Flyby's Reactions to "React"

By Eva S. Monroe

As if clicking ‘Like’ on Facebook weren’t expressive enough, now there are six different ways you’re allowed to feel about someone’s new profile picture or Go Fund Me post. Now all six human emotions are displayed when you hover over the ‘Like’ button. Instead of just liking you-know-who’s 100th post of the day, you can show them that Facebook activism really does make a difference by letting them know that you too are “sad” or “angry” at the state of the world. Go crazy.

Seriously, Zuck? Did we need this? All we ever asked you for was a dislike button, so we could effortlessly express that we’re sorry to hear about something bad happening (or sorry we had to see someone’s crazy ‘I support Trump’ post), and instead you gave us this. And come on. “Haha” isn’t even an emotion. “Wow my status for a truth is” just does not make sense.

But it gets worse. How are we supposed to quantify our Facebook presences? Before, it was just about how many likes your ‘comp my club’ profile picture got, but how do we judge its reception now? Are “haha”s positive or negative? Are we supposed to subtract the negative reactions from the positive to figure out the public’s net opinion? Do we need equations and actual math skills to know if our crush thinks we look good in our latest post? This is too much.

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