If you’re lucky enough to have perverted Facebook friends, your news feed is probably littered with “potty” humor.
Does this look familiar?
(Photo by @ckbarrett)
Variations on this theme included pages like “in the butt”, “big butts, and I cannot lie”, and “it like that”.
Obviously, Facebook didn’t consider its users’ maturity levels when it launched the new “Like” feature.
I’m happy that users are playing with “Like” because the concept should never be taken seriously. Pages like “in the butt” and “it rough” actually fill me with hope for humanity.
Some social networks have tried to “standardize” human emotions. Don’t stand for it!
Here are 10 ways that the web has tried to simplify our feelings:
1. The Facebook Like feature: Instead of “becoming a fan” of a page, you can now “Like” a page! To be honest, I have “fanned” a lot of pages simply to show my support for the people who created them. Now, I have to “Like” a page? What if I don’t actually “like” it? Have you noticed what happens when you try to “Like” that one of your friends has “Liked” a page? You “Like” it too! Is that confusing enough for you?
2. The idea of Facebook “friends”: In the right sidebar on the Facebook home page, you will see a section called “Get Connected” and a link to “Find your friends”. Have you ever actually thought to yourself, “Hey, I have (INSERT NUMBER OF FACEBOOK FRIENDS HERE) friends!”? How many friends do you actually have? Facebook, I can count my Friends (with a capital “F”) on one hand.
3. MySpace mood status: As deceptive as a person’s MySpace profile photo, the MySpace mood status allows for descriptive mood updates like “sad” and “bored”.
4. Emoticons: When writing e-mails and text messages, most people feel the need to use emoticons to clarify a statement with potential for misinterpretation. It’s the difference between “You’re such a nerd” and “You’re such a nerd 
”. Do we actually believe that an arrangement of punctuation marks resembles a person’s face?
5. YouTube thumbs up or thumbs down feature: YouTube recently changed its rating system from stars to thumbs. Before, a viewer could rate a video from zero to five stars. Now, viewers click thumbs up or thumbs down. Don’t think too hard!
6. Twitter’s Make Favorite feature: Do you like a tweet? If you click the tiny star next to a tweet, you “favorite” it. Basically, this means that Twitter saves this tweet so you can refer to it later. Rarely, do I actually star tweets because they are my favorites, if favorite means most-liked. More often than not, I star tweets on my phone so that I can refer them later on a larger monitor (links and videos are difficult to access on my BlackBerry). I also star both positive and negative feedback so that I can refer to it in the future.
7. Pandora’s thumbs up or thumbs down feature: Pandora’s thumb feature is actually useful because your feedback customizes the station to your preferences. However, it assumes that you like or dislike songs equally. Sometimes, I REALLY like a song, and I wish I could love it on Pandora. Other times, I sort of like a song, but I have to give it the same thumb I would give to something I love.
8. Match.com: During my brief stint on Match.com, I discovered some things about etiquette unique to this dating community. When I first signed up for the site, I received a message from a man who wasn’t really my type. In the message was a link I could click to let that person know I just wasn’t interested. So I clicked it. Apparently, if you’re not interested in someone, ignoring that person is better than actually clicking the “I’m not interested” link. The man was very offended, and I learned my lesson.
9. Lack of a Facebook Dislike button: Lots of people have asked this question, but I’m going to ask it again: WHY doesn’t Facebook have a Dislike button? Well, thanks to awesome people who develop Firefox add-ons, now Facebook DOES have a Dislike button!
10. Twitter followers: I’m being kind of tough on Twitter here because I think they do a good job of utilizing Twitter-specific jargon to characterize activity on the site. However, some people take the whole “follower” thing a bit too seriously. You, the person with 100,000 “followers”: tweet that you’re having a special “Kool-Aid party” at a place called Jonestown and see how many people attend.
(Photo by allyaubry)
Laryssa Wirstiuk is a social media marketing and online image consultant. Learn more about how she can help you and your business gain friends and customers by visiting Comma ‘n Sentence Consulting.
This is actually why I rarely make use of such ratings anymore. The “yea or nay” approach to out thoughts on something we encounter online is obviously the outer facade of simplified code for gathering marketing information. Which is bothersome enough. The idea that I have to ignore a huge range of possible preferences, as you are discussing, is also part of it.
Re: #6, I do that too when I’m using Twitter on my Blackberry. I have never actually just read a tweet that I loooooved and had to call it my “favorite.”
Also, I can’t stop laughing at that “Kool-Aid party” bit.