Like or not: why did they become so important

It’s always been possible to express our own Like, even when internet didn’t exist yet. We called to the TV program that we were following and we voted according to our preference. Even in radio it was possible to call to ask to put a song instead of another one.

But the thing that there wasn’t before, it’s without any doubt the prompty of the result and the possibility to see even the preferences of the others. Therefore, now, everyone (a person, a company, an image) can receive a Like even if it wasn’t requested. It’s enough to be in the web to end up in the whirlwind of the feedback.

Like and the need of feedback

We aren’t any more so just users, but it’s possible to give a support about everything we use: videos, music, products, restaurants, even schools and interesting places. Everything is judged, in a more or less prompty way.

And it’s normal to open in every moment a debat about it. If before we commented the result of the televoting at home, now it’s possible to let all the web knows about our opinion.

Currently they became so important that it’s not anymore the voice of the competent authority to be more important, but the opinion of the web’s users. The feedbacks even evolved. By starting from the written comment to the Likes, we arrived to the reactions on Instagram, but about the group even the gifs and the memes.

The Likes were born like only positive comments, but right thanks to their importance the users wanted the possibility to say much more specific opinions. Now so we find even crying, angry or smiling faces.

What does really mean to write a Like

It seems a harmless act to put a Like, maybe about a politician’s meme, or to an ambiguous sentence. We need though to remember that Internet isn’t only an information place, but it is even and especially populated by companies that make profit from it. They want just one thing from us: analyse our habits and our likings.

So a “harmless” Like given to an image published by a brand, causes that advertising about this brand magically start to appear everywhere. It’s not a case, obviusly. But the fact that we put so many likes often doesn’t let us notice it.

Other uses of the datas collected are focused to understand the politicy preferences, or the feeling for some important topic. And with the advertisings, or with the possibility to let appear in our home page “similiar” contents to our preferences, it’s possible to let us see what instead we were never able to see.

Facebook, for example, is able to specialise advertising until to let it arrive to just a bunch of people, the only ones that meet the conditions. The only ones that, probably, are really interesting to this kind of advertising.

The loop of the expression of our own opinion

Until here the system is efficient. In a specific step, though, it becomes creepy. Infact the algorithm that manages this massive quantity of datas records every kind of reaction (both if it is a Like, a sad or angry face) as a kind of interest. And here we entered in the loop without we really wanted to.

Because it’s true that if I give a Like to an object, probably, I would like to have it. Anyway, if I give an angry face to a picture of an evil event, I won’t probably want to hear about it anymore.

This increase a loop for which we are forced to see informations that we don’t really like and instead to ignore them we go on to interact with them. Maybe by answering to comments that we don’t like, by creating a cycle that will never stop.

Like or not Like this is the problem

So what should we do? Don’t we express our opinion? Do we try to go out from this cycle with the hope to feel like a better person? Like we saw give opinions is part of our nature, we always did it. So let’s put all the Likes that we want, let’s remember though that our acts have an importance in the world of the web.

This post is also available in: Italiano