Are you kidding?
Maybe you got the Facebook invite. The “Dislike” button has been debated since Facebook first made it’s transition from Zuckerberg’s memory to the database of his computer.
After three invites… No. I’m not doing the Dislike Button.
Besides, everyone should know that Facebook’s “Like” button doesn’t actually mean “like”. It means, “Push this through aggregated RSS 2.0 and Atom feeds and use limited permissions to promote it in the Facebook database.”
Dah! I mean, don’t we all know that?
So, if that’s what “Like” means… then what in the world would “Dislike” mean?
Would it count a tally, like on YouTube? Would it block feeds? Would it make sure everyone in the world knows about the article, sees the link, and can comment on the title of something I “disliked”, yet still offered free advertising for it? Do I really need to know if you dislike something? Do I really care?
One benefit of Facebook is to keep all those annoying complainers at an arms reach. If a “friend” dislikes a post, we probably know already—and we don’t need Facebook to tell us.
And what about the logistics of a true “Dislike” button… that actually reflected people’s dislike for stuff? CNN and FOX News would have to dislike the world since the modern, so-called “News” business is really just in the “business” of telling us all the stuff we should “Dislike”. If the “Dislike” button became standard, it wouldn’t be long before someone wrote the “Cable News” app to automatically dislike every post in your feed.
How would anyone take such a feature seriously? Is there an “anti-twitter” service where you can send “anti-tweets” that you don’t want people to read..?? If the “Dislike” feature carried any value at all, it would function just as a “Like” button because, “Like” it or not… the whole world will find out about that web post… one way or another. That reduces the entire exercise to an absurdity.
What’s the real reason for people wanting a “Dislike” button? When I finally clicked on the “Dislike” button invite, in effort to turn the thing off, I was bombarded with a video of a woman who couldn’t stand still for the camera. Was I supposed to be attracted to her? Is the “Dislike” button really just a way to get people to use some “other” service… people who have no self control… not over their thoughts… nor over their lust?
Is it just an emotional fix some people need? Is the world so bad that we need to bother all our friends with every random thought people fart onto the Face-o-sphere? If that’s you, make a t-shirt that says, “I Dislike everything.” There’s probably a good market for it. Go ahead, I won’t charge royalties.
So, thanks, but no thanks. If I want to dislike stuff, I’ll go to my digg profile. Digg.com/JesseSteele
Facebook is for friends and letting people know about stuff on Al Gore’s first invention: the Internet. (Global Warming being his second, invented in the 1990’s.) Facebook was never a candid round table, like YouTube and Digg.com. The day I sign-up for a “Dislike” button for sewing-circle chatter, such as Facebook, is the day I’ll start selling stock for business start-up: “Anti-Twitter… the tweet no one can read.”
photo by: Sean MacEntee