Trekkychick

Dear Readers,

These days, it’s not enough to have preferences, or to express them verbally. No, these days you don’t actually own your predilections until you’ve publicly proclaimed your preference via our society’s newest communicative modality, facebook. This phenomenon is reflected in the following conversation that has surely not been embellished as my readers have come to expect my fact-driven journalistic integrity as a cornerstone of my posts:

Me: Hey Ricardo, would you like my newest blog post, please?

Ricardo: Um, I do like it. I like it, Troi, it’s good.

Me: No, I mean “like” it. Click the “like” button. It’ll show up on facebook, and other people will “like” it too.

Ricardo: I don’t understand why I have to press a button to prove that I like your post.

Me: JUST DO IT, IT’S NOT REAL UNLESS IT’S WITNESSED BY FACEBOOK!!

The idea, I explained to Ricardo once I’d taken my medication and restored my sense of calm, is simple. People like to operate under the misconception that we’re unique beings. We create our very own unique facebook page, which looks uncannily like everybody else’s unique facebook page, and then we further establish our autonomy by identifying our unique sets of interests, which we demonstrate by liking those interests on our public facebook forum. We are disconcerted as we notice 5,357,922 other people, 5,357,921 of which are our facebook friends, share these same interests, so we keep clicking, sure that nobody else likes “losing their balance and falling over, but then getting back up again and looking around to make sure nobody noticed, and nobody did notice, so, like, cool!” but it turns out, damn it, that everybody has fallen over and nobody likes to be caught falling over, and maybe we should create a page about not falling over, and we can be the first to stand up straight and like it, too.

Ricardo: That doesn’t sound simple at all. Also, you talk too fast.

Let me put this another way. My old church pastor, Friedrich Nietzsche, used to preach about the idea of the herd mentality. The herd mentality comes from the root word “herd,” meaning, “Dude, I herd you were doing this, I like, totally want to do it too!” and the root word “mental,” as in, “Alright, man, but we’re, like, totally mental for trying this–it’s SO crazy, dude!” The herd mentality refers, then, to the idea that no matter how crazy a particular activity seems, people can be persuaded to participate in it if there are enough people already doing it. Ergo, (Yes! Cross off “using the word ‘ergo’ in a blog post” from my bucket list!) if one member of the human herd likes one of my previously undesirable blog posts, it follows that other humans will experience a higher likelihood of similarly tolerating the post.

Ricardo: Wait—-I don’t think Nietzsche was your church pastor—-

I didn’t hear Ricardo say this during our conversation, of course, as he said it over the phone and didn’t post it as a status update, our socially-accepted medium for stating one’s spontaneous thoughts, opinions, and rebuttals.

Since Ricardo has not yet liked my post, I arrive at the inevitable conclusion that he, and perhaps many of you, have not become fully acquainted with the practice of liking things, having previously engaged in the formerly acceptable practice of expressing your opinions in the form of a verbal comment. While I have not personally engaged in the practice of liking (I find it to be dull and derivative, whereas I find writing entire blog posts about it to be refreshing and fun!), I have witnessed others who are bonified experts at liking all sorts of things and can offer you a step-by-step guide of the process.

STEP 1: Find something you like.

STEP 2: Don’t say you like it! This is a classic newbie mistake. Instead, search for a small tab with an “F” near the thing that you like. This is the Facebook “like” button. This is what you use to convey your preference to others.

STEP 3: Place your hand, palm down, onto your mouse, move the pointer onto the facebook tab, and click so that you can show all of your friends what you like.

A typical question I get asked when I am traveling the globe, from NE Portland all the way to SW Portland, to train herd members in perfecting their facebook preferences, is what one should do when one likes something that does not have the designated preference-expressing facebook button available.

“I really like my piano,” one naive student said to me the other day, “How do I show that I like it?”

“No you don’t,” I explained. “Remember, if it’s not on facebook, it doesn’t exist.”

“But I really like my piano,” she insisted, “I feel strongly that I should be able to let people know I like it!”

I gave her an “F” —-and that doesn’t stand for “Facebook.” Some people just aren’t ready to embrace the communicative restrictions placed on us by technological advances.

So, Readers, I hope that you have appreciated your lesson, and if you have, don’t forget to show it by liking this post.

–Troi out

*My apologies to my good friend Ricardo, for having grossly altered our conversational exchange without obtaining his prior permission. If Ricardo would like to express any qualms regarding this matter, it is requested that he do so using established societal norms by writing of his displeasure on my wall.