When someone hearts my response in text or social media, I often feel dismissed.
Why?
Because that's what I'm sort of maybe doing when I heart someone's response.
Instead of meaning the intended I love what you've said...I think the heart tends to mean one of the following.
1. I hear you. I'm fine with what you said. But I have no idea how to respond.
2. I hear you. But I think this conversation has reached it's end point.
3. Thanks for commenting but I have 50 zillion comments and can't give a personal reply to everyone. (not the case for me but I imagine the case for influencers)
It's a difficult thing.
I feel a little rejected when I get a heart instead of an actual response. I also feel a bit guilty when I do the same to others.
But I think it's kind of a part of life.
I don't know of an alternative.
I don't think it's technically rude to respond with just-a heart.
One thing I try to do is remind myself...if I'm feeling rejected...that it might be less about rejection and more about the person feeling awkward and shy.
Because that's usually the case for me. When my hearting = not having more to say, it usually doesn't mean that I'm looking down at the person with derision. It's often me feeling intimidated...feeling that I won't be able to match their cleverness or humor.
I think I have close to the same amount of social anxiety with texting, commenting, emailing as I do with in-person and phone conversations.
Wait...I feel I should clarify something.
I think the heart is different when responding to the actual social media post. Since most of my followers totally ignore my posts, getting a heart feels like a big deal. And when I heart someone's post, it usually means: I love this, I like this, I totally agree, or I would totally repost this except I've already spammed my followers too much today.
What I'm referring to above is when someone comments on a post, and then the response to that comment is a heart.
I hope that makes sense.
Its hard on platforms with one "like" as the option. I find myself spending time thinking, "I have nothing to add, I want to show support, but don't want to indicate I like this troublesome time. " for famous people I take it as a ranking "like" "comment" "retweet" are the three levels of acknowledgment. Like at least means it's caught their attention.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah. That's another issue...the not wanting to seem as if we like tragedy. Maybe there should just be some kind of thing we could click that meant "I saw this" or "I see you".
DeleteI also struggle with the choices on texting—the thumbs up, thumbs down, heart, and ha ha. First of all, the ha ha actually sounds mean to me. Like the thing someone would say when they DON'T find something funny. It's like "Ha ha. You think you're so funny. But you're not". But then the notification says that so and so laughed....so that makes me feel better about things.
I struggle with the thumbs up vs heart. My sisters, parents, and nieces share a LOT of photos. I don't want to heart everything, because it then seems disingenuous. (And also there are some things I feel don't merit positive feedback). But I worry that I'm going to upset someone by giving a heart to some stuff and a thumbs up to others.
I rarely use the thumbs down, because I feel people wouldn't know if I meant "I don't like that this happened " or ""I don't like that you are sharing this".
Its definitely a mixed bag. For comedy stuff, I use thumbs up for appreciating the humor, laugh if I laughed out loud, and heart if its a joke I'm going to steal. the only time I use (and see) the thumbs down is usually back and forth between my daughter when we're deliberately trying to annoy each other.
ReplyDeleteIs it appreciating the humor or appreciating the ATTEMPT at humor. I'm joking. Sort of. I did a thumbs up with a family member's attempt at a joke recently. It was awkward. I felt I was saying. "That wasn't funny. But I did see it, and I'm not purposely ignoring you. Blah, blah, blah. After I clicked it and it was out there, I started to feel it would have been better to not respond at all.
ReplyDeleteCute about trying to deliberately annoy each other. That's a fun use for the thumbs down.
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