The Insidious Evils of 'Like' Culture

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Unfortunately, this idea is becoming an anachronism. When the Internet first came into public use, it was hailed as a liberation from conformity, a floating world ruled by passion, creativity, innovation and freedom of information. When it was hijacked first by advertising and then by commerce, it seemed like it had been fully co-opted and brought into line with human greed and ambition.

But there was one other element of human nature that the Internet still needed to conquer: the need to belong. The “like” button began on the website FriendFeed in 2007, appeared on Facebook in 2009, began spreading everywhere from YouTube to Amazon to most major news sites last year, and has now been officially embraced by Google as the agreeable, supportive and more status-conscious “+1.” As a result, we can now search not just for information, merchandise and kitten videos on the Internet, but for approval.
 
Let me be the first to “Like” this post! 🤨
 
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Conformity has always been the rule, likes are just the new way of enforcement is all.
 
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I’ve got ten years of likes to catch up on 🙂 I never had any likes or gave them until CAF
 
A whole lot of people have already invited themselves off the social media bandwagon. If I’m “liking” something now it’s usually a prayer post or someone rehabilitating injured animals.

I think these articles are a bit focused on the folks who are spending a lot of time on the social media, either as a way of marketing or self-promotion for their business, or simply because they’re young and are in the stage of life where they want the approval of a group and tend to conform to all the current trends. I’m willing to bet that by the time a person is 30+ with responsibilities, then unless Facebook or Twitter is part of his job (like he’s a political pundit or a journalist, both of whom are generally out to get the most “likes” possible), he couldn’t care less if 50 people like his post or not. He may not even be making posts. Now, he may well care if his friends agree or not with his views, but that’s separate from social media and “like culture”.
 
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