Why Do We Like Being “Liked”?

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

Last month, my blog post on long-term relationships ("The Gray, Gritty Details of Long-Term Marriage") got picked up by Google’s newsfeed, and I got as many reads in one week (over 900,000) as I had in eight years of monthly posts combined. That is, if my average blog posting garners roughly 10,000 reads over time, and this one posting got over 90 times that.

There’s something both exhilarating and troubling in getting this much attention. My inbox filled with emails from people worldwide, most of them complimentary. I got more referrals from people wanting to see me professionally than I could field. I found the whole experience both fun and disturbing. I want to share my experience because I think it is a kind of commentary on the up- and downsides of the social media ecosystem.

What I liked:

1. It’s wonderful to have such a large megaphone. If I have something important I want to share to educate people, why wouldn’t I like to reach more people rather than less? Heck, I wish I had gotten 50 million reads.
2. That kind of exposure makes others take you more seriously, increasing your credibility. When that many people “like” you, surely there must be something worthwhile there, no? If I had a larger social media platform on an ongoing basis, I would have far less trouble getting my book on masculinity published.
3. There is a financial incentive here, as most of the way these things are monetized depends on the number of clicks. While I don’t write this particular blog for the money, my royalty check this quarter will be the largest ever because of this one post.

What troubles me: To some extent, everything I like has an underbelly that troubles me, and there are a few more besides:

1. Having such a large megaphone carries with it responsibility. Am I really sure about everything I’m writing? If so many people are reading me, there’s a burden I might not otherwise feel.
2. When I told friends and colleagues about this good fortune, their instant reaction was, “Oh, send it to me. I’d like to read it.” Why? You haven’t asked to read anything else I’ve written. What makes you think this is suddenly worth reading just because it went viral? Why do I now have a legitimacy I didn’t before?
3. I could see how, if you depend on the money, you could do things to try to repeat this experience, creating what we have all learned to call “clickbait.” In other words, I would try to repeat this experience by using the same ingredients, hoping to strike gold again.
4. I almost didn’t publish this particular post because it’s a little bit edgy. Its language is stronger than I normally use, and in fact, I think an earlier post I wrote on the same topic is actually better but less strongly worded. It got about 20,000 reads initially, but another 50,000 after being linked into last month’s post. I don’t want to contribute to the current atmosphere of shouting in the various newsfeeds.
5. Something about “bigger is better” always gives me pause because it instills a kind of competitiveness that I don’t think is always healthy. The vast majority of us toil away in near-complete anonymity. Does that mean we are all worth less because we aren’t well known, or does that make our contributions less important because we’re not famous?

Don’t get me wrong: I would be delighted if this post also got picked up by Google or some other large ecosystem. It’s a challenge I’d love to have. But I do think all of us need to stay in touch with the values we hold and live by them, no matter how much we are or are not “liked.”