What’s not to Like about Like

What does Social Media Do For US?

The ever pervasive social media systems such as Facebook and Twitter provide a very useful way of people staying in touch with each other, this is a positive. the same can be said for commercial users, most large retailers have Facebook pages for example. Speaking of commercials, those pesky advertising companies have a way of inserting an advert in almost every website. But then you don’t need this site to tell you that unless you’ve been living off the net or are a visitor from another planet…. if the latter please be nice to us.

Recent press has provided a much more negative view of social media, such deep suspicion of secret unknown friends causing relationships to fail though arguably not the cause of failure rather a significant contributor (allegedly!).

The rise of the Like

In the early days, a social media user would ‘Like’ a post or comment posted on a social media site this indicated that the liker liked or someway approved of whatever the article or comment was about.. obvious really.

In an obviously non-competitive way (because we are not allowed to be competitive anymore as its confrontational #cottonwoolkids) people started comparing the number of likes they were getting to those of their friends, enemies and people they didn’t even know… pretty well everyone. This somehow became a measure of that person’s popularity…

The Cyber Like Crossover

“DANGER WILL ROBINSON” <<– (You may need to look that up)

The issue here is that the liking or not of a social media post is something that happens in Cyber Space. This act of liking is often carried out by people known to the author but in many cases not. Under such circumstances one has to work out what “Like” actually means.. here’s a list…

• I have read the post and I like what you say
• I have read the post and you’re one of my best friends evs
• I have not read the post and your like one of my bestist friends evs
• I accidentally pressed like and don’t know how to un-press it
• I pressed Like because then I know I will appear in your news feed (Linkedin!!!)
• I am playing with your mind
• I am playing with my mind
• I don’t do tech, don’t know what happened, don’t know you and don’t care
• I read the post and then moved on (No Like.. not Not Like)

In summary, only one of the above cases is genuinely reflecting the true purpose of the Like button. This means that in the majority of cases, Like has nothing to do with expressing opinion over the post itself. It merely represents a desire to communicate in some way so don’t read like as like or not liked as not liked or no like or not like as not read.

Why is like so important..it isn’t…it has no value

Sadly the still growing but immature mind, dealing with its own insecurity will treat Like as an actual physical measure of their world wide appear, their popularity in the classroom and the number of friends they have.

This is entirely superficial as it is based on nothing more than passing fancy on not genuine opinion in most cases.

Having said all of that, if you Like this post I will count you as a friend!