New Facebook Buttons!

Mark, give us a Care-Button!

We “like” things on Facebook like there is no tomorrow. But let’s be honest: Even primates are more versatile in expressing themselves. It’s time for new buttons! Here’s a little mind game and some creative suggestions.

“We don’t just like things, we do more than that!” was the outcry of more than 20’000 groups on Facebook. But nobody is listening. For many years millions of users declare “All they want us to do is to like things, we want to dislike!”.

Even the scientific community is angered about Facebook’s bloody-mindedness when it comes to introducing new buttons. Felix Stalder (Professor for Digital Culture and Network Theories at Zurich University of Arts) recently warned us about the pre-formatting of our internet communication:  “Facebook is guiding us in a direction which is beneficial only for them and refrains of introducing a Dislike-Button for fear of negative comments”. But this is no secret, Facebook even admits it openly: “Positive comments fit better in our philosophy than negative statements”.  Facebook is worried about their cozy virtual world because their users mostly log in to feel good and Facebook doesn’t want to provide a stage for cranks and sourpusses.

Grooming Talk: We are like monkeys

Fact is: Even monkeys have a bigger repertoire than the virtual human when it comes to social graces. Gorillas, chimpanzees and Barbary apes love to sit in groups, ruffle each other’s fur and delouse one another. Basically they are like us, at least when it comes to social interaction. It’s all about the exchange of niceties and social commitments.  Obviously humans don’t sit together in small groups and fondle each other anymore (even if it is a nice thought), our evolution pursues a different, more economical way. This is why we invented the language, more specifically small-talk. Mostly senseless babble, like delousing without lice, but not entirely pointless: It binds us together.

Then came the internet and brought us many new “friends”, 130 each Facebook user has in average. It would require a lot of time and nerves to send emails to all of them or to place nice comments on all of their walls: we all were in desperate need for something new and the solution was the “Like”-Button! 

What fondling is to monkeys, the click on the Like-Button is to us. Each one of us already “liked” 80 things in average, that’s a staggering 66’800’000’000 Likes till date! This shows that we are living in the age of a real “Like-Inflation”. We like irrelevant stuff like childhood pis of colleagues of friends or “funny” status updates like “I think I have another beer” and so on. And there exactly is the problem: Thumbs up, thumbs up! Facebook doesn’t give us a possibility to express sorrow, dismay, preferences or sympathy. There is nothing in between an elaborate comment and a simple “thumbs up”.  The Like-Statement is not just for what you like anymore and this can cause confusion.

Suggestions for a new Button-Culture on Facebook

I have to admit, I “like” a lot of things – 334 till date. But I actually don’t feel embarrassed about my generosity – not at last because this button has a very limited significance nowadays. A boost in importance of the Like-Button would really make sense, don’t you think? How about a “Love-Button”, constrained to a limited amount of let’s say, 10 per year? Or a “Care-Button” to supplement our digital communication vocabulary?

The question remains – Would the users be satisfied with a couple more feel-good-buttons or would they want more? Anyway, the system will protect itself as it know to be the case: tomatoes won’t be thrown on Facebook anytime soon.

(this post is based on a Tagesanzeiger article by Roman Hirsbrunner, CEO of Maxomedia)