Sympathy can't be reduced to a Facebook button | Melissa Bradshaw | Comment is free | theguardian.com
so what options do they need?
Sympathy
So Sad you're sick - here are some LOLCats.
Sad you lost your Job - here are some LOLCats.
Sad you lost your love of your life at 13 - here are some LOLCats.
Sad you got turfed out by the missus teach you to shag her sister - Here are some naked pussies.
What would it mean to turn sympathy into a button? Apparently Facebook has already done so although has not yet made plans to launch it. The button has been developed as a solution to the difficulty of responding with "likes" to a status where someone posts bad news – as if users were not already able to negotiate this small hurdle.
Facebook is proposing a menu of negative emotions that you can select when posting your status, choosing from which will allow people to respond with sympathy. But there's already the option of commenting on rather than liking bad news statuses – so if someone posts that they're ill, for example, you can write "get well soon" instead of risking looking like you're happy about their condition. Given the flexibility that already exists, a sympathy button seems both patronising towards users, and as though Facebook is trying to encroach further into the range and distribution of human emotions by turning them all into clickable options.
Facebook is proposing a menu of negative emotions that you can select when posting your status, choosing from which will allow people to respond with sympathy. But there's already the option of commenting on rather than liking bad news statuses – so if someone posts that they're ill, for example, you can write "get well soon" instead of risking looking like you're happy about their condition. Given the flexibility that already exists, a sympathy button seems both patronising towards users, and as though Facebook is trying to encroach further into the range and distribution of human emotions by turning them all into clickable options.
Sympathy
So Sad you're sick - here are some LOLCats.
Sad you lost your Job - here are some LOLCats.
Sad you lost your love of your life at 13 - here are some LOLCats.
Sad you got turfed out by the missus teach you to shag her sister - Here are some naked pussies.
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