To get the rage with clapping?

[TinfoilHattie]

Not applause. That's fine and a great way of showing appreciation.

It's the "clap along with the music" which makes me cringe. It's like being back at pre-school. Gives me the rage when the kids do it and they now know better than to clap along to the car radio. Gives me the rage even more when some crappy performer tries to encourage audience participation by getting people to clap.

Just NO.

I fly between London and Rome or Florence a lot. I'm used to clapping now. I understand it's a harmless superstition. Mildly annoying though and not every Italian passenger does it.

At Disney myself and my husband clapped loudly and a half-beat out of time along(ish) with the Country Bear Jamboree. The trick is not making it look deliberate.

I guess there's a special place in hell reserved for us.

I don't mind clapping except for the growing tolerance of clapping in church.

YANBU - I once went on a ghastly corporate bonding sort of day, where there was an event involving clapping along to music for a whole hour. Complete nightmare!

Oh god, just thinking about this has me doing a cat bum mouth and clenching my bum cheeks. It's so, so, so horrendous. And I promise you, performers/musicians do NOT like this! I've played with orchestras and sometimes play a patriotic piece of music, or something particularly rousing and people stand up and start clapping! The first clapper is usually ok, but it gets worse and worse because as more join in they speed up and the conductor is frantically waving their arms about trying to get the orchestra to look at them and follow them. Half of them manage it and the other half are confused by the clapping. And then I find myself Making. A. Point. Of. Exaggerating My. Bowing. TO. DEMONSTRATE. THE. CORRECT. TEMPO. TO. PEOPLE. WHO. ARE. WRONG!!!!! A particularly dramatic conductor once stopped and shouted at the audience

I've never understood the stamping. It's so much worse than clapping. I don't know what it even means. Why does liking something mean they have to stamp their feet very quickly on the floor?

The worst was at a gig with just one man and his guitar. It was such a tiny venue it was as though he was sitting on my lap and personally serenading me. That was bad enough - a bit like when somebody starts singing to you out of the blue and you want to die but have to seem serious and appreciative because you can hardly escape unnoticed as an audience of one. Then came the clapping. I could cope with that. But then he asked the audience to join in with the last song, which was a cover of a love song. I honestly thought nobody would because of the cringe, or there would be some awkward mumbling, but I swear I was the only person with mouth clamped shut. The man next to me even had his eyes closed like it was some deep, spiritual experience! Horrifying.

I don't hate it, but I have very little sense of rhythm so I find it embarrassing to have to clap along to anything as I always get it wrong. Also annoys me when it drowns out the music which is what I'm there for.

Clapping on planes makes me cringe - never sure if it's because people were expecting to crash so clap from relief or a patronising 'well done' to the pilot for doing his/her job.

YANBU. I'm just cringing just thinking about it! My parents dragged me along to an abba mania concert as a teenager, all I remember from it is loads of old ladies trying to physically force me to get up and dance with them. Audience participation of any kind makes me want to run a mile.

My very worst experience of this type is burned on my memory. I was in my first job after graduating, and the idea was the thew new recruits would spend a month in each area of the business to learn the ropes before settling into their permanent role. So I found myself in a Dorothy Perkins store in Cardiff one afternoon with a load of store managers from all over Wales and the west of England learning all about their store card products. Boring as fuck.

Anyhow. After lunch the "trainer" decided he'd combat the post-lunch slump with an ice breaker. He made us all get up on the desks and do the hokey cokey. I shit you not.

Fucking awful experience and 20 odd years later still makes me shudder.

I've no objection at all to clapping along - as long as I don't have to sing BUT it's embarrassing clapping along if the person next to you refuses to join in. They can't help but give the impression that they don't know how to enjoy themselves and are giving you the death stare.

Circus clapping hell over. I noiselessly touched my hands together when I was expected to clap but had no problem with applauding the performers.

I lurve a good clapalong opp

Massively makes my day it does

1, 2, 3 altogether now....

I fucking hate it, it makes concerts seem like a 'get the old ladies moving' session in an old people's home.

I"be seen some amazing bands on the arts circuit be totally ruined by this church-goer English weirdness. I blame that fucking music hall show that was on in the 1970s that seems to have been peak cool for far too many of us.

You'd be amazed at how loud deliberately clapping out of time with the crowd can be and how offputting it is for the sheep who love to clap. It's great fun.

Please none of you get fat and have to go to Slimming World. It's not a bad diet, but the clapping.

There might be 40 people in the circle, mostly ladies, and at mine they were mostly over 55, with a couple of stone to lose at the most. The leader would go round the circle, and say what every person had lost or gained, and we'd all have to clap, then they'd ask if we had any plans, and what we'd do to ensure we stuck to the diet. Again we had to clap. So 80 rounds of applause. It was hell on Earth.

Really misread the title thought it was about an STD

You should all have been at Joseph last night. It was an absolute festival of all the worst types of clapping imaginable. I was a maverick with my traditional applause. Encore after encore of clap along songs. And clap along they did. I thought of you all.

NO- don't tell me that, Toysaurus, I'm going on Saturday. I know it's a total cheese-fest anyway (although I do love it) but clapping could be a game changer!

I don't get the rage but it is really cringe I agree

I want to know more about "the rage". I'd never heard about this before finding this forum. What is it? Who gets it?

Youre not alone!

It reminds me of Trevor and Simon - Swing your pants children!

I hate it too, any enforced jollity is anathema to me. Where I work when it's someone's birthday we all have to gather round them and sing 'happy birthday ' really loudly. I die a little inside every time

Thank goodness, I thought it was just us. When we go to a show, it often seems that we four are the only ones not singing along or clapping. Even at Ronnie Scott's one time. We also are usually the only ones not laughing at the stupid predictable jokes. Makes us seem joyless, but I don't think we are, outside the confines of a show.

We either don't clap, or do this move where your hands are on your lap and you sort of touch your fingers together, in case the non- existent clapping police spot us not having fun.

As soon as we see that clapping is on the cards, we have to avoid looking at each other, as the cringe effect is magnified.

Save the clapping for applause people!