“Like’s” on facebook and other social sites is a very interesting concept indeed. A minimum effort from the user results in a statement that may be encourageing or discouraging for the receiving part. The important question I need to ask myself is off course “What do I like?”
My friend Helena changed her relationship status on Facebook to “Single”. This particular dialog caught my attention. Let me tell you, right off the bat, that this post however is not about Helena or her love life. This is just one example of the implications involved with social interaction on line in general. With this said, lets dive right in!
Technically Helena being “Single” is just that she changed the value of the relationship status field in the database from what ever is was before to “Single”. This however does not necessarily mean that she became single at this moment. The relationship field may be left blank for one reason or another and not show up at all on her profile. Stating that she is “Single” may there for not mean any change at all. Here is all get’s a little weird, if Helena just browsed around her settings and realized that the relationship status was still empty and decided to fill it, her entire on line community containing of xxx friends will still be presented with the new that “Helena is now Single”. The crowd will now be led to believe that that she was in a relationship that that maybe no one knew anything about and now, suddenly was single again. How is this for drama!
This is not the most interesting thing however. More interesting is the number of people that states that they “Liked” the fact that Helena now is single. In my mind this response to this matter is a bit strange. Off course there are certainly a few men around this both good looking and vibrant person that sees their chance when Helena now seems to passionately be back in the dating game, but this can’t be the complete explanation. If somebody wanted to get together with Helena they would NOT “Like” the single status but rather express their hope that Helenas relationship status would at some point be pointing in their own direction. Or at least that the status was cleared. “Like” in this meaning does not make sense at all and a “Hope” button is still yet to come.
In my book the term “Single” is charged with rather negative value. It implies a broken relationships and a state of “lonelyness” In this case it would be rather unpolite to “Like” the fact. You would not use the “Like” button if somebody told their online community that something bad has happened, right?
I know that the term “Single” also carries a nother possible interpretation. I may mean freedom from old and stagnated relationships, to be able explore options in life and what not. If this would be Helenas perception then a number of Jolly and cheerful “Likes” would be perfectly appropriate response from loving friends. As it turns out however different people in the actual thred is clearly responding according to their own interpretation!
There is another bothering thing with the “Like” functionality. If I have clicked “Like” by mistake and want to reverse it I should use the same button that has a toggle functionality. The text however is changed to “Unlike” which may not address my purpose at all. In my book “Unlike” is far more negative compared to the state matters was before I clicked the “Like”-button in the first place. Did I just loose you? Probobally. If I wanted to reverse a “Like”, “Undo Like” would in my opinion explain more clearly what I was aiming for.
As a matter of fact there are several groups on Facebook that want Facebook to add a dislike button in the interface. This, I can tell you, would be a disaster for the community building effort of the users. Bullying on the internet has become a great distress for the people growing up now. When the conversation flips to digital channels after school the victims continues to be victimized on line at night. Your friends may not love everything you write about yourself online, but you have to be rather strong in your self image to not be affected by some of your friends, meaning people that you have invited to your private space by accepting them as friends, suddenly started to state that they “disliked” the small pieces of your life you choose to publish.
I strongly believe that it is the “Ignore” and the “Maybe” concepts made Facebook great and is one of the things that separated it from all other networks available when it introduced a few years back. The possibility to get help from Facebook to induce uncertainty into relationships is actually giving us some space. If you for example gets invited by someone you love to an event that you don’t love you can still show your support for the event by accepting the invitation with a “Maybe”. You will not be there, but maybe a little bit in spirit even if you are not showing up in the flesh.
So, if Helena is happy with the life as “Single”, whatever meaning of the word, or happy with the fact that a certain population within her on line community likes the fact in question, this story will tell nothing about. But be sure that journey in the on line landscape will probably will continue to be rather inspiring and fun as long as the people that dislikes what you do or say are forced to mind their own business and go else were with their negativity.
/ Mårten Angner
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Helena was very pleased about this post by the way