Perhaps you have heard of it. It is the latest ‘revolution’ in communication. You might even have some hipster friends who already use it. But ask anybody what it really is and you might be surprised to hear that hardly anyone really knows. It’s the ‘Wave’, by international conglomerate Le Go-Go Group. Touting the ‘wave’ as a revolutionary new tool for communication, Le Go-Go believes that it will bridge the gap between instant glances and conversational chatting.

Developed by a team of Le Go-Go engineers over the past two years, the Wave is now being tested by a select group of engineers and those that they have taught it to. New users are allowed to teach it to a limited number of their own friends too. All in all, however, just a few thousand people know how to ‘wave’.

Penelope Johnston is one of the privileged few. “I got it a long time ago when it first came out – one of my friends works at Le Go-Go,” she bragged. When asked what use she found for it, however, she conceded that she had ‘absolutely no idea.’

“It’s just a cool thing to have,” Johnston said. “Not all of my friends have even been taught how to wave yet, so here I am just waving to random people on the street. Some of them don’t even know how to wave back, so yeah, sometimes I feel like an idiot.” Like others I spoke to, Johnston likes to tell people she knows how to wave, but rarely does so herself.

I managed to get a hold of an invitation to the Wave craze myself through a friend. Excited, I waved to as many people as I knew, but I ran into the same problems reported by so many others. Nobody I knew had it, and out of the people I knew who did, none of them knew how to use it. I really did feel stupid waving at people and like everyone else, I eventually gave up and waved good-bye.