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Likes : Serious Business?


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#1 Mercurius

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Posted 11 February 2016 - 06:15 AM

"The downvotes only prove I'm right."

 

"I'm so sorry for not being part of the reddit hivemind."

 

"Do you even reddiquette?"

 

So like everybody on the internet, I've become pretty aware of this like system thing that's been popular lately all over social media and forums and such. I've also noticed that people really, really hate downvotes(dislikes) when I occasionally check reddit for discussion about something. (It all started with r/MonsterHunter...)

 

I get that people generally want to be liked and all, and that on Reddit in particular (given that I don't use social media to see what happens there first-hand) causes your posts to become hidden when sufficiently downvoted, but...how many people even check the amount of likes you have? This particularly applies to a place where you are forced to be anonymous enough to forgo an avatar. I get pretty disappointed when a question I have gets utterly buried under a bunch of other posts about some trivial thing too, but that's mainly because questions need attention to be answered. Most downvoted comments do not really ask about something.

 

It just seems to be such an invisible form of social pressure/reputation. It's not like you even receive a notice when you get dislikes, and even on another forum I'm on I disabled the notification for when I get a like since it doesn't provide anything worth looking at. The reasons for dislikes pretty much parallel real life too, anyway.


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#2 Rujio

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Posted 11 February 2016 - 11:21 PM

The biggest issue I've seen is that downvotes/dislikes tend to be way more abused than upvotes/likes. Instead of just trying to hide spam/inappropriate stuff, people will use it to cover up any opinion they disagree (instead of, say, engaging in a conversation) with or just to troll, whereas upvoted things tend to legitimately deserve it. It can end up stifling discussion - which on an internet forum seems kind of counterproductive...


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#3 kirant

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Posted 12 February 2016 - 09:39 AM

I think people care about what anonymous strangers think about them far more than they let on.  Or they're the competitive type who thinks that their e-peen means something.

 

I would agree with Rujio that it's used more to develop a hive mind and a circlejerk than its original intent (to upvote things that contribute to conversation and downvote meaningless distractions).  It's part of what makes Reddit a dangerous place to stay for too long or to trust for your information.


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#4 Mercurius

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Posted 12 February 2016 - 09:07 PM

Instead of just trying to hide spam/inappropriate stuff, people will use it to cover up any opinion they disagree (instead of, say, engaging in a conversation) with or just to troll, whereas upvoted things tend to legitimately deserve it. It can end up stifling discussion - which on an internet forum seems kind of counterproductive...

So...

 

The reasons for dislikes pretty much parallel real life too, anyway.

Though I admit internet discussion with dedicated locations for it tends to be a lot more interesting than IRL discussion. (even if the auto-ignore function some modern forums provide me with these days has been quite generously used by me...)


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#5 Fire Blazer

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Posted 14 February 2016 - 05:42 AM

 

I think people care about what anonymous strangers think about them far more than they let on.

 

For sure. I mean, it's only natural for people to like when other people agree with them, so the opposite also kind of holds true, to some extent—people don't like when people don't disagree with them... especially the more there are. You can feel isolated and many emotions that I'd rather not/probably don't need to get into

 

but in general, yeah, likes are definitely a... powerful tool. like the internet in general, I don't think they're inherently good or bad, but they promote the mob/hivemind mentality. If a smart-sounding comment is made and people upvote that, it feels like verification/evidence that said smart comment is indeed smart and maybe even "right", but said comment might not be that way. With jokes, I think it's relatively harmless, but hateful or even... the opposite... uh... loveful? comments like "this sucks" or "this is great" can create conflict.

 

on one hand, it's an easy way of sharing your opinion. we can't all afford the time to make our own comments and repeat what others say, so we use upvotes for that purpose, whether it's to agree with something, upvote a helpful comment, or whatever. on the other hand, it's grouping up a bunch of people into one thing and gives this sense of numbers--like, your opinion is clearly outnumbered, it must be wrong. look at that loser with no upvotes compared to the guy with 80 upvotes, he's so clearly right. people might not think it in exactly those terms (or maybe they do) but those are the vibes they get.

 

so even if something isn't mob mentality and all say, 80 people actually thought about what they were upvoting seriously, you might not even know

 

I could go on and on, liking stuff actually has a ton of psychology to it that feels like it'd hurt my brain if I thought about it too long.

 

I just try to like simple stuff when I can and not get too caught up in it, whether that's trying to avoid social media or something else. I also know a lot of comment systems don't have down-voting, or down-voting doesn't do anything, but that doesn't mean much in some regards. while a comment might not get "negative rep", having 0-1 rep compared to a comment that has 10 gives a similar impression as of that of -5 and 5, IMO. though with down-voting is almost does become a kind of war, like, we gotta downvote all the comments we don't like and upvote all the comments we do or something, is what I imagine people would think.

 

"at least if it's just upvoting, you only have a fraction of the toxicity/games that comes with a liking/upvoting system". how does that sound? lol. "oh, it's bad, but it's 1% less bad than it could be", haha


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