Reacting to Facebook’s Reactions
59 billion people are active members of the Facebook community and although all are different geographically, socially, and demographically, each holds emotions that can be expressed online through this social media outlet. There personal emotions can be shown through the pictures they post, items they comment on, and group they associate themselves with on the web, each individually placing each user in their own unique and diverse personality filled with endless opinions, and most importantly, emotions. This past month, Facebook recognized this and saw that the commonly used “like” button shown throughout their site wasn’t enough immediate expression for any user, leading them to create “reactions” that now give individuals the opportunity to express themselves on others posts through seven different emoticon buttons. This simple change on the comment feature has lead to endless debate and questioning of this website since its founding eight years ago, realizing for the first time since its launch, that facebook may have done something as a failure, rather than an evolutionary success.
The article “Linguists Not Exactly Wow About Facebook’s New Reactions”, written by Emily Dreyfuss on February 28,2016 discusses, the evolution and criticism of resolving the limitations of emotions through a single expressive button, commonly known as the like button for many Facebook users. It goes into detail about the author’s personal experience with the new upgrade and how multiple errors are found within this new addition, leading the long suspense of what Facebook would do next to the site to lead to disappointment. The author reveals the new components to the like feature, including six new expressions: love, haha, yay, wow, sad and angry all expressed in addition to the like button through emoticons, which is also commonly known as emojis. As one can guess, many individuals have mixed reviews and feelings about this new feature, some liking the old format of a simple like, while others, like Emily appreciate the additions of new emoticons, but criticize the variety and format Facebook chose to display.
After personally experiencing the new features that have come as an addition to the traditional direct responses to statuses, posts, and links, I can understand and support Emily’s criticism of the update, leading Facebook to what I’d consider its first technology fail. Further research on this topic allows me to conclude that many other individuals have established similar opinions on the development of “reactions”, reacting in a negative light to this update. I, overall, understand the approach Facebook was trying to take with this new development, but do not believe they approached this tactic in a correct approach or had an accurate execution that Facebook account holders expected. I personally believe many errors are associated with this new edition to the Facebook experience, including the lack of emotion variety, change in the atmosphere of the site, and as Emily Dreyfuss points out, the grammatical error of the words associated with each emotion.
Through this particular piece it is interesting to discover health’s affiliations with social media through the grammatical association the brain has with particular emotions and their relationship with the expression of words. It discusses the sentence structure, format, and thought process any individual has with particular word placement and how different details of these new features, like not associating an Emoji expression with a word, would completely change the complexity of the update. It supports the overall idea that not all emotions can be expressed through these six new reactions created, as well as, that labeling the emoticons themselves was a big error. More error was found through the development of “reactions”, leading users and critics, like myself, to react negatively to the Facebook enhancement.
In support of Emily Dreyfuss’s analysis, the article “Facebook tests ‘Reactions’, a Like button with more emotions” by Jason Trew on engadget.com, discusses how one emoji could have expressed multiple emotions and expressions if they had not been labeled as “haha”, “yay”, “wow”, “sad” and “angry”. It goes into the varying labels that could be associated with one of the six new reactions, all based on the context of the particular post. I agree with his belief in support of Emily Dreyfuss’ piece that although users requested more than a like button, these options limit the experience and stray individuals away from using this new dimension of the social media site. These emoticons can be seen as a technological failure, largely become they defeat the purpose of making it easier on an individual on a social media outlet making them choose between options that don’t accurately apply to a post and limit their freedom of expression on a site that highly values human opinion and interaction.
It is interesting to see how the emotions without labels could have applied to a wider array of emotions, if they had only labeled the reaction itself, rather than a word to describe it. As Emily Dreyfuss points out, there would be no grammatical error that she identifies within her piece, if these labels had not been associated with each particular reaction. Each emotion could have supported a wide array of words. For example, rather than “wow” someone could have expressed the fact that they were shocked, amazed, disturbed, or in awe of someone’s post. They could say “I am amused”, but they could never say “I am wow” without it being grammatically incorrect. This experience and grammatical error could also be found among five of the other reactions faced created leading to users being confused and distressed over which image to use to express themselves and their opinion. To solve this problem, I believe the idea of expressions through an image individuals already recognize and familiarize with is a great edition to the Facebook site, but support Emily’s advice of removing associated names with each emoticon because they only lead to error, confusion, and lack of use.
In the article “The Surprisingly Complex Design of Facebook’s New Emoji” written by Robbie Gonzalez on wired.com, the factor of variation of the emojis come into play, which supports another criticism in addition to grammatical error that author Emily Dreyfuss addresses, which is the lack of emotional variation. When thinking about the expression of emotion on social media, I can’t help, but think that simply “liking” a post could lead to a variation of possible responses and makes other site users question what it may mean without ever having to go into the personal detail or opinion of the post. I preferred the like button because it allowed you to show support over the web, without allowing other individuals that you may have not been friends with know the emotion you are feeling about it. Before this update, you could express an entire dictionary worth of opinions as a user within one button, depending on what you were responding to. This option is no longer available because now you are simply limited to six additional features, with only one that shows clear reaction. I believe the love button, in addition to the already commonly used like button, is the only new feature that can be fully understood globally as an expression, where the others lead to questioning and confusing for the party contributing to the context and the individual receiving that information as well.
Through my time spent analyzing this addition to the world’s most popular social media site and application, I continue to find more reasons supporting the opinions created throughout the article “Linguists Not Exactly Wow About Facebook’s New Reactions”. Although I believe the words should be eliminated with each expression and a larger variety of emotions should be displayed, like those in the new Pixar movie Inside Out for example, I salute Facebook for what they have done to the world and what they continue to strive to do as the leading social media site.
As analyzed in this piece, although this was seen as a Facebook failure it was refreshing to see a leading company, that has become a large factor in many individuals lives, like myself, take a positive approach and aim to use emotions that lighten and support a conversation, rather than disgust or anger them. All individuals have an array of emotions, and although Facebook could not accurately depict their “reactions” to post, at least each position and opinion could choose from a variety of positive approaches, than an array of negative emotions. It was a large mistake for the company based on grammatical error, lack of variation, and increase in user confusion, but the fact that they attempted to listen to users opinions and bring to light a positive approach on social media, is a large reason why I salute their attempt and will strive to adjust to this new site change.
