The Post-“Like” Era of Social Networking

My name is Ian Roberts, and I’m a “like”aholic. I’m helplessly addicted to the like button on Facebook. That’s not to say that I enjoy handing out likes, but I am constantly seeking them out, practically manipulating my Facebook friends into pressing that tiny little button above the comment box. The like button is a pat on the back. A tussle of the hair and a “I’m proud of you, son.” An almost zero-effort gesture of approval that is nonetheless more important to you than the home run you just hit. For the past two and a half years, the like button has shaped the way that I go about posting status updates and links and photos on Facebook.

The like button has become a validation of my sense of humor. If a particular link or status update that I post doesn’t get any likes, or gets likes from the wrong people, I have failed. I spend minutes wondering what I did wrong, and then I move my cursor to delete the horrible piece of trash that doesn’t deserve to be on the internet. But I stop. That’s the cowardly way out. Let the world see my failure, and I hope I have the strength to face their harsh criticism. Then I tear off my shirt in frustration and throw my computer out the window. And then I die. Yes, every time I don’t receive a sufficient amount of likes for a status update, I die. I die a slow, painful, melodramatic death. But each time, as my soul passes on to the next life, a wayward spirit comes up to me and says, “Seriously? You died because of the like button?” and then slaps me in the face so hard that I resurrect. It is a painful experience.

Plugging in to The Matrix: A Retrospective

I was ten years old when I first saw The Matrix. My family had just recently gotten a DVD player, and the 1999 sci-fi film was one of our first DVD purchases. My parents were very permissive about letting me watch R-rated films, but I usually avoided them because I associated them with tense, scary scenes and “disgusting” acts of human affection like sex and kissing. However, my parents and brothers told me that The Matrix was a fantastic movie, and I had to see it. So one weekend when I had nothing to do, I went up into my playroom where the DVD player was, and watched the movie. I fell in love that day.

Bullet time, one of the most iconic special effects in the movie.

The appeal of the movie was quite simple to a ten-year-old. It had guns. It had cartwheels and wall-runs. It had explosions. It had bullet time. It had a kick-ass soundtrack that showcased the finest electronic music that the late 90s had to offer. It had… the lobby scene. Back then, I didn’t care all that much about the hour-and-a-half of movie that comes before Keanu Reeves utters his famous line, “Guns… lots of guns.” I cannot count the number of times that I popped in the DVD just to watch that scene. But that was all that The Matrix needed to be catapulted into the distinctive honor of the best movie ten-year-old me had ever seen.

I was wimpy but hyper-competitive in the fifth grade, so I often found myself on the losing end of competitions of strength and athleticism, much to my chagrin. I escaped from this cruel reality through Neo’s heroic and superhuman feats, dreaming of a day where I’d be able to do the same. I’d pretend that I could cartwheel, wall-run, and shoot guns with pinpoint accuracy like Neo and Trinity did in the lobby scene. I bought into the notion that a man could dodge bullets by waving his arms around in slow motion, and I fell flat on my ass many times while trying to mimic the scene. I was completely entranced by and immersed within the world of The Matrix.