Yes, you read that right. No, not Facebook has games, but Facebook is a game.
Haven’t noticed yet? Take a closer look. See those numbers on people’s posts? __ likes, __ comments? While they do innocuously state how many people have interacted with that post, they also help people compete against one another.
PS. If you want to try getting rid of the numbers on Facebook, someone has written an extension exactly for that. It removes all numbers from likes and comments, and replaces them with blanks. Try it! It’s pretty refreshing.
When you look at a status or post someone particularly witty has put up, do you get a inner feeling of jealousy; why didn’t i get that many likes or comments on MY post? If you’re one of the lucky few that don’t get that feeling, then lucky you! Otherwise, for the rest of us, Facebook helps us unleash our inner desires to be popular, to be better than other people, especially socially.
These numbers enumerate our Facebook life. Instead of paying attention to the content, interaction, or quality of the post, we are drawn to how many people have “liked” a status, how many people have commented on a post, how many reshares a post you published to your timeline has. Facebook was meant to connect us to each other; instead, much of what occurs today is looking at how popular people’s posts get on Facebook. I mean NewsFeed doesn’t select the information that you care about, it basically selects the ones that are most popular–the ones with most likes, most comments, etc. In essence, Facebook forces you to consume the most popular posts, and thus subconciously encouraging people to post statuses that gather many “likes” and “comments.” Does anybody really pay much attention that one person who has posts that don’t gather any popularity? Only the most popular ones count, and Facebook helps reinforce that.
Have you ever put a status up hoping that people will notice it, like it, and comment on it? The way Facebook is designed encourages us to aim for this goal. Facebook’s like button on other webpages consists solely of a “like” button, and then a number of how many likes that page as garnered. No commenting system, no way for people to connect.
Then again, is this phenomenon unique to Facebook? One could argue that this isn’t Facebook’s doing, that the competition was something already present in existing social structures; Facebook just made it seem more pronounced. I mean, people do tend to gravitate the one person in social circles that makes witty jokes and thoughtful insights, right? But if one buys this argument, one also has to concede that everything about Facebook has made social interactions more pronounced. Perhaps Facebook really is simply just an extension of already existing social interactions and structures. Whether or not that’s true, I have yet to see deep, heart-to-heart, conversations occur online. Perhaps Facebook brings out the competitiveness in people after all.
The next time you go to post a status, ask yourself: Why are you doing that? For likes, comments, and popularity, or something else?