I Don't Want You to Like This One

I’ve been active on the Internet, in one form or another, since 1992, and in that time I’ve developed a collection of vague “rules” for how I act and interact there (or, I guess, here). Now I’m going to start sharing them with you, so you can live as happily and productively on the Information Superhighway™ as yours truly.

Rule No. 1: Like Nothing

Once upon a time, not all that long ago, we mostly kinda liked social media. Whichever amoral billionaire was running the show, the platforms at least let us keep up with our friends around the world: their first-day-of-school kid pics, their job changes and romantic entanglements (and disentanglements), links to odd or important stories they were reading. Whether your network was far-flung, like mine, or tight-knit, the social platforms (which I don’t even want to bother to name now) was a gentle, low-effort way to stay in touch.

Eventually, though, the platforms began to shift what they showed us, and we all suddenly became aware of The Algorithm. To be sure, The Algorithm existed beforehand—these platforms had to find a way to sort and winnow what they were showing to us, because most of us had too many friends and interests to just look at every post one by one, reverse-chronologically. But the new shift was taking place less to suit the needs of us, the users, and more to please the advertisers and shareholders. The platforms wanted us to see more ads, and to spend more time on the platforms themselves, without ever leaving. And so The Algorithm adapted with those goals in mind, and it could do so because we’d spent several years clicking “Like” every chance we got. The Algorithm knew what we Liked, if not what we liked, and it knew this about our friends and family and about all the other hundreds of millions of people whose Likes lined up with our Likes.

And it turned out that what a lot of people liked, alongside Bounty™ paper towels and Wendy’s™, was Fascism™ and Disinformation™ and Straight-Up Lies™. And now here we are, with an Internet whose potential for connecting us has instead been twisted into a means of economic and political domination. Maybe it was always going to be that way, but for a while it felt like it didn’t have to be.

For me, however, my feeds never got overly polluted with such trash. Instead, they stayed relatively focused on the things my friends do and see and read. And that’s because, about a decade ago, I changed how I act on the Internet: I stopped Liking things.

On the free and open Internet, the universal currency is not the U.S. dollar, or Bitcoin, or email addresses. It’s the Like. Sometimes it’s called Kudos or Upvoting; often it’s represented as Hearts or Stars or Gems. Fundamentally, conceptually, it’s a Like—a binary indication not of whether you like or dislike something but of whether you have any feeling about it at all. You, the Internet user, have an infinite supply of such feelings, and The Algorithm wants to know them all. Each Like is a virtual coin in The Algorithm’s begging cup, and that cup is already overflowing. Also, it’s made of solid gold. You need not contribute to these coffers. Like nothing.

Friends, you must be hard-hearted! Adorable doggos, praiseworthy political statements, predictably amusing anecdotes, corporate cleverness from a social media intern—do not react to them, lest The Algorithm gobble up your most closely held preferences.

These posts, these brands—they can live without your Like. There will be millions and billions more Likes to fill the infinitesimal vacuum you and I create. On an Internet where I feel like the bastard child of Lysistrata and Cassandra, Like-sluts abound, so nothing will change … at least not yet.

But it will change, if slowly, for you. By robbing The Algorithm of its sustenance, you will slowly return your feeds to their innocent infancy—to a state where you can once again appreciate the Internet with childlike awe.

How to Like Nothing in 6 Easy Steps!

Look, I don’t expect you really to Like nothing at all ever. There is so much awesome, amusing, heartbreaking content that you would really have to be an android never to Like anything. I certainly click the damn Like button more than a few times a day, though far more rarely, I think, than most. Here’s how I approach the social Internet:

1. Set a high bar: It’s easy to fall into that rhythm of thoughtlessly Liking everything your “friends” post. So I shifted my default mode to Never React, where something has to actually be good for me to Like it. Likeability is, of course, in the eye of the beholder, but I’m usually looking for something surprising, or truly meaningful. And when I find it, I Like it.

2. Never like anything with more than 100 Likes: It’s got enough already—your Like adds nothing.

3. If you don’t personally know the company owner, don’t Like the brand: Corporate entities do not need your allegiance. It benefits only them—and The Algorithm.

4. Comments are better than Likes: If you’ve got an opinion to express, express it! But you can do this without clicking Like. Yes, The Algorithm will still note this down as Engagement, but its systems for evaluating Engagement remain imperfect: It has to perform all kinds of idiotic “sentiment analysis” to figure out your feelings, and even then bot posters are polluting the language with AI junk, making these analyses less and less reliable.

5. A pity click is okay now and then: You know what I mean here—sometimes you see a mangy, starving dog of a post that is just begging for a Like. Fine, click. Then heed point no. 6:

6. Put some effort into Unliking and Hiding: Though my feeds are decent, The Algorithm will, every once in a while, send me a stream of crap I can’t stand—right-wing political ads, ads for brands I hate, AI slop. And when that happens, I will diligently go through as many as I can stand, telling the platform to Hide All because this shit is Irrelevant. This feels different from a Like—a cue about my overall preferences. It bypasses all that to say, No matter what you think I like, or will react to, just don’t show me that shit again. Take the time to do likewise, and your feed will clear up… at least until The Algorithm comes up with something new.

I’m not sure when I’ll write the next one in this series, but I think it’ll be called “Never Touch Your Goddamn Mouse Again.”

Read Yesterday’s Attempt