The shaka is pau.

It's not ours anymore.

What used to be an insider gesture has been packaged and sold and thoroughly misappropriated.

It's like when those ladies' magazines you read only at the dentist's office started using the word "bling" in articles about mail-order jewelry.

It's like when grandmas started using "disrespect" as a verb.

It's like when high school teachers got into watching "Pimp My Ride."

Going mainstream is not always a good thing.

The debate over the origin of the shaka can fill a chatroom or letters-to-the-editor page for days. Everyone wants to talk about how it started and how it used to be. Few want to face the state of shaka today.

The shaka has been slipping away for years. It started with the first "hang loose" T-shirt ever sold and went downhill from there.

For a long time, we were holding it together. If you didn't have shaka experience, it showed. The posers and fakers were easy to spot, their thumb and pinky flapping wildly like a wounded duck high over their heads.

Then somebody figured out that the gesture was meant to be held close to the body, the elbow bent, bicep flexed.

Whether it was Brook as Miss Universe (who has the quintessential local-girl shaka, you have to admit, even with her dainty fingers), Angela as Miss America, or Jasmine on "America Idol," somebody studied. Somebody took notes. Somebody sent out the secret plans.

Then, every other small-time thug on the Dog Chapman show was shaka-ing.

When the big guy, Hurley, from "Lost" flashed a shaka in the Emmy-night cast photo, you knew the thing was out of control. Yeah, he works here, but not like we see him at Pali Longs, if you know what I mean.

And the latest assault, the "Shaka for Steinlager" ad campaign. Wait, now a beer company is taking the shaka as its own? Wait till Duke Aiona hears about that!

Oh, it's sad, but it's been a good run.

Tita Ahuna, Brian Villoria, Russ Francis — those were championship shakas.

But think of the thousands of otherwise dignified graduations marred by flipping shakas to the annoyance of prim grandparents.

Think of the thousands of minutes of airtime burned at the end of the news when we could have been watching ... something scenic.

Think of all the drivers who have been able to worm their cars into traffic by flashing the magic sign.

It's time to let it go. We'll come up with something new, something cool, something so insider-y that it can't be so easily co-opted. Let the shaka stand not for "I'm local" but, instead, for "I'm pretending that I'm local." That's more accurate.

But the word kahuna, that we must reclaim.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.