The Upvote Era - Likes 👍 | Favorites ❤️ | Shares 🙌
The Upvote Era - Likes | Favorites | Shares
Upvote, like, favorite. The one click that makes most of us get excited, getting that dopamine pump. But why is that? Studies say that the creation of a post, the sharing and liking of something creates an expectation. A like back, a reply is a reward the brain expects after these actions. It is even simpler than that. Even the mere act of getting a notification or hearing our phone ring gets the dopamine flow in our system. Getting many likes in a photo you posted on Facebook even boost your ego. It does nothing more to build upon that though.
On the other hand on Steem upvotes build a profile. The more Steem power the more value that account has and the more value that upvote has to others. But how valuable can be something like that future wise. Can your activity in the web have impacts on your life in general? Will the whales live better and have more privileges than the others?
I guess similar thoughts about the future of likes and upvotes made Charlie Brooker create the episode Nosedive for his series Black Mirror. Most Black Mirror episodes are in the near future and it seems like a good one too. So does this.
The episode starts showing us a future Facebook-like site that you rate 1-5 starts not only on pictures and posts but with any interaction you have with anyone. Getting a coffee from the store, taking a taxi, all interactions are rated 2 ways. And your profile gets an average score (max is 5).
As it is expected, people don't want to hang out with low rated people and only want to keep in touch with same rating or above people. The whole episode is about our protagonist wanting to get the attention of an old friend who is now a whale (4.8 rating) cause getting your score up has other benefits too (discount when you buy things, priority seats in the plane etc). I will not spoil it more for anyone wanting to see the episode. Feel free to discuss the episode with me in the comments if you have seen it!
Another series approaching the matter in a different way is The Orville by Seth McFarlane (Family Guy, Ted) in the episode Majority Rule. Similar to Black Mirror every person has a tag with upvote and downvote to it. Every interaction is rated. Having low ranking doesn't help in your everyday life.
Having above 10 million downvotes makes you unwanted to society and the government forces you to get a lobotomy kind of procedure.
Thoughts
What are your thoughts on the future of ratings, likes, upvotes etc? It may start slow like the companies that require likes etc to give you a coupons for discounts but can we predict if it doesn't change in the future? Feel free to post your thoughts in the comments!
Have a great day! - Chris Myll @coolmyll
Chris.
Great post yet too scary the idea..
Even seeing the image posted with everyone having little circles with a rating, is absolutely frightful. However, maybe not so far away from the future as we might think.
Or from the past in some cases. (Is there anyone who does not search for other human beings on facebook, linkedin etc? Does this first impression count?)
On one hand, everybody is expecting recognition when being in public. From his friends, from his family, from his community. On the other hand, the feedback is not public ‘a priori’ to the rest. This gives a fresh start, an opportunity to new relationships, new friendships and so on..
At the scenario you are talking about, when the total of the ‘ratings’ becomes a number and public for everyone to see, this causes prejudice (be it positive or negative)
I confess that on steemit there are times that I do not read or upvote a post by someone that I see that has a very low reputation. This scares me in advance and prohibits me from taking actions.
[many thoughts are mixed up right now and I will try to come back soon to continue my comments]
Great comment! Not only you are right about this causing prejudice about people, judging their score but it also cause the opposite to just to get a good rate from other people.
In the start of the episode the protagonist fakes liking a cookie that the barista offers her for free just to get a positive rating from him. And they are many more fake interactions between people just to be rated good. Most people are not themselfs anymore.
You MUST like what most people like.
This is an interesting aspect of this whole idea.
If you are faking to be good, and do good deeds, does this 'lessen' the good in them?
Is it that what or is it the why that counts?
And is the repetition of good deeds actually make a better you in the end?
Or does it give you an alibi to make bad thereafter as you will have gained people's trust?
Just some food for thought below, as per a quote by Heraclitus
it is scary if you think of the implications this might have. but for the mega cities of tomorrow it is probably a necessity.