Óscar A. Montiel | Digital Philosopher

It seems like a socially expected chore to “react” to messages—like, if I don’t “react” with a “love” icon to a message that conditionally expects the love icon, the sender feels one hasn’t “fulfilled” the reply appropriately—it is now the norm to “react” with established symbols—words are not enough anymore!

I’ve noticed how these “Reactions” in most social media & messaging services actually degrade digital communication—they limit genuine dialogue into quick and effective messaging (“why waste time writing what’s on your soul and mind when you can simply choose a reaction!”).

I don’t like to romanticize the past, since we’ve never lived a clean, good society, but I do remember how digital dialogue was more sincere, open and unique—people used to play with letters and words to express themselves in special and specific ways, creating what’s called a culture.

Nowdays, the only culture we have now is that imposed particularly by Facebook and the weapon of massive stupidification called “Like”, which evolved into “Reactions Culture”—it seems every human reaction is condensed in a default set of symbols, which are the same for everyone, and are the same ones that the establishment has decided to be the most “important”. In fact, we should philosophize what does it means when something is “by default”, but that’s another topic for another day.

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