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The "Like" button is doing a lot more than just showing opinions

The “Like” button on Facebook has become a cultural icon for our generation. It is a way that people can instantly give their approval and/or association with a thought, picture, quote or meme. It may seem like an innocent and small aspect of our online society. But in fact the Like button is having a profound effect on how people think and act on both conscious and subconscious levels. The best way to investigate this subject is through a thought experiment. Imagine yourself as someone who is regularly checking his/her Facebook profile. Let’s make the assumption that the reason(s) that you may be using Facebook is either for entertainment, boredom, money making purposes, social interaction or all of the above. Ok, so now you are on your main status and update page, and you see what other people are saying. What comments and images do you think you are going to click on or take the time to read the most? The ones that will probably catch your eye will be the ones that either have the most “comments” and/or the most “Likes” or thumbs up. The simple reasoning for this is because if someone else took the time to read or comment or approve of something, then it would be more worthy of your attention. While reading you start to ascribe a sort of value to comments or pictures that have the most “likes.”

Something happens when you decide to write on your wall. Do you usually get a lot of comments on what you have to say? Do people give you the thumbs up and press the “Like” button? Let’s say you write about how your day went. And your comment was something like this, “Work was tolerable, but my boss fired Jim and now I am fearful of my job.” And for the sake of this thought experiment, no one commented on this and no one pressed the “Like” button. Does this mean this was a bad status update, or was this useless information? No. It just means that no one showed an interest in this comment and didn’t want to add any extra attention to this issue. So let’s now say you wrote a status update that said, “I went to Starbucks and I’m so thirsty that I just drank 2! Count ’em TWO venti lattes! Now I’m goona barf.” Well, your friends read this wall update on their friend feed and most of them had a good chuckle. So a few friends wrote comments, joking around with you. And several other friends clicked the, “Like” button. What just happened here? Not only were you given more attention and feedback from your peers, but you also got one thing that you desired from Facebook in the first place: Social Interaction. So by writing a more witty and interesting wall update, you achieved one of your online goals. Thus, you have been rewarded for your form of communication.

Yet we don’t just use Facebook once a day. Most users log in and spend over 30 minutes per day if not more and check it often. I myself keep my Facebook page open while I’m writing in case someone wants to get a hold of me or if there are any notifications on my communications. So there are many chances for people to write things and either get or not get feedback. So if you think about it, over time you are being evaluated hundreds if not thousands of times on what you say and how you contribute. And the simplest form of judgment on your actions is of course, the “Like” button. After using Facebook for a few months one can begin to learn patterns in how people react to information and what will garner “Likes.” But what is really going on here? Are we putting spin on our interactions to gain more approval and affinity from our peers? I don’t think so. We are actually being reshaped behaviorally using Pavlovian methods. But the interesting part is that we are reshaping our behaviors both consciously and subconsciously. The conscious part is that we push the “Like” button on information that we have an affinity with or agree with, and thus propagate the usage of such a button. And the subconscious part is that we gradually reshape the patterns of our actions to cater to getting more “Likes” from other people. Thus we are molding our online personalities to become more attractive to the attention of other online personalities that are shaped by the very same trends and forces.

Since the online social networking groups are connected through vast webs, even the most unique and stalwart of individuals will become tempered by the temptation of online acceptance and popularity. This factor is multiplied when the user wants to gain notoriety for the purpose of promoting his/her idea or business.  Now there is a more rapid expansion and evolution of personality shaping on the internet. We are already witnessing memes getting spread faster than wildfire. It seems like even the standard media sources like the TV News and Newspapers pay tribute to often silly internet phenomenon like Double Rainbows and others. The end result is that our culture and especially our behavior is being self-regulated and almost policed for no other reason than getting attention. People used to have to write music or books in order to get 15 minutes of fame. Now someone can make a YouTube video about makeup and get tens of thousands of Facebook fans overnight.

Thus we aren’t the same people anymore since we’ve started to use Facebook. Similarly to the substance “D” in the film A Scanner Darkly: There’s no withdrawal from Facebook. You’re either “ON” it, or else you haven’t tried it yet.

So my main concern about the Like button is that we used to have our behavior primarily modified by our parents, then by the education system. Then the media became a larger factor in influencing behavior. But now people are modifying their own behavior wholesale. The real danger in this is that we are setting ourselves up more manipulation and suggestion on such a huge scale that we could have artificial and subliminal memes integrated into our collective psyche literally overnight without anyone knowing the difference. One thing that comes to mind is this new trend of people constantly, “Checking In” to stores and places they visit and transmitting that information via Facebook. This blatant disregard for security and personal privacy really worries me. What if you live alone? Couldn’t someone rob your apartment or house super easy by finding out when you check into McDonald’s on Main street? Afterwords you can check into the police station downtown saying, “I got my ass robbed!” – Jim Smooth just checked into Police Station 2013 Downtown 2 hours ago.

-Tyler