The "Like" Button

Facebook's "Like" button seems to me one of the smartest virtual inventions of recent times. It has  saved its users' time and the trouble that they used to take in the past to comment on a photo, status or post. Today, a click on the "Like" button is enough to convey your feeling toward a post, but really?

These days people "like" anything and everything. If you "like" my photo, I will "like" your next photo, even if you look like a lost witch in that picture. It is a give-and-take virtual relationship that people seem to have established on the Internet.

Although the "Like" button saves us time and energy but I still like the old Facebook more, where if someone really liked your photo they had to scribble at least one word - pretty, beautiful, nice, sweet, hot or whatever - to express their feeling. Today, the click on the "Like" button does not really convey a friend's feeling - you will never know if your friend thought you looked "pretty" or plain "sweet." Your time spent on photo-editing applications and websites literally went down the drain, if your friend thought you merely looked "nice" and not "gorgeous," the adjective that would have satisfied you.

Jokes apart, I think the "Like" button has made us impulsive. We "like" anything and everything on Facebook now. I have seen posts with 100+ "likes." How many from these 100 people would have bothered to respond to your post if there were no "like" button? My conviction is, not too many. Writing a short or a lengthy comment takes time and energy after all.

This is a busy world, we are busy at work and home. We have hundreds of friends, most of whom are on Facebook but are friends (!) nonetheless. It is not easy to connect with everyone so Facebook just invented a "Like" button to help us let our friends know that we like them and care for their photos and posts - whether we really do is a different story of course...!