Fury Friday: The Facebook 'Like' button
Every Friday, I'll be jumping on the soapbox and letting rip into the things of the week that have annoyed the living daylights out of me. Think of a dumbed down version of Peter Griffin's 'Grind my Gears'.
Just before I get started on the usual rants and raves of the week, a brief look at the other things which have riled me up this week:
- Overweight people eating salads alfresco;
- HM Revenue and Customs, the UK tax office;
- North Korea.
And onto the meat in the sandwich.
The Facebook 'Like' button is everywhere on the web, allowing you to keep Facebook signed in on another window or in the background, and you to share other links, pages, news stories and the rest around the web outside of the site. Yes, it has some wonderful implications and allows you to share more about the web with your closely knit group of friends (on the most part, at least).
But the 'Like' button has diluted the indication of pleasure, just as the entire site has watered down the concept of actual, real-life friends. You can 'like' absolutely anything on the web, and frankly this just makes the web more unattractive and pointless.
Take this stellar example as the epitome of what I hate most about this damned button. You'll see what I mean.
Great news! They're alive, safe and well, and no less in a beautiful paradise like Fiji. They're tired, but they're in generally good health.
Excuse me?! Four people actually liked this story.
What's to like: the brutal beating and mugging of an 80-year old man, or liking the structure of the story as it was reported, or liking the fact that the Formula 1 chief has a Brazilian girlfriend a fraction of his age?
By all means, just below this sentence you will find the dreaded 'Like' button, so use it to air your pleasure, discomfort, annoyance, stress, happiness, financial situation or sexual preference. Because after all, that is what it's for - an acknowledgement of something about anything.
Grawwrr.