The ‘Like’ doesn’t mean what you think it means

Before deepfakes and alternative facts, the online world was already telling us fibs. In our series Lies the Internet Told Me, we call ’em all out.

We all like to be Liked.

In the daily life of any social media user, there is nothing so needy as the moment — or, let’s be honest, moments — we check to see how many people have reacted to our posts. 

And nowhere in our daily life is there a greater disconnect between what we think people are thinking when they Like our stuff, and the dispassionate way we sow our own Likes on the content of others.

The first behavior, the neediness, places a far higher value on the Like. It is entirely internal, largely hidden from public view, though not as hidden as we think (we act like nobody around us can see what’s on the private rectangle of glass in our hands). There is a thin veneer of plausible deniability, because there really are other reasons we might be checking our notifications. 

Right. Sure. “I just wanted to see which of my friends started a fundraiser for their birthday” is the new “I was only reading it for the articles.” 

We all know what’s going on here. We’ve all sat there at our keyboards after posting something we thought was funny or admirable and hit reload on the notification page. When a clever tweet or neat #nofilter Instagram is launched, its owner invariably acts as if they have just given birth and are waiting for the world to love their baby as they do. 

We’ve all had that small hit of dopamine — because yes, dopamine is literally what we’re injecting into our brains here, producing a result similar to cocaine — when that first Like rolls in. After the second or third Like, the drip of dope becomes a roar of validation. We feel the virtual love, we see ghost hugs everywhere. In the center of all of our brains sits the voice of Sally Field. 

But is that what we really intend when we’re on the other side of the fence, dispensing the Likes? Not so much. There are a variety of reasons why we might like a post other than literally liking it or liking you.

The like button has acquired a panoply of meanings in the social realm. It can be used variously to mean yes, I agree, I hear you, sure, why not, I guess. It can be used as a bookmark. And that’s just scratching the surface; there are a whole bunch of other reasons, personal and political, why we might be giving you a heart or a thumbs-up. 

It behooves us to try to remember all these when we’re giving tearful thank-you speeches on the Academy Award stages in our heads. Starting with our selfish need to dispense:

1. Dollar dollar bills, y’all

Likes are the Monopoly money of the 21st century. Or they would be, if Monopoly players could plunder the bank at will. They are social dollars, and we are all granted an endless supply. 

In the Like economy, everyone is a zillionaire, and as with real-world zillionaires at charity galas, dispensing our largesse is a performative act. The more you Like, the better you look. 

It has taken social media users some years to become fully cognizant of their wealth. We used to be more stingy with our Likes. Like the early moviemakers who still included the stage’s proscenium arch in their films, we applied the rules of an old era. The one where capital was finite. 

In the early, innocent years of this decade, I recall one prominent San Francisco tech reporter became known for hitting the Like button on just about any reply-tweet, instantly and indiscriminately. Back then, users generally didn’t do that. It was laughably weird. “I am a bit slutty with my Likes,” he told me proudly at the time. 

Turns out his approach was the future. Now, we’re all a bit slutty with our Likes. Indeed, the 2010s have seen rampant Like inflation. In 2019, if you don’t like a reply-tweet, Twitter followers may interpret your silence as disapproval. Heaven forbid you miss a friend’s baby pic on Facebook, especially not one that has been “Congratulations!”-ed so much in the comments that we all know the algorithm will make it unmissable in your feed. Oh, we know. 

So that’s another reason to dispense the dollar bills like a rap star with our crew: It makes potential social problems go away. Just hit that Like button (and for extra credit on Facebook, choose a specific emoji!) on anything that seems even vaguely important to anyone. Yes, it turns us into indiscriminate Like-mashing zombies, but at least you’ll never be called to account for social media ghosting. 

2. The gift exchange

Naturally, we feel an especially deep sense of duty to our loved ones online. On Instagram over the past three years, my mother has become a modestly successful purveyor of flower pictures, and if I don’t Like at least one out of 10, I may find it on the agenda the next time we talk. 

There are times I’d swat that obligation away like a sulky teenager, but for the fact she still likes all my Instagram posts. 

Like exchanges have become almost as fixed in our social system as holiday gift exchanges, except they’re year-round. And as with any gift exchange, there are times when, for whatever reason, it doesn’t get reciprocated. Grudges over not receiving Likes can be held for years, and may make their first appearance IRL over Thanksgiving turkey. 

3. The internet crush

There are times when it’s possible to be Liked too much, as when a random Twitter user or an outer-circle Facebook acquaintance suddenly Likes a bunch of your posts at once. Clearly, they’ve spent some time perusing your page. It’s kind of flattering on the one hand, kind of weird on the other. 

What are they thinking? Who knows? The potential reasons cover the gamut: It could be innocent, a professional crush, mere genuine admiration for your way of thinking. Or it could be a manifestation of feelings that are on the romantic-sexual spectrum, especially if the Likes all came in at 2 a.m. local time. 

Either way, there’s often a subtle level of quid pro quo at play, an unspoken request: “please Like me back!”

4. The political Like 

Tell me if this behavior sounds familiar. You see a tweet or a post that perfectly encapsulates some aspect of our present political crisis, but it already has many thousands of likes. At this level, social capital is worthless. Your extra thumb or heart would be embarrassingly ineffectual, a drop in the bucket. 

But you know there has to be a war going on in the comments or replies. So in you charge — dispensing Likes to the good and the underrated, perhaps attempting to save face for the unfairly ratio’d. You act less like you’re approving the specific comment, more like you’re providing power-ups in a first-person shooter. 

These days it feels like we’re all soldiers in a great online war of good vs. evil, and Likes are our bullets.

Sound about right? It’s fair to say this behavior is more prevalent now than it was before 2016. These days it feels like we’re all soldiers in a great online war of good vs. evil, and Likes are our bullets. 

Sometimes the battleground is a politically opposite family member’s post. Sometimes it’s YouTube, where thumbs-up or thumbs-downs can restore balance to the Force. Sometimes it’s Twitter, especially the high-value territory immediately below a Trump tweet. 

In all these instances, we’re sucked into a game with what feels like real-world consequence, where the correct point of view (ours) will prevail if only it can receive frequent enough Likes. 

It sounds strange, but in our strange era it makes a grim kind of sense. Now we know the awful truth that entire elections can be swung on social media, political liking is the modern take on voting early and often. 

5. Training the robot 

Our social media lives are controlled by algorithms. This has long been true for all users of Facebook and Instagram, for whom there is no option but to view posts in the algorithm’s predetermined order. But in the last year it’s increasingly the case on Twitter too — save for the power-user few who know to switch the app’s new default  “Home” order of tweets to the chronological “Latest Tweets” order. 

In our algorithm-run world, the fight to gain back control has begun. At this stage, it seems most of us know the “Congratulations!” trick for signal-boosting any post, which has been a thing since 2014. Facebook has tacitly accepted that this is a legitimate tactic  — or at least, it has not been ousted in any algorithmic update yet. Better for the gatekeepers that they allow your friends to game the system than to let you, the almighty user, miss posts you’ll probably find important. 

Slowly, instinctively, we’re picking up more tricks — and a big one is the selective Like. It’s pretty simple: The more you Like someone’s posts, the more of their posts you’ll see. That’s why you see the same names popping up again and again in your notifications, as well as your News Feed. 

But you can also game this system by Liking the posts of people who appear in your News Feed for the first time in an age, or going directly to their page and liking the most recent post. 

That Like from someone you haven’t seen in an age, then, could be the Facebook equivalent of going on a date with someone who is trying to annoy their ex and assert their independence.

Just say no to Likes?

Another variety of gaming the system is simply not to play the game at all. I’m not suggesting anything radical like quitting social media; I’m suggesting going cold turkey on the Like button.

That’s what Canadian writer and designer Elan Morgan tried back in 2014. Reacting to a Wired story by a writer who wanted to see what would happen if he liked every post he saw on Facebook — spoiler alert, it did not end well for him, his feed soon filled with junk, mostly from brands — Morgan tried the reverse experiment. They would simply Like nothing.

The upshot was surprisingly positive. Morgan was forced to actually interact with their friends in the comments section. Instead of Liking a photo of a baby, for example, they had to think of something to say about why the baby was cute. And their feed, Morgan said, suddenly seemed more sane. The brand content disappeared. It was such an improved experience that they continued with the experiment for another three years (before quitting Facebook altogether for unrelated reasons.) 

Is this the solution to our Like crisis, to Like inflation, to the yawning gap between what we think the affirmation means and why people really push the button? Can we end the obligation of the Like exchange by simply declaring that we “never Like anything anymore”?

Your mileage may vary, but personally I’m giving the prospect of a coming Likeless age a big old thumbs-up.