The Great Like Experiment of 2017

I think the odds are very high that someone in those 50 could have come up with something relevant to say. But since likes are pointless, I’d still prefer your scenario.

Exactly. Gay marriage should be opposed because it’s pointless. Just like offering thoughts and prayers.

And despite there pointless nature, you still know how many you received. Mee thinks thou protests too much.

Okay, I’m going to give all of you a like. Will this makes things better now?

Not good enough. I’m afraid you’re going to have to marry me.

Hm. We’re both sea creatures… so I guess that’s kosher. Is May good for you?

Like, tomorrow

Jeez, slow it down, you lovebirds

Lovefish, excuse me.

I dunno. Alien crustacean, marine mammal marriages can be problematic. Sure it’s great for you two, but what about family and friends?

It’ll be a big freaky clambake! Come on, you know you want in on this action.

Gods, the descent into madness just never stops around here anymore, it seems! LIKES now?? Yikes! Likes are really part of why I don’t use Facebook - its just so empty a gesture, and yet, its what drives so much adolescent yearning (Please like me), that I find the entire thought structure behind it pointless, and negative.

Just because you can do more, doesn’t automatically make it an additive.

Anyways - if it in any way matters, I don’t like the idea of adding likes to the forum.

Yes, because I looked it up because wumpus asked for specific citations. It’s not something I track, but it is something Discourse tracks.

But your post has received likes, so it is invalidated.

Right, so which people from this board is going to get a wedding invitation? People with lots of likes I assume. Speaking of which, you guys watched the Nosedive episode of Black Mirror, right? It’s the most approriate thing to watch for this topic!

While kinda funny, its also very indicative of how likes are used. In this case, likes are used as a ironic gesture, instead of words, to denigrate my post. Its how likes , and the absence of them as well, just works.

But it offers people MORE ways to denigrate your post. Wumpus believes that more of something that is negative is better than less of something that is negative, so why aren’t you pleased?

Frankly unless you are severely insecure about how random people on the internet do or do not give a fuck about your posts, likes are fairly pointless. I understand why some people just “gotta have em!!!” but what I don’t get is why anyone who doesn’t, cares a single bit if the like button even exists. Unless they are more insecure about likes than they want to let on. Myself I really do not care, either way. If some people find the like system beneficial, great. The fact that they serve no real purpose to me shouldn’t mean that I should want to deny others of whatever benefit they derive from the like system.

Because they have an effect on how other people choose to communicate.

Just from a conceptual level, I wonder if there’d be any value to a weird hybrid model, where likes are enabled for all new posts, but if another user quotes or replies to that post, the likes disappear. So likes are only visible on a post if there have been no verbal replies to it.

I mean, in real-world conversation, verbal engagement tends to drown out non-verbal engagement, if you’re fond of that metaphor.

I don’t think so, no.

The only scenario where anything analagous to likes make sense in a forum is “thanks” in support forums. There you’ll find people posting solutions to problems, and a quick way to click “thanks” rather than spamming a forum intended for productive problem-solving makes a lot of sense. That’s because these forums aren’t intended to foster communication or community, that isn’t their purpose.

Likes/voting also makes sense in very large forums like reddit of course as a way to surface higher-quality posts to the top and make the volume manageable. But that isn’t what Qt3 is.

We really should have two distinct like types. Normal likes and ironic likes.

As it is I’ll see something I liked and won’t be able to remember if I was being ironic or - you know - actually liked the post.

which, would otherwise be solved by, you know, ACTUALLY writing a reply to the post.