empathy

Why We’ll Never Get A Dislike Button

Never doubt the playful trait of human beings since the whole planet is playing Facebook. It’s a game base on self expression, acceptance and imagination. Late at night or early in the morning over coffee, at work or in our spare time, we play this game that connects us all. Nobody seems to marvel anymore about the instant flow of thoughts and feelings between individuals located in different places of the world, but I sometimes marvel because we are living what others might have called telepathy 100 years ago.

You read my words, you can see an image that I post, you can hear a song I like and you can get meditative or emotional by visiting my head or my heart. Now the rules of the game have been extended, we are granted additional button to express our feelings.

After the Internet revolution in which we’re living and how social media is affecting our lives, I can’t deny that if someone is chatting with me with no emojis I’d probably think he’s sad and I’m sure so many of you are like me.

The last thing we want on earth is more disputes and fights and hate and the only things in my opinion worthy of a dislike are wars, people who ask for wars, racism, famines and bad politicians. If we think that these causes could be dealt with by just emojis, then we’re wrong, those are causes that need protest and real help offered, help manifested on planet earth not just planet Facebook.

And the Sad emoji! I’m thinking about how it’ll be used like I could see me using it if a friend posted that he had a long day and exhausted or posted about the heavy traffic or the heavy work but let’s get to serious stuff, if someone said someone he knows has passed away do you think the sad emoji is a good console or as you might say at least better than the ” like” emoji , because to tell you what I think both emojis I consider are a disaster, have we reached that level of insensitivity that we’re dealing with our emotions only by emojis, do you think this is right, don’t you think that social media is making us anything but social, don’t you think that if you are really sad you should go to this person and show it to him that you are going to be there during his sadness or at least call them to make him know he’s on your mind but no instead we’d press the sad emoji and consider ourselves have performed our duty as friends.

I fear is that we take those emojis so serious that we forget all about our emotions. We get to this level of highly featured communication but only on the Internet, at a time when all we want in real life is not something Facebook can give. I don’t want a dislike emoji as much as I want those, alleged to be my friends on Facebook, to get into the real world and deal with me, to meet me and comment on how tired I look instead of just believing the comic I just posted and think that everything is okay with me. I know it’s almost impossible that we get to ask about each other’s health or well being every single day and that’s what Facebook is for – to make communication easier but believe me it was never meant to wipe away any other sort of communication, other than it.

Overall, it is a good thing, I have always been an active promoter of expressing our feelings, we all get angry or sad, we love or we laugh or we marvel about something. But just take a minute to wander if the emotions you instantly express by hitting a button are the real ones. Will people over-abuse the love button and handle with more care the angry or sad button? Only the history of Facebook will tell. Will we get furthermore isolated in the self image we are all constructing from the comfortable place behind our screens and let others know only the emotions we carefully consider worth expressing? Or will we all angry about the missing dislike button we were craving for? Only the history of Facebook will tell.

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Written by Mariem Sherif and Laura Livia Grigore

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