There have been several reports that the Zuckerberg gremlins are currently developing a “Sympathize” button for Facebook.

In cut and dry terms, users could “sympathize” a friend’s status instead of “liking” it.

When I heard about this, immediately my mind went to the now infamous and viral YouTube video LIKE MAH STATUS by Miles Jai (@MilesJaiProductions on YouTube).  Need a refresher?  Here you go:



It’s hard to believe that LIKE MAH STATUS is over two years old, but in all of the video’s ratchetness, there was a pretty profound point that might as well speak for itself: “Don’t be mad when nobody likes your shit because you’re the only one to blame for that.”

Let’s fast forward to 2013: I’m sorry; as much as you all wish you could see me don a rainbow wig and pretend like I’m Shocantelle Brown, screaming SYMPATHIZE MAH STATUS, it ain’t happening.

I am the first to admit that I am an utter Facebook and social media junkie; part of the reason is because it is how I stay connected to a lot of acquaintances that I, quite frankly, would never stay in touch with if it weren’t for Facebook (what’s email?!).  However, the more prominent reason, to be honest, is, to use the words of a friend of mine, it (i.e.–social media) is my playground.

If you know me “in real life,” you know that I’m pretty reserved, one may even say, standoffish, until you get to know me, or unless I’m comfortable around you.  I’m a professor.  I try to teach people how to write and communicate for the academic and business worlds, about literature, about one of my former occupations and one of my loves, theater—in other words, about feelings, emotions (to steal a phrase of a co-worker, she calls me one of those “touchy-feelies”).

When I think about the word “sympathize,” I go back to the word’s root, “sympathy.” If I asked you to write down the first five or six things that come to your head when you hear the word “sympathy,” my guess is you’d think “pity,” “compassion,” “suffering,” “concern,” maybe even “funeral” or “death.”

I’m sorry, but I’m not sure that we can “express” these sorts of things on Facebook.

This leads to the bigger question: are we, as a social-media loving junkies, unable to actually express this sort of emotion in “real life”?

When I have a family member or friend who is going through a hard time, I talk to them on the PHONE (not via text, either…), I write a card, or I take them out for dinner or a drink.  That’s expressing sympathy.

The thing is, I’m not some sort of old fart who is condemning the use of social media; clearly, as the editor of this blog, I find social media to be an utterly vital way to communicate, and it isn’t some sort of new-age “thing” that’s “coming:” it’s here.  All of these “Social Media Directors” that are being hired for companies?  They’ll be antiquated in not even five years (I always chuckle inside when I hear someone say they aspire to do “social media” for a living—um, every twelve-year-old does social media “for a living”).

In 2010, Sandy Hingston of Philadelphia Magazine wrote one of my favorite pieces about this topic, “Is it Just Us, Or Are Kids Getting Really Stupid?”  She closes the piece by saying the following: 

In our rush to respond to the chime, the chirp, the bouncing icon, in our eagerness to prove ourselves multitaskers par excellence, in our willingness to sit alone at home and count our “friends,” ironically enough, we’re overlooking solitude’s real advantage: the opportunity it provides to develop what essayist Sven Birkerts describes in The Gutenberg Elegies as “our inwardness, our self-reflectiveness, our orientation to the unknown.” In other words: a soul.

Before we are given the choice to SYMPATHIZE MAH STATUS, perhaps we should consider the above advise of Hingston and Birkerts.

Now, “LIKE” THIS BLOG POST!