I'm just sticking with Facebook "likes"

A day-ruining thought: These will be part of the record of our civilization when archaeologists excavate its ruins. 

Facebook is stupid. It always has been, and always will be. Yet it nevertheless has enmeshed itself in my life, like some kind of vicious parasite. Every time I try to remove it from my life, I find it has laid eggs in my social consciousness, which hatch and bring me back (boy that is a mixed metaphor, isn't it?).

Though Facebook certainly does not make it easy to stay. Since I joined--er, "was invited to" because that's how it worked back then--the site way back in 2007, it has gone through all sorts of changes. Remember when every status had to start with "is," and how overjoyed everyone was when that requirement vanished? (I believe I celebrated it with a stoic status that simply read "Jack Butler isn't). Remember when it introduced hashtags? Remember when you could start liking people's statuses (an occasion I celebrated with a status that read something like "wants you to like his status").

Facebook has made another change: It no longer limits one merely to "liking" a status. One can now "react" with the emoji-indicated responses of "love," "haha" "wow" "sad" and "angry."

Aside from contributing to the infantilization of our culture and to our steady return to hieroglyphics-based communication, Facebook's decision is just unnecessary. Then again, I have always been a stick in the mud about Facebook's changes. Though I can do nothing about the amount of likes my statuses receive (and long ago conceded to the "like" anyway), I have kept the third-person implication of Facebook's first status template, and have steadfastly refused to use hashtags on Facebook.

I shall react to this change similarly. Consider this my ironclad resolution, recorded for all of posterity, never to use anything other than a "like" to communicate my reactions to Facebook posts. I don't care if it becomes wildly inappropriate when this decision encourages people to start making statuses designed to elicit the new reactions (because now we'll have to decide which reaction is "appropriate"). Mark my words: This change will somehow make Facebook even worse than it already is. Join me and stick with the plain-old "like."