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. Read more…
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