Facebook: My Life Just Got Fabulous ….Again!!

Yippee!!! Just heard Facebook will be introducing the dislike button. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook said yesterday during a Q & A “What people want is to be able to express empathy”.  He said some users (me) have been asking for the icon since 2009 and that the icon will be available to test very soon

He also said he did not want it to be a mechanism with which people could “down vote” others’ posts.

While I completely agree with him on the use of the button on the empathy front , however I can’t help but think that young Mr. Zuckerberg, by his comment on the “down post” is just trying to absolve himself of any wanton misuse of the icon in the future. And he knows it will happen.

To borrow a much used analogy, providing the dislike button on Facebook and asking users not to “down post” with it, is like taking a child to M&M world in central London and telling them they can’t have any sweets? That’s just cruel. Or even worse, presenting me with an attractive muscular guy with a clean lubed bubble butt, then giving me condoms and telling me not to do him. That’s not gonna work.

With the introduction of the button, I no longer have to ignore tedious post workout selfies taken on the gym floor or in the changing room exhibiting “natural” muscle gains made in a “remarkably short space” of time. (Puhleeze, I know where you get your steroids from). I can use the dislike button.

I no longer have to ignore pictures of “friends” on holidays in far exotic places with them hanging out with their amazing friends. (Meanwhile you just know, someone somewhere has seen the same post and humming “Bitch, you better have my money”). I can use the dislike button.

No longer will I have to curse under my breath, when I see Facebook exchanges between couples, regarding restaurants they should go to over the weekend. (They live in the same house; Can’t they talk to each other!?!) It’s bad enough they use the check in functionality on Facebook heralding their arrival at chosen restaurant, before taking a picture of the food and posting  it on their newsfeed for all to see. I can use the dislike button.

And what about the guy who “severed” – or so he wanted us to believe – his finger, in a kitchen blender. He went to hospital, had a few stitches put in and naturally put the entire drama on Facebook. Of course the cringe worthy sympathy messages came flooding in and no one asked why he put his finger in the blender in the first place while it was on, except muggins here. “Was it a cry for help?” I asked. I promptly got unfriended when I further opined that perhaps the “accident” was the beginning of the natural selection process.

My point is had the dislike icon been available, I would have used it rather than make the last comment and we could have still been Facebook friends. He would have thought I was empathizing with his accident and not his stupidity.

Like I said before in an earlier post (click here), which I like to delude myself helped in some way in influencing Mr. Zuckerberg’s decision in introducing the button, nothing bad ever happens on Facebook. You see the numerous posts expressing undying love between lovers, but hardly anything about the breakup two weeks later.

I suppose the polite thing to do is ignore the annoying posts and move on without making a negative comment. A fellow brother blogger (Pink Panther) said, “If you no like my post, just waka pass (walk on by).  And where is the fun in that when I can cause misery by flipping the dislike button as I “waka pass”?

The fact is Mr. Zuckerberg has shielded Facebook users (myself included) from the harsh reality of life outside facebook which is, as long as the earth continues to rotate on its axis; human beings continue to breath oxygen; North Korea continues to seek attention by threatening to launch nuclear missiles; Prince Harry continues to have ginger pubes and Janet Jackson continues to mime – haters gonna hate.

For a social website that is meant to be all-inclusive, they have deprived haters a means of expressing their feelings about posts quickly, for far too long and I almost feel like asking Amnesty International to look into the matter.

Anyway, thank you Mr. Zuckerberg for considering exposing the millions of Facebook users to the real world and not having most of us thinking the whole world is amazing and everyone likes what we post. Better late than never, I guess.

I suspect in the name of political correctness, Facebook will impose a ban on users for what they perceive to be the misuse of the dislike button. And going by my previous record (click here) I reckon I shall be banned in no time.

Meantime, I look forward to the period between when the icon is introduced and when I am banned –  I anticipate that my life on Facebook will be truly fabulous if not amazing, within that period.

****Rubs hands with glee*****