From the time we are little tots, we crave interaction with other humans. We want people to acknowledge us, react to us, show us that we are individual agents whose actions are influencing the world and those around us.* That’s why social media is so addicting – all of these people are acknowledging you! Hooray! – you exist!
Therefore, one of the gravest of all social media faux pas is to consume the lives, words, and pictures of a friend’s page without even offering a cursory thumbs up as a sort of interweb up-nod. For serious! Fb has now given you the option of sad face or angry face if you don’t like the post, so… you are all without excuse. If your thoughts are so unique and special that you are offended by the constraining choices of pre-manufactured reactions that fb and other social media accounts offer, I’ve heard about this option called “comment.” The only downside is that you have to form words and put them together in a coherent** string called a “sentence.” Even if you’re “blah” about someone’s entire page, 1) why are you looking at their stuff anyway 2) the least you can do is comment below at least one of their posts with a “pfffft.”
I implore you – don’t be that person, who, as I’m telling you about my weekend says, “Oh yeah, I saw those hiking pics. I loved them.” As my closest confidante expressed recently, “Oh did you?? Well I didn’t see a little ‘ ❤ ’ from you, buddy!” I think we’d all rather log into our accounts and see 57 notifications from you going through our profile pics dating back to 2007 than for you to nod your head knowingly when we tell you our weight fluctuated a lot through college.
So now for a moment of Galloswag honest vulnerability – this post is 100% motivated by my own vain curiosity. With any given blog post, my blog views are ~5x, even up to 20x more than I get in likes, reactions, or comments on fb. Were those views from people who read the first sentence of my post and said, “Oh Lort, ain’t nobody got time for that!” Did their clicker finger have a muscle spasm and they opened my page by accident? Did they read every single one of my posts, and were so moved by the beauty of my words they sat frozen for hours with graceful tears streaming down their face???
I guess there’s no way I’ll ever know. Oh wait, I would totally know, if 90% of you weren’t being social media sneaks! >8-O ***
— EDITORIAL NOTES —
*This is all loosely based off of an undergrad class in Developmental Psychology I took 10 years ago. If you have information to the contrary, call me out on it yo.
**Although I think we can all testify that there are social media friends who don’t find the ‘coherent’ part necessary… but I digress.
***For those of you who were born after 1992, tilt your head to the left and you will see an angry face!! Isn’t that neat-o?? This is how people in primitive times expressed their emotions.
galloblog 
OK you caught me. In my defense I would offer that after reading many of your insightful and thought provoking observations on the human condition I am driven to spend entire minutes at a time in thoughtful introspection and self examination, wondering how to apply these nuggets to my own life. At the end of many of these minutes a competing Notification! of potentially life altering import, (or not) will shake me from my thoughtful reverie, and with a cry of “Squirrel!!” I am off down another Rabbit Hole of Distraction. It is a poor excuse, but it is mine.
I will pledge in future to at least leave my Interweb calling card in the form of that little thumby thing so you’ll know I dropped by. ❤ Bill
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Hahaha I am so grateful that you reached out! And I totally understand — you let me know at least one time before this that you were reading. I have people who will mention my blog to me in person but NEVER comment or like it. It drives me crazy. *anyway* Thank you! 😀
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