I heard the other day that Facebook is beta testing a possible new feature for all its users. It’s a potential “Dislike” button for the postings people do on their personal pages. While I can say I’m not really surprised that this might be the next thing I see showing up on my own page one day soon, I must say I’m not overly thrilled about it, mainly because I think it’s only going to spur on more negativity in life.
There are many people out there on Facebook who post very personal things about their life from the struggles they are going through to the triumphs they are having in life. Then there are others who place pictures and videos of things they adore such as their family or their pets. And some like myself put their artistic work out there on their pages such as the comic strips they draw, the articles they write, the poems they compose, or the quotes that uplift them. I feel that disliking any of these things would basically be similar to putting a stamp of disapproval on someone’s head with each click of the button.
I already struggle with the fact that I rarely see many likes at all on my own Facebook re-postings of my blog, yet I’m definitely grateful for the one or two that I do get with them here and there. But think about the possibility of me getting those one or two likes and then having a dozen or more dislikes at the same time with something I wrote from my heart and soul that took me several hours to compose. Not only would that be a serious slap in my face, it would cause me to reconsider why I’m even sharing my articles with the world at all.
Now take a person who posts those cute videos or pictures of their family, friends, or of themselves that bring them happiness and joy. Their only purpose of posting it was to share that happiness and joy with the world. But imagine them now having to receive several dozen dislikes because of the negativity that’s out there in the world. Personally, I believe that having those dislikes would only cause more harm and suffering to those that are on the receiving end of them.
I know that YouTube has had one of these dislike buttons for as long as I can remember, but I’ve never once hit it for anything I’ve watched. To me, a person wouldn’t be sharing something out there for the world to see if it wasn’t something that moved them in some way. And just because it might not move me in the same way it did them, it doesn’t justify me being able to give them a thumbs-down of disapproval. Look, the world already has so much disapproval out there, so why do we need to have yet another way added to our lives that could possibly only create more of it?
The bottom line is that I don’t feel like it’s a spiritually uplifting thing for me to ever dislike anything that comes from another. Disliking it is really nothing more than me placing my judgments on it or them. So rather than dislike it, isn’t the higher path to just move on to another posting? Sadly, many would probably disagree and instead revel on having an option to show their disapproval of something else in life. Thankfully I’m not one of them so if that dislike button should eventually be added, I certainly hope the Facebook team will also provide the ability to turn the feature off. Why? Because I honestly feel it’s only going to create more negativity in this world and nothing more and don’t we already have enough of that?
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson