'Social-Media Blasphemy'
Texas researcher adds 'Enemy' feature to Facebook
Mei-Chun Jau for The Chronicle
EnemyGraph, an application that allows Facebook users to identify their enemies, is the creation of Dean Terry (right), director of the emerging-media program at the U. of Texas at Dallas, and Bradley Griffith, a graduate student.
Dean Terry has 400 friends on Facebook, but he wants some virtual enemies.
Mr. Terry, who is director of the emerging-media program at the University of Texas at Dallas, says a major flaw of the popular social network is that it's all sunshine and no rain: The service encourages users to press the "like" button, but offers no way to signal which ideas, products, or people they disagree with. And "friend" is about the only kind of connection you can declare.
Real-world relationships are more complicated than that, so social networks should be too, the scholar argues. He's not alone—more than three million people have voted for a "dislike" feature on an online petition on Facebook.
But Mr. Terry has decided to take action, protesting the ethos of Facebook by literally rewiring the service. Or at least, adding the ability to declare "enemies."
I'd settle for a meh button, maybe a whatever
ReplyDeleteSociety is built on a foundation of warm fuzziness and agreement with majority opinions. Hence, this experiment is going to fail horribly IMO. Dislike only works on youtube because the voting process is anonymous.
ReplyDeleteFirst person to click dislike on a gay marriage support article will get death threats.
I hope this fails. Is it too much to ask that every online interaction boil down to simply like and dislike?
ReplyDeleteThe interwebs seems to function much the same way as the mentality of a 5 year old: everything is black and white, right and wrong, like or dislike, for or against. Good research paper topic.
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