Monday, September 27, 2021

The Likers Club

The Likers Club

Facebook has changed the way we communicate and interact with friends. It has opened up vast opportunities to connect with old friends and also make new friends online. In this fashion, Facebook has enlarged our world to a great extent.


It is not something surprising today, for us to be more familiar with people whom we periodically interact on facebook, rather than our close set of friends and relatives, who are not on facebook. It is because a lot of sharing is happening in this virtual world, as compared to the real world. Those who are not in the list of our facebook contacts don’t get to know as much as our friends who are in facebook.



For instance, during the days when we were clicking photos in film roll camera, we anxiously waited for the photo to be processed and printed. We then put them on an album and when our friends or relatives, came home, we showed it to them and took pleasure in explaining each photo in detail. The people who viewed the photos also took a keen interest in knowing more about the event or place. But now, things have changed. You click the photo on your mobile phone camera, press the share button and in seconds it is on our facebook page. Within 10 seconds, you get a ‘like’ for the photo or a comment such as  ‘nice’ , ‘wow’ , ‘super’ from your facebook friend. This instant gratification makes people happy and encourages them to share more and more of what is happening in their lives.


How often have you posted a message or photo, in your facebook page and eagerly waited to see how many ‘likes’ you get?  How happy were you when you see that you have got a number of ‘likes’, for your post? It is a common happening in everyone’s life. The more contacts in your facebook list, the more chances for you of getting more likes. So, people keep expanding the list of contacts by adding friends, friends of friends and so on.



The good part of facebook, is that the majority of facebook users, could be categorized as, “The Likers Club”. Likers are those who are not very active in posting, but whenever they see a post on their wall they make sure to click the “Like” button. Pressing the ‘Like’ button does not necessarily mean that they like the post. It could just be a way of acknowledging that they have seen the post. So when this happens, the person who made the post feels happy. The Likers are the cheer bringers to the facebook world.


I was wondering how this concept of LIKE, motivates people to share more about themselves with others. This led me to a realization that people crave for recognition and they do not seem to be getting enough of it from the real world. Facebook is in a way, passively satisfying this need and this has to a great extent influenced the number of people getting into this social world.


“Is it safe to make friends with online strangers? Why should we make friends with people whom we hardly know? Why do we need to create a virtual world of friends, when there are so many friends in our real world? These sought of initial apprehensions are swiftly fading away, as more and more people have started to enjoy being ‘liked’ and earn recognition on facebook.  The more they get recognized, the more they want to share and this keeps growing. When you ‘like’ someone’s post, then the probability of you getting ‘like’ on your post to goes up.

Now imagine extending this likers club from the virtual world to a real world. Would the world not be a much happier place to live in? While we are happily sharing our ‘likes’ on the virtual world, what is stopping us from expressing our ‘likes’ in the real world?


How often have we told our mother or spouse that we liked the delicious food that they have made for us? How often have we told our children, that we like their polite behaviour, in a social gathering? How often have we told someone; I like your smile; I like your dress; I like your style; I like the way you walk; I like the way you express your thoughts, or something of that sort.


It is not that we don’t like, but we rarely express our like.  Thanks to Facebook, that it has brought in the culture of expressing our LIKE. Let us not limit this LIKE culture, only to our facebook circle but extend it to our near and dear ones. It would not only make them glad, but also motivate them to do things better.













 D. Senthil Kannan,

Managing Trustee, PALMS, Tuticorin.
Author of "Transformational Thoughts" - A Journey of learning 
Email: senthilkannand@gmail.com

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