The Death of the Public Like

Harry on what we lost when likes went private

On May 7th, 2015 Lebron James created a medium-sized PR scandal for himself when someone discovered that he had liked a photo on an Instagram account called “perfectbooties”

There's so much about 2015 Instagram UX that now feels dated. The feature that got James in trouble was a feed where you could see the activity of everyone you followed. 

I got thinking about the Pubby Like this week because i noticed somewhat passively that Lawrence from throwing fits likes a high percentage of artist and media theorist Brad Troemel’s Instagram posts.

I think i noticed this because it kind of warms my heart. It is cool to me that Lawrence supports Brad Troemel. I respect what Brad does and i respect was Lawrence does. It is fun to see this little iota of creative exchange between two people whose work I like.

The pubby like has long been a lightning rod for all kinds of internet hijinx. On one end you’ve got Ted Cruz liking tweets from a porn account named SexuallPosts, likely not realizing the likes are public, and on the other you’ve got writers slyly liking tweets from more brazen posters, subtly showing support for the notion that you should or shouldn’t be able to say the R-word at church, or that Jaylen Brown is overrated, or that Tesla’s business model actually does make sense even outside of the carbon tax arbitrage they do. 

In some cases, a like can be completely paradigm-shifting. It can reveal that two people who you thought were not in conversation with each other, may actually be…why is the guy who posts videos of Tobias Harris missing layups liking a tweet about Dasha from Red Scare? The guy who wrote a nuanced piece about bird scooters enjoyed Megalopolis? The teenager who posts videos of Mark Wahlberg fit checks is fucking with mj lendermen like that? Huh…

Elon’s recent decision to make likes on Twitter private marked the death knell of the PL, but the PL has long been trending towards extinction. The IG feed that caught Lebron was sunsetted in 2019. Now all IG shows you are the three most algorithmically reasonable thumbnail images in the bottom left corner of a post. Then of course there is the more macro shift towards an exponentially more complex algorithm, where who you follow or what you like is only one part of a highly complex recommendation system. And you know what folks…that sucks. With the public like going to UX jail, we’re losing a weirdly powerful tool. 

Digging Through Likes

There was a sweet spot in the evolution of these platforms, where your feed was a mix of who you followed, and what your followers liked. In my early media consumption days I remember finding music, movies recommendations, podcasts, authors etc. all from snooping around the semiprivate browsing habits of other people. 

This specific sweet spot afforded internet culture hounds the ability to parse through piles of data with a light degree of curation, not too dissimilar from digging through crates of music at a record store or combing this Fools Gold discography looking for slappers. There was a really nice balance of active searching and passive curation. Sometimes how you find some information is as important as what you find and that semi-active role in finding shit you like is propulsive. It moves you past a surface-level aesthetic conception and into some second stage. I’m not gonna say it! I’m not gonna say it! Ok fine i’ll say it…its a bit transcendental.

I don’t think i gravitate to internet culture because I like posters, in fact i hate most of you freaks. Nay, I gravitate towards it because the actual process of private curation, of searching through internet detritus for dank memes and good takes and thoughtful analysis is a meaningful and grounding exercise.

Keep Liking My Posts and We Gone End Up Like This 

I once was talking to a friend who told me that she could tell a guy was flirting with her because he “kept liking her tweets about god.” I have never experienced that specific version of flirtatious likes because i keep the god takes in the boys chat but I totally get where she was coming from. Inarguably a public like can be flirty. There’s also something thrilling about how it could also totally not be flirty. A like means almost nothing….almost nothing. It’s important for there to be stakes in flirting. Often, in the atomized contextless world of private DMs and platforms specifically designed for flirting, any risk is neutralized. A public like was a tiny step towards risk. Maybe like flicking a glance at someone on the train. It was a nice Goldilox flirtation zone for quirked up boys like me (never worked once but that's not the point). 

PLAZ (Public Like Autonomous Zone)

Perhaps my most turnt LRT (like related take) is that the like acted as a helpful liminal space between things that happened in real life and things that happened online. Theres a weird human insight you get into someone by seeing what they like. 

I had a boss who combed through my likes before making a final decision to hire me. I talked to another friend who called snooping likes “the last good way of stalking someone online.” Both of these point to the idea that likes are weirdly a good window into who someone is. It's certainly a better window than what they post. 

In a piece for Dirt about scenes, Daisy Alioto smartly remarked that the center of a scene is impossible to find. I suspect one reason that’s true is that the pulsing metadata of discourse, LIKES, are now invisible. Each person in their own allegory of the cave scenario with giant digital platforms showing us shadow puppets of shitposts. The Like Nexus use to be a little easier to see in full.

In sum, there is a reason I get a little warm and fuzzy when I see Lawrence liking Brad's post. The public like occupied this funny zone where the experience of liking something on social media felt private, but was public. Very VERY few things online are like this. When I toss a double tap to a dank meme from like @da_midwestern_p00syzone while half-watching Netflix’ The Starting 5, I’m mostly not thinking about how it will be perceived, even though I know it it is nominally public. I’m not thinking about it because you just can’t. Theres too much data. Almost like the way dancing is easier at a club full of other people dancing, relaxing into the performance of being online is easier when the morsels of data you’re throwing out there are one of 10 billion. A Like, in its very small way, cuts through an online performance. It’s the water we actually do forget we’re swimming in.