December 10, 2013

The statistical pleasure of Like kills the conversation

I liked the like button of Facebook till the time I realised that I can not dislike it. There is no option!

It was a simple one click action to like something. People would post photos, thoughts, views, opinions, links and you could just Like it if you liked it. Even if you did not like the post you could still Like it if you liked your friend unless your friend never liked any of your likeable posts!

Ah..but, consequently, people started forgetting the Comment box. Lately I have seen posts with 50+ likes but less than 5 comments: hey where is the conversation now.

Even a photograph is liked by different people for different reasons - we don't know those perspective now, we don't express them now. A landscape photograph may be liked by the photographer for the greenery while someone may like the clouds, and some may like the goat standing in the corner, umm the left corner, which others may not even have noticed. There is no exchange of appreciation, there is no sharing of viewpoint - its only a statistical increase of Like.

Facebook being intelligent has probably sensed our inability to write our mind in Comments box, so they have planned to come up with Sympathise button if the post is - say worth liking but in a sympathetic way!

Now knowing that I can not dislike the Like button, may be I can Sympathise :)
After all feelings have to be let out, and we need buttons for that.

No comments: