Don’t Fall For The Hype of Facebook Likes & Comments

William Spivey
Sep 8, 2018 · 1 min read

I wrote a politically related story, referred to below, and forwarded it as usual to the Facebook groups I belong to who typically share (or oppose) my views. The feedback was instantaneous. Hundreds of likes and other reactions, dozens of comments, some shares. Then I look at the Medium statistics and see at present; 14 views and 6 reads.

There are only two conclusions I can reach:

  1. Medium somehow fails to capture a high percentage of viewers/readers that felt strongly enough to comment or react to the stories.
  2. People are so locked into their own views that they find reading unnecessary and simply comment and like, love, wow, sad, angry based on the title alone without taking in information that might inform their view.

I’d like to believe it’s the first possibility yet find the second prospect far more likely. If a writer posts a story and people only pretend they’ve read it. Does it make a noise?

William Spivey

Written by

Writer, poet, wannabe philosopher. Elsewhere I write about politics, race and social justice at Enigmainblack.wordpress.com. Here… it’s personal!

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