Social Currency

Our online personas inhabit worlds of false value.

Our online personas inhabit worlds of false value. Worlds where loving something means nothing more than a CPU cycle and a record notched in a database. Emotionally bound verbs have lost all worth. Yet we spend more hours online expressing pseudo feelings every single day. Favoriting, stashing, bookmarking, retweeting, loving, +1’n, digging, up-voting, tagging, curating, pinning. Racing stripes without an engine.

How did we get here?

In meatspace everything happens within the constraints of supply and demand. Ebbing wants and quantities. The symphony between these variables is unpredictable and fluid. In one parking lot we have big-box stores and in the other, $30 hand carved pencils. When one side is disproportionately inflated it’s proven that chaos follows. Lottery winners are rarely happy. Applications live in counterfeit utopias where the only constraints are internet speed and the distance we have to move our thumb. Favorites are fruitful and naive. Everything lacks worth yet we long for the attention. Unlimited supply. Emotional demand.

There’s over 4.5 billion Facebook likes each day.

What if you could only like one photo a day? Share one thought a week? Friend only 50 people? Akin to our wallets dictating what we eat, restrictions force us to make conscious choices in how we use an application. Where we show our attention. With a limited supply of interactions we no longer like everything hoping to get liked back. We don’t friend gutless avatars to increase our Klout scores, and we don’t bookmark a page unless we intend to return. Maybe you’re already frugal with your social spending, but how many times have you wished there was a button beyond like, beyond love, which screamed: “This is incredible, and I mean it.”

Embrace constraint. Think before you tap.

The next time you love something, I want it to cost you.