Ink Paper Words' Profile

My photo
Pacific Northwest, United States
In elementary school, I desperately wanted my mother to order books for me from those flyers Scholastic hands out to kids. She refused, citing the "perfectly good library down the street." I exacted revenge by becoming a card-carrying ALA accredited reference librarian. Ha! Take that!

Sunday, April 1, 2012

At Last! A Facebook Dislike Function


I was fascinated to learn of Dean Terry's Enemy Graph plugin for Facebook. It has frequently occurred to me that a simple Like button was not sufficient, and in terms of letting brands know what people truly, think of them, the Enemy Graph is not only an idea whose time has come, it is long overdue.

As a member of a few anti-fan sites I can already anticipate much of the criticism likely headed toward the Enemy Graph developers: there is too much negativity in the world already; this is for losers who are wasting energy by actively disliking someone they adore; people are just “jelus [sic].” Although personally, I've always thought that when you expend the energy to find a group devoted to disliking something you do like for the explicit purpose of trolling them, that is just one step closer to mental than those you're ragging on. Face it, disliking something is just as much a part of human nature as liking something, if not more so. As a species, are we not driven by a desire to shun and abhor that which is different?

Interestingly, MSN reports that Facebook will not allow a “dislike” button and have to wonder why. My guess is they are PO'd they didn't think of it first. Or perhaps it simply did not fit into their strategy to attract businesses with built-in fans.

Huffington Post has several built-in reactions for their stories. You can click Inspiring, Funny, Obsolete, Scary, Must-Have, Amazing, Innovative or Nerdy. It's nice they give you more ways to react, but really, any reaction worth recording will not be pre-defined. I thought I saw “Insipid” once, but when I looked closer it was the aforementioned “Inspiring.” Meh.

Per the Enemy Graph FB page, they are currently being slammed with new people "liking" the option to express dislike. I find the irony delicious. Anyway, when it's back up, my first EG will be Rachael Ray and other assorted Food network tools.

No comments:

Post a Comment