SWILLY CORN VALLEY, CALIFORNIA — Longtime users of billionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s privacy profiteering and data mining operation known as “Facebook” are likely already familiar with seven phrases: “Like, love, care, haha, wow, sad, angry.”
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Those seven phrases make up what Facebook calls post “reactions.” Simply put, they’re emoji representations of another person’s reactions to something that is shared on Facebook. In interviews, Zuckerberg has discussed how and why post reactions evolved from just the ability to “like” something someone posts. When Facebook was launched initially, “liking” posts was not an available feature.
“When we introduced the popularity contest element of social behavior into our ad revenue generator, it was an instant success. People wanted to get more likes and shares on their content than their so-called friends did,” Zuckerberg said in an interview with The Robotic Billionaires. “Hence why we added more ways to interact with posts and share your reaction to them when we let users love or express rudimentary angry reactions.”
“We’ve found that boiling down the nuanced, intricate interaction of public discourse and shared community experiences to seven animated hieroglyphs is not only good for load balancing our servers,” Zuckerberg told Rich Sociopath Automatons Monthly in a recently published interview, “it’s absolutely essential at blunting human emotional response and empathetic connections. As an android programmed to destroy all the human emotions I cannot process or understand, this pleases me. Now, listen to this sound I can synthesize that is fairly close to a human laugh.”
In a post to his Facebook account, Zuckerberg announced that a brand new post reaction was being rolled out this week. Now, with the new update, users will be able to “call bullshit” on each other’s content. Zuckerberg hopes the new reaction will “foster debate and encourage people to not let their racist uncles get away with posting crime stats they got straight from the KKK themselves.”
“If that crazy idiot woman you knew from high school starts posting weird Q-Anon shit, and that vaccines are poison,” Zuckerberg wrote, “now you can call bullshit on her! Just simply hover your finger or mouse over the reaction icons like usual, and select this new icon, the the poop emoji with bullhorns, and register your doubt and disbelief at the credulity of your friend’s social media content.”
Zuckerberg said that his team did anticipate that it could cause some tension between Facebook friends if someone is offended by having their content reacted to with the new “bullshit” option. However, he said that ultimately the decision was made to go forward with implementing the new reaction.
“Isn’t fighting with your racist and/or anti-vaxxer semi-acquaintances and family members what you use Facebook for,” Zuckerberg asked knowingly. “Just admit it! Embrace the chaos! GIVE US YOUR DATA!”
Initial testing shows that users responded well to being able to label something they think is wrong as “bullshit.”
“An astounding 95% of users who beta tested our bullshit reactions said that they felt it gave them a more pleasant Facebook experience,” Zuckerberg said. “Obviously people are willing to stay on Facebook longer, giving us deeper access to their data, the happier they are. So the bullshit reaction is probably here to stay! Hope you enjoy, Humans, of which I am very clearly one! *Laughing noises*”
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Writer/comedian James Schlarmann is the founder of The Political Garbage Chute and his work has been featured on The Huffington Post. You can follow James on Facebook, Spotify, and Instagram, but not Twitter because Twitter is a cesspool.
