SuppliedI’m not perfect. Far from it — I’m flawed. I’ve been known to stop at the McDonald’s drive-thru on my way home from work, and even order double layers of butter for popcorn at the movies. These are things that I can’t help but do.
Then every once in a while I’ll go on Facebook to remind myself of why I don’t go on Facebook. Between targeted advertisements that pander to my baser instincts and baby pictures posted by my high school classmates, I’ll sometimes find a post about something tragic, be it Ben Mendelsohn losing to Peter Dinklage at the Emmy’s, or an earthquake in Nepal.
All available options on Facebook that allow me to express myself make me uncomfortable. For some things, I want to express my dislike without having to type out a low effort comment such as “dislike.” For others, I can’t exactly “like” a natural disaster, but I still want to give both the events the prominence that a “like” allows me to project. What’s interesting about Facebook right now is that posts with more likes tend to rise to more users’ front pages, making the posts much more prominent across more profiles. Statuses or posts that don’t have likes or comments tend to just wither away.
With these functions in mind, I finally have a better way to express my emotions without having to comment on a post. The downside is that in more public debates on Facebook, from say the Emmys’ Facebook profile or from Donald Trump, you could have an unpopular opinion (like vaccines actually being safe) buried under dislikes (from internet conspiracy theorists jet fuel can’t melt steel beams).
With posts from ordinary people like myself, I’m eager to see how a dislike button plays out. One of the common refrains against the internet by real people is that anonymity enables people to be much more insensitive behind a computer monitor and smartphone. The introduction of a dislike button to as public a platform as Facebook threatens to stir the pot, and has only reinforced the idea in my head that the ongoing social experiment that is Facebook is taking another step to further the breakdown of the social fabric of civilization.
