The “Wow”, “Angry”, “Haha”, “Love” and “Sad” buttons will soon be available to the general public.
It seems that very soon Facebook users will be able to express their emotions in relations to their people’s status updates via reactions. The “Reaction” buttons will replace the “Like” really soon. This change comes after Mark Zuckerberg’s company wanted to introduce a “Dislike” button on Facebook but renounced the idea after thinking about the catastrophic potential it would have among insecure users, such as teenagers.
The Sixth “Yay” Emoji Didn’t Make the Cut
Facebook has been experimenting with six new emotions. Unfortunately only five of them will be released to the general public because one of them, a “yay” emoji that featured closed eyes and rosy cheeks (something similar to the emoticon that results when inputting ^ _ ^ to Facebook) was considered not clear enough and was not understood universally by the testing sample.
While it may be possible that Facebook is working with primates that are not able to understand more than five basic emotions, and a “yay” one was just too much for the universal consumer, there is another underlying problem that has not been addressed properly.
Why Do We Need So Many Emojis And Buttons In Order To Express Basic Human Emotions?
While it is admirable that Facebook is trying more and more to bring people together, and make them communicate with each other with ease, people should not restrict themselves to the pushing of a button if they feel like the resulting emoji does not convey the entire message that they want to send.
The “Wow”, “Angry”, “Haha”, “Love” and “Sad” buttons that will soon be featured for Facebook’s general public were devised after more and more people reported to the social media platform that the “Like” button is just not enough for them,
The example of the “Spot, my lovely 17 years old Golden Retriever passed away this morning” status update example was given. People were “forced” to press like even though they didn’t actually like the message conveyed in the status update. A “Dislike” button wouldn’t have helped much, either, because then it would mean that the user disliked the fact that Spot’s owner spread the news of the pet’s demise on Facebook rather than cry alone in a corner.
This is what prompted Facebook into creating more buttons that could show a wider array of emotions. And while the company’s effort is to be appreciated, the question remain, why didn’t the people who thought the “Like” button inappropriate just comment on the status sharing their “wide array of emotions” with the user, instead of complaining of the limits that the “Like” button has.
It just seems that while the “Reaction” buttons will replace the “Like” one, people will just forget how to express their emotions in their own words and just use the animated pictograms instead. Facebook will boost sales even more if it would start a 3 D printing company and sell the emojis to the universal public
Image source: www.meshbetter.com
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