Thanks Kindra. :-)

I totally know what you’re saying. I guess I’m raging against the machine a little these days. I love so much about social media — I’ve met some really awesome writers and generally good people that I would never have known otherwise.

But the dark side is pretty powerful. It plays with your head. Even if you know the hearts have little meaning in the big picture, they start to mean a lot in your weaker moments.

It’s extrinsic motivation rearing its not so pretty head. It’s like my husband complaining he only got 89% on a test. It’s like me wondering why that popular writer got 1.5K hearts for a piece about the same thing I wrote 2 months ago to the sound of crickets.

Big picture … no meaning whatsoever.

And then I wonder what it would all look like without the hearts … likes … shares … pins … retweets. Is that the only way for us to spread our words? If so, do we have to go to the dark side to do it?

I also wonder if the people who conceived of “Web 2.0” even thought of the approval rating system that it has become. Is it just one of those things? Is it human nature to take something and morph it into a profit-driven popularity contest?