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" There was a time, way back before Facebook and Instagram, when the only people who made a point of publicly proclaiming what things they liked were women. If a woman liked your pants, she&amp;#039;d say, &amp;quot;I like your pants.&amp;quot; If a man liked your pants, he&amp;#039;d just keep walking to his desk. But now, the entire world has taken on this tendency, all day long, every day. Our resident sex columnist and misanthrope Stacey Woods decided to try it out for herself. \u2014The Editors eileen56* liked my photo. She likes all of my photos \u2014 even the ones of people she doesn&amp;#039;t know and of things that don&amp;#039;t concern her. ronniekay likes all of my photos, too. Both are distant acquaintances. I&amp;#039;ve spent less than an hour with either of them, in a group, over four years ago. Yet they linger, liking and liking and liking. From my cursory research on Instagram and Facebook, I&amp;#039;d say their behavior is far from uncommon. People, it seems, love to like things. Moreover, they love to proclaim that they like things. One recent afternoon on Facebook, I watched a friend ride a torrential-like bender. In the space of one hour, he liked 26 things: Starbucks and the state of California among them. That&amp;#039;s not just pro-establishment, it&amp;#039;s positively gung-ho establishment. But why? What does the liker get out of it? Likes are just little drawings of hearts and thumbs. They&amp;#039;re not legal tender yet, are they? &amp;quot;There are two reasons why people like,&amp;quot; says Dr. Suzana Flores, a psychologist who specializes in the emotional effects of social media, and who I suspect will be very busy in the coming years. &amp;quot;The first one is simply to show support. Like, I appreciate what you post, I want to be a good friend and I want to endorse whatever you say.&amp;quot; Which is a bit psychotic in itself, if you ask me. &amp;quot;The second reason people like is that they want the likes to be reciprocal. They are liking because they&amp;#039;re hoping that you&amp;#039;ll like as many of their posts. They are very much seeking validation.&amp;quot; And then there are people like me. I like things. Of course I like things. My likes are genuine, well-considered, and hardly ever politically motivated, and I don&amp;#039;t reward selfies or most forms of self-promotion. I don&amp;#039;t like more things not because I don&amp;#039;t like things (though I don&amp;#039;t, in general, like things), but because I figure that my tacit acceptance of your morning scone is implied. And I&amp;#039;m afraid to over-like. I don&amp;#039;t want to give anyone the opportunity to find me as annoying as I find them. I&amp;#039;d hate to inspire people to look at their phones and think, &amp;quot;Stacey Woods liked this? Fuck her.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Most people aren&amp;#039;t thinking that far ahead,&amp;quot; explains Dr. Flores. Liking, she says is &amp;quot;a very impulsive thing. And part of the reason that the like feature is the most popular one on Facebook is the brevity. It takes only a second, so there&amp;#039;s instant gratification: I&amp;#039;m liking and liking and liking.&amp;quot; So I started to watch everyone on my feeds trade likes of each other&amp;#039;s cupcakes and yachts and sunsets. I watched them toast each other, promote each other, and give each other expensive gifts. I watched as groups of people sitting across from each other photograph each other, tag each other, and like each other&amp;#039;s photos all night long. Having had the distinction of being adult before people started doing this, I can&amp;#039;t help but think it odd. (Besides, hardly anyone takes pictures of me.) They all did look to be having a great time, though: laughing, drinking, parasailing, and giving each other great jobs, it seemed, whereas my last few posts had been of pictures off the TV. (I had a good one of Chris Elliott in Kingpin.) Perhaps I&amp;#039;d been too stingy with the likes, I thought. Maybe I could stand to get in on the New Friendliness. Join Generation Yay. Why not? A like is literally the easiest thing to give, and maybe if I sent enough of them into the Hive Mind I could get in there too. I started on Instagram on a Throwback Thursday, figuring that it&amp;#039;d be harder to dislike photos of people as kids. As I marched down the feed, tapping the heart beside every photo, an elated, almost zippy feeling overcame me. All of these people would soon learn that I approved of them and would be forced to think about me. It felt powerful, like I was branding myself onto their minds. Then I came across hunnypot7&amp;#039;s picture. It was her usual softly-lit, pouty self-portrait. &amp;quot;Throwback to &amp;#039;09,&amp;quot; it said. It was a selfie masquerading as a Throwback Thursday. &amp;quot;That doesn&amp;#039;t count!&amp;quot; I said aloud. I didn&amp;#039;t want to like it. Moreover, I wanted to ask all 46 people who liked it how they could like it. But I liked it, and kept goose-stepping down the feed. All social media is a platform for boasting, but the things they get up to over on Facebook would make even the most narcissistic sailor blush. I raised my virtual thumb to every humblebrag, political harangue, and comedy bit, feeling a giddy, albeit queasy rush, until I came across a status that gave me pause. A Facebook friend was using the opportunity of a recent tragedy to drop a celebrity&amp;#039;s name, and people were furiously liking it. I can&amp;#039;t like this sort of thing. I rationalized that I could like it purely for its ingenuity. There were so many likes, mine would just blend in, right? I liked it with my eyes closed and moved along, liking things that made no sense to like. Someone needed help moving, and I, along with thirteen other people, liked it. Someone else reposted something about a missing cat. I declined to like it. (There&amp;#039;s a clause in my liking contract for missing pet posts.) But seven other people did. Did they like that the cat was missing? Or do they just like cats? I then received word that someone I know had liked the fact that someone they know liked the cover of a David Crosby record, which I was invited to like, too. This was a tough one. I&amp;#039;m well-known to dislike David Crosby and have expressed on more than one occasion my bafflement at this very record&amp;#039;s popularity. I&amp;#039;ll come back to it, I thought. That night I returned to my devices for another session. Far from getting me off, though, liking was making me weary. I&amp;#039;d liked so many sunsets and cocktails that I couldn&amp;#039;t keep anything straight. This relentless approving of things was taking its toll. Worse, when I came across a picture of something that I genuinely wished to like (yes, a picture of a cat \u2014 a really great cat I know), my support felt cold and weightless. This confusing dichotomy continued for days. I knew that I should use my rare excursions out of the house as opprtunities to like and be liked but I couldn&amp;#039;t bring myself to ask to take people&amp;#039;s pictures for Instagram. It seemed forward. On the fifth morning, I woke up with what I can only describe as a likeover. Flashes of cats, kids, cakes, and coffees kept coming back to me. Did I like pictures of people I didn&amp;#039;t know? I did. Did I like a picture of kale? I did, which is funny, because I despise kale. And was there someone currently puzzling about why a girl he took out for Thai food in 1989 had popped up to endorse the death of his father? I feared so. Wearily, I sat down to tackle the day&amp;#039;s likes. I still hadn&amp;#039;t made a decision about David Crosby, and I knew I had to. I logged on to Facebook and was immediately prompted to like the Subway chain of restaurants. Included, as incentive, was a list of my friends who had also liked Subway. The number was staggering.  Liking Subway presented a legitimate problem. I&amp;#039;ve never eaten there. A friend of mine once described to me how he made the notch in the bread have congress with the rim of the toilet when he worked there, and I never got over it. I dislike submarine sandwiches, so it&amp;#039;s unlikely that I&amp;#039;d like Subway, and I bristled a bit at the thought of anyone thinking that I did, let alone waking up to that information. But most importantly, I didn&amp;#039;t want to start getting a bunch of e-mails from Subway. It felt like a natural end to my experiment. In the weeks that followed, I saw no significant improvement in my fortune. Apart from the usual DJ nights, no invitations came. My Instagrams received the usual low two-digit likes, and my Facebook status, &amp;quot;THUMBS UP,&amp;quot; debuted to a measly two. It seemed that my branding iron had had little effect. Either that or people were in fact saying, &amp;quot;Stacey Woods likes this? Fuck her.&amp;quot; Either way, I learned that I&amp;#039;m not equipped for the New Friendliness, which I suppose is fine. Condoning nail art and ice cream, I suspect, is a dumb way to spend time. I wonder if the worth of each other&amp;#039;s snacks could once again exist in the realm of the unimportant so we could all move on to other business. &amp;quot;Unfortunately the next generation is growing up with this and the message we&amp;#039;re sending them is that everything has to be approved,&amp;quot; says Dr. Flores, who suggests that some people occasionally take a Facebook break, and I think I will. &amp;quot;There are people who are living their lives just so they can post them on Instagram and Facebook. Our friends are not our friends anymore, our friends are our audience.&amp;quot;  And the likelihood of anyone tiring of an audience is slim, I thought, as hunnypot7&amp;#039;s evening selfie rolled out. Releived, I ignored it and hopped over to eileen56&amp;#039;s page to see what she was up to. Her latest showed her in eveningwear, raising a glass to the camera. I gave her one. *All screen names are pseudonyms. PLUS: Read Stacey Grenrock Woods&amp;#039;s Sex Column &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; Follow Just Now Ago on Twitter at @JustNowAgo. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a25239/facebook-liking-stacey-woods/>