It’s something Facebook users have been wanting for some time now, and Facebook creator/destroyer of the Internet as we knew it, Mark Zuckerberg has finally listened, promising the long-awaited Dislike button. The doppelganger of the Like button, it will be an option underneath a Status/Comment allowing users to express their disapproval. It appears to be a pretty well-accepted innovation to the website’s barebones aesthetic, but I see nothing good coming of it.
First of all, isn’t Facebook passive-aggressive enough as it is? Maybe I missed the memo, but at what point did Facebook stop being about keeping in touch with family and friends and became a shitty image board? A bastardization of the formats of 4Chan and Tumblr, Facebook is now a platform to log in and share cynical image macros about other users, culture, and most aggressively, socio-political buzz-topics. If I was more matured, it's what I'd refrain from calling Memebook. It’s pretty safe to say that most of these posts aren’t exactly life-affirming (and most of them are plagiarized from old memes, minted with a new watermark for some website, wannabe Internet celebrity, or radio station…for some reason), and the adopted-nihilism will only be given a new means of passive-aggression.
Think about this: for every status you post, how many people comment something negative or argumentative? Or better yet, how many people don’t? For the most part, I’d assume that people who don’t have an interest in what you’re sharing or disagree with your belief (be it that TMNT was a good movie, which would be false, or that Kim Davis lives under a bridge, which has no evidence to the contrary) just scroll down. Now, if they’re given the option to click a button that essentially lets you know “I don’t care,” or “I don’t respect your opinion,” how will that affect communication?
Some people think the Dislike button will be for information you appreciate, but are not happy about. Anyone whose used the website has probably had that struggle between Liking a post about someone’s family member, friend, or pet passing away, and whether or not it’s in bad taste. I like that interpretation. It’s a bittersweet addition to the site, to eliminate miscommunication. However, if we can simplify our thoughts to Like/Dislike, what’s the point of a Comments section at all? We might as well add as many shades of Like and Dislike as there are Emojis and install new keyboards that have not characters, but emoticons for all occasions.
Also, there’s been a rumor going around the Internet that posts with more than 10 Dislikes will be removed from the website. Yeah, that might sound like another outlandish conspiracy theory on the same level as paying for Facebook, but remember that time Comments were deleted if they used certain words that were unamiable? Or how Facebook now selects whose posts you see in your Friends List/Liked Pages, rather than a timeline of posts, regardless of who posted them (based on who paid for better advertisement on the website, who has as many Likes in common with you, or who you most recently communicated with). The website has always been pro-censorship, and even pro-segregation not on any ethnic palette, but based on personality. The Dislike is just another way to control what we see and who is allowed to express themselves. If you ask me, that’s the opposite of what social media should be.
And if you needed any more convincing, just go to the Comments section on any Entertainment Weekly post, and tell me that you want those people to have the option of a Dislike button.
