In the early fourteenth century, peasants in southern Germany would collectively hunt for smooth pebbles which they would then paint (using a mixture of boiled beetroots and milk) to leave outside each other’s doors. The house with the most coloured pebbles outside it was the house most favoured by those in the community, and its residents could hold their heads slightly higher at Sunday morning mass each week.
This, of course, is completely untrue. The fact there is no real historical precedent for social media “Likes” illustrates how jarring it is that we have introduced a system whereby we can visibly quantify and publicly display our social worth on an interaction-by-interaction basis. Throughout history, humans have come up with an abundance of ways to demonstrate their social standing, but none have been as pervasive, as recurrent, and as efficient as the Like button.
In just over a decade, Likes (which, for the sake of brevity, include “Upvotes”, “Hearts”, and “Favourites” in this piece) have become commonplace across a variety of social networks. But what really is a Like, anyway? Why do we Like posts, and how do we feel when our own posts are Liked? Has this huge shift in the way we interact had a positive impact, or a negative one? To find out, I conducted a survey of 518 social media users, from teenagers to sexagenarians.
How many Likes do we like?
It turns out that most of us don’t have particularly grand aspirations when it comes to Likes. When asked what is the number of Likes we, realistically, aim for when creating a post, 64.1 per cent of us said we wanted between zero and 20. Only 1.5 per cent of us aimed for between 60 and 70 , with just 1.4 per cent wanting over 1,000 .
“Likes are always an indicator of social standing, at my age,” says an anonymous 17-year-old survey respondent. “As someone who gets anxious and occasionally struggles with self-esteem, the amount of Likes on my posts can be both hugely uplifting or depressing.”
Which Likes do we like?
We hold this truth to be self-evident: not all Likes are created equal. Most of us – 86.3 per cent to be precise – admit to valuing Likes from certain people more than we value those from others.
“If I shared a link to a new song and ‘Marie Mummy Fox’ from secondary school liked it I would question who I really am,” explained one anonymous survey respondent. “But if my music-wizard pal Rowan Mckillop liked it I’d feel a sense of approval or achievement.”
But not only do we value Likes from certain people, we also have a preference as to which of our posts get the most Likes. Just under a quarter ( 23.7 per cent ) of us want our opinions to get the most Likes, while 18 per cent most value the Likes they get on their jokes. This was followed by 16 per cent who desire Likes on pictures of their life, and only 5 per cent of people who cherish Likes on their selfies the most.
If you’re happy and you know it, check your Likes
It probably won’t surprise you that 89 per cent of us admit that getting lots of Likes on social media makes us happy, but what’s interesting is that, for 40 per cent of these people, the happiness only lasts as long as the Likes keep coming in. After getting lots of Likes, 12.5 per cent of people will feel happy for around an hour, 10.2 per cent will feel it for the entire day, and for 3.1 per cent of people, it will last a week. It seems, also, that we are all well aware of the power of the Like button to invoke happiness, as 70.1 per cent of us have Liked someone else’s post in order to make them feel good.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my mental health has become more stable in the time that I’ve got a regular circle of followers who like a lot of my tweets,” says Tyron Wilson, a 25-year-old researcher.
It seems logical that if getting lots of Likes makes us happy, getting few – or none – would make us sad. However only 32.6 per cent of respondents admitted that getting few likes on a post made them unhappy, with the majority saying it doesn’t.
“I hardly have negative changes in my self-esteem if I don’t get a lot of likes. I usually just attribute it to the time of day or the number of friends who have access to my profile,” said one survey respondent. “However, many likes, especially on a selfie post or a post of a picture of my life, can certainly make me feel good in that moment.”
Despite less than a third of us being unhappy with a small number of Likes, however, 42.1 per cent of people have deleted a post because it didn’t get “enough” Likes. Unhappiness is also generated when we compare ourselves to others, with 55.4 per cent of people admitting to having been jealous when they see someone else with a high number of Likes.
For a rare few people, too many Likes can actually make us unhappy. Ed Williamson, a 37-year-old film reviewer for theshiznit.co.uk , admits: “I sometimes get annoyed when someone Likes too many of my tweets, because it makes me feel like they’re not discriminating enough, which devalues the action.”
Overall, however, 62.7 per cent of us agree or strongly agree with the sentiment “I feel a buzz when someone Likes my post”. Matthew Sumption, a 24-year-old Oxford student, reveals that he kept checking his status for days after it “blew up” and got over 250 Likes. “I’m very conscious of the fact this probably isn’t a very healthy way to behave, but I think the combination of the dopamine hit when someone Likes a post and the feeling of being ‘liked’ by your peers has a kind of irresistible cachet,” he says.
Likes can also make us happy in more indirect – and sometimes malicious – ways. Just under half – 43.8 per cent – of people have felt schadenfreude from seeing someone else’s post get a low number of Likes.
When is a Like not a like?
When we get a Like, we mostly interpret it as just that – an outward expression that someone likes you ( they really like you! ). However, the survey’s respondents revealed that they also Like posts for other, slightly more selfish, reasons.
Just over half ( 51.2 per cent ) of us have Liked something to stop a conversation by indicating we’ve finished replying, while 39.4 per cent of us have Liked a post to remind someone else we exist, and 22.2 per cent of us have Liked a post so that person will Like our posts in turn. A very small number of people ( 4.6 per cent ) have also passively aggressively Liked a “sad” status to show that they’re happy about another’s misfortune.
A Like is also not a “like” when it is coerced. 28.8 per cent of us admit we have asked someone else to Like our posts. Self-reporting bias might have been in action here, however, as a much higher proportion – 64.1 per cent – of us say that someone else has asked us to Like their post.
Additionally, 78.8 per cent of us have deliberately not Liked a post because we didn’t like the person who posted it, suggesting that Likes are not just an indication of who Likes your post, but who Likes you.
The most likable statistic
Perhaps the most revealing statistic of all, however, is one of the most simple. When asked whether they’d like more, fewer, or the same number of Likes, 67.4 per cent of respondents wanted more, 32.4 per cent wanted the same, and only one, very lonely figure, wanted fewer.
Maggie Goldenberger is not the Ermahgerd girl, not really. Although she is the star of the four-year-old meme of an awkward tween girl holding up her favourite Goosebumps books, she was actually in costume at the time.
“I was in like sixth grade [year seven] maybe, and I’d always dress up and take photos with my friends,” she says. “I don’t feel that offended by it [becoming a meme] or feel that embarrassed by it, because I was just messing around.”
Now 29, Maggie is video-calling me from her home in Phoenix, Arizona, where she works as a cardiac nurse. Although she was 11 or 12 in the now internationally famous picture, it only went viral when she was 25 and on a six-month-long travelling trip. The image spread across the internet and was quickly captioned phonetically to imitate a speech impediment, and thus a rhotacised pronunciation of “Oh my God” was born. “Ermahgerd,” an internet user emblazoned the image, “Gersberms!”
If you’re not exactly sure what that means, you’re not alone. Maggie’s mother, although immediately proud of her daughter’s new-found fame, was a little bemused by the internet’s captions. Maggie tells me her mother, “had the picture up in her office and she thought it was hilarious. But she kept telling me like: ‘Maggie! They’re putting all this German writing all over your picture! What’s going on!’
“She didn’t quite understand it but she loved it.”
Like her mother, Maggie didn’t immediately comprehend her new online fame. She is happy to share her story, and laughs about it, but admits she still doesn’t really “get” the meme. “I’m even more confused about it now than I was then,” she says. “I kind of got like the novelty of it and it being fun but I don’t understand how it’s lasted so long.”
It is this confusion that means that Maggie, unlike most of the memes I have spoken to , has not made much money from her viral fame. “It’s hard for me to get behind something that I don’t understand,” she says when I ask if she ever considered releasing merchandise. “Also if I’m gonna make shirts I wanted them to be like fair trade, organic . and it just seemed like a lot going on, like the responsibility of it.”
Though Maggie could potentially have made thousands of dollars, not cultivating her online fame means that she is now able to live a relatively normal life. Most people don’t recognise her from the image, although word-of-mouth does mean that sometimes strangers approach her to take a picture. Maggie doesn’t mind this, but she is annoyed when people won’t reveal why they want a picture with her. “Then I’ll just find out a couple weeks into knowing them that they know about [the meme],” she says, “and I’m like, oh, just say it upfront.”
Yet while Maggie has never been embarrassed of Ermahgerd girl, she did get a taste of the darker side of internet fame when her friend’s brother uploaded a more recent photo of her, in a bikini, to Reddit, and revealed in his post that she was lesbian.
“I could finally feel for other people like in those tabloid magazines,” she says. “I thought I was a pretty confident person, not that weird with my body and things, but to have someone put your photo out there without your knowledge and to have people sharing it and making ugly comments . it’s kind of an ugly world out there.”
Although Maggie did not enjoy being exposed in this way, she says the best thing about becoming a meme was when Vanity Fair wrote a profile on her in 2015. “I was going through a break-up at the time and when it came out I was getting attention for that and it just took away attention from the big break-up, so that was good timing.”
Despite enjoying the renewed attention on that occassion, however, Maggie is generally very grounded, and says she doesn’t normally announce who she is when she meets new people. “I usually try and not say anything,” she says, when I ask if it affects her dating life. “I keep it on the DL.”
Via Maggie Goldenberger
In many ways it is fortunate that 29-year-old Maggie is detached enough from her Ermahgerd persona to be able to do this. “I try to feel for others that have their meme go viral and it’s their real picture,” she says. “It was kind of weird that people were just making fun of a child without trying to figure out who the child was . .. I just don’t understand why people feel like it’s okay just because it’s online and it’s a stranger.”
For the future, then, Maggie says she is “still working” on embracing her meme status. She has no plans to cultivate it online or to make any money, and instead intends to do some travel nursing across the United States or potentially abroad. I ask her, if she could have been famous for anything else, instead of this, what would she choose?
“Initially I think like comedy,” she muses. “But then I think I should do something for the greater good.”
“Living the Meme” is a series of articles exploring what happens to people after they go viral. Check out the previous articles here.
To suggest an interviewee for Living the Meme, contact Amelia on Twitter .
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Sentiment rank: 1.1

© Source: http://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social-media/2017/01/both-hugely-uplifting-and-depressing-how-do-social-media-likes
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Jacqueline Kennedy and Christine Chubbuck may not have had much in common in real life – the former briefly the US first lady, the latter a put-upon television news reporter in the early 1970s in Sarasota, Florida – but two new films named after them are cut resolutely from the same cloth. Jackie and Christine are character studies of haunted women in which the claustrophobic close-up and the desolate wide shot are the predominant forms of address.
Both films hinge on fatal gunshots to the head and both seek to express cinematically a state of mind that is internal: grief and loss in Jackie , which is set mainly in the hours and days after the assassination of President John F Kennedy; depression and paranoia in Christine. In this area, they rely heavily not only on hypnotically controlled performances from their lead actors but on music that describes the psychological contours of distress.
Even before we see anything in Jackie , we hear plunging chords like a string section falling down a lift shaft. This is the unmistakable work of the abrasive art rocker Mica Levi. Her score in Jackie closes in on the ears just as the tight compositions by the cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine exclude the majority of the outside world. The Chilean director Pablo Larraín knows a thing or two about sustaining intensity, as viewers of his earlier work, including his Pinochet-era trilogy ( Tony Manero , Post Mortem and No ), will attest. Though this is his first English-language film, there is no hint of any softening. The picture will frustrate anyone hoping for a panoramic historical drama, with Larraín and the screenwriter Noah Oppenheim irising intently in on Jackie, played with brittle calm by Natalie Portman, and finding the nation’s woes reflected in her face.
Bit-players come and go as the film jumbles up the past and present, the personal and political. A journalist (Billy Crudup), nameless but based on Theodore White, arrives to interview the widow. Her social secretary, Nancy Tuckerman (Greta Gerwig), urges her on with cheerleading smiles during the shooting of a stiff promotional film intended to present her warmly to the public. Her brother-in-law Bobby (Peter Sarsgaard) hovers anxiously nearby as she negotiates the chasm between private grief and public composure. For all the bustle around her, the film insists on Jackie’s aloneness and Portman gives a performance in which there is as much tantalisingly concealed as fearlessly exposed.
A different sort of unravelling occurs in Christine. Antonio Campos’s film begins by showing Christine Chubbuck (Rebecca Hall) seated next to a large box marked “fragile” as she interviews on camera an empty chair in which she imagines Richard Nixon to be sitting. She asks of the invisible president: “Is it paranoia if everyone is indeed coming after you?” It’s a good question and one that she doesn’t have the self-awareness to ask herself. Pressured by her editor to chase juicy stories, she goes to sleep each night with a police scanner blaring in her ears. She pleads with a local cop for stories about the darker side of Sarasota, scarcely comprehending that the real darkness lies primarily within her.
For all the shots of TV monitors displaying multiple images of Christine in this beige 1970s hell, the film doesn’t blame the sensationalist nature of the media for her fractured state. Nor does it attribute her downfall entirely to the era’s sexism. Yet both of those things exacerbated problems that Chubbuck already had. She is rigid and off-putting, all severe straight lines, from her haircut and eyebrows to the crossed arms and tight, unsmiling lips that make it difficult for anyone to get close to her. That the film does break through is down to Hall, who illuminates the pain that Christine can’t express, and to the score by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans. It’s perky enough on the surface but there are cellos sawing away sadly underneath. If you listen hard enough, they’re crying: “Help.”
Some works of art slip into the world so naturally that it feels as though they were there already, waiting for somebody to notice them. Paul McCartney apparently woke up with “Yesterday” in his head and assumed that it was a tune he had heard somewhere before. While reading Homegoing , the debut novel from the Ghanaian-American writer Yaa Gyasi, I wondered whether she had experienced a similar sensation when she came up with the structure for this book. It seems so obvious, once you’ve read it, that it needed to be done, but the right artist had to be ready and Gyasi was the one.
In the first two chapters, we meet Effia and Esi, two sisters in what is now Ghana, in the late 18th century. Effia lives with her father and stepmother in Fanteland. The village chief, keen to build links with the newly arrived British, encourages her family to marry her off to James Collins, the white governor of the slave trading headquarters at Cape Coast Castle. Although she is a “wench” rather than a “wife” (wives are white), Effia has a relatively privileged existence, surrounded by fine furniture and silk hangings. Only now and again, when the wind changes, does she hear the cries from the dungeons, where the “cargo” is kept before shipping. When her son, Quey, is born, he is destined for a British education and a future as a slave trader.
Esi’s life takes a very different course. She is brought up with the girls’ mother, Maame, in the heart of Asanteland. Following a conflict with another tribe, Esi is taken prisoner and sold as a slave, first to the Fante and then to the British. She is kept, unknowingly, beneath her sister’s feet, in the horror of the castle’s dungeons, and raped. By the time she is taken to America on the “Big Boat”, stacked ten-deep with other prisoners, she is pregnant with her daughter, Ness. Later in her life, Ness will remember Esi watching motionless as she was torn away and sold to an Alabama plantation owner. Ness will always miss the “gray rock of her mother’s heart. She would always associate real love with a hardness of spirit.”
Each chapter of the book then tells the story of the succeeding generations, alternating between the Ghana-based descendants of Effia and the American descendants of Esi. The last two chapters, which bring the bloodlines together again, are set in the present day. But while the structure is fantastically strong, it would have been nothing without Gyasi’s ability to bring each character alive. At every turn, she resists cliché and dogma: her characters inherit the legacy of their parents, but they also have agency of their own and their lives take paths that no reader would have predicted. She deftly weaves in just enough historical information without sacrificing its complexity. The best chapter, which is about a freed slave known only as H, is a deeply shocking – and new to me – account of the ways in which the American nation perpetuated slavery after the Civil War.
This is not a perfect book. The mosaic-like structure creates some problems: we are never fully invested in any one character, as we know that each will disappear as suddenly as he or she arrived. Keeping up with who is whose great-great-grandson occasionally feels a bit like work; to understand its intricacies fully, the truly committed may want to read it twice. But Home­going has something better than perfection, and that is a touch of magic.
Gyasi was born in Ghana but brought up in Huntsville, Alabama, and she brings to this book her deep and intuitive understanding of both her homeland and the American South. She needed not only a great deal of skill and knowledge to write this novel, but also that complicated lifetime of experience. So many factors came together to make Gyasi ready, the right artist at the right time. If that’s not magical, I don’t know what is.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi is published by Viking (320pp, £12.99)

Sentiment rank: 0.5

© Source: http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/film/2017/01/women-edge-new-films-jackie-and-christine-are-character-studies-haunted-women
All rights are reserved and belongs to a source media.