On Tuesday, Twitter rolled out a new function by steamrolling an old one. Gone is the yellow star and the ability to “favorite” a tweet. In its place is a red heart, symbolizing a “like.”
“We know that at times the star could be confusing, especially to newcomers,” read the official announcement. “You might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favorite.”
How do non-newcomers feel about this development?
.@twitter no.
— Jessica Goldstein (@jessicagolds) November 3, 2015
As something of a language literalist — one who only uses “literally” literally — I respect the truth here: Favorite, as a noun, is a superlative status. But on Twitter, “favorite” is not a noun. “Favorite” is a verb. And as Twitterers (tweeters?) well know, to “favorite” a tweet is not the same thing as “liking” it. (Which is an altogether different thing from like-liking someone, as any sixth grader could tell you.)
Like, stuck with a second order significance from its usage on Facebook and Instagram, means something social, pure, simple, kind. You support the sentiment being expressed. You’re happy for your friend’s new job. You agree: That’s an adorable puppy, that’s a gorgeous sunset, that’s… brunch. It’s casual, unambiguously positive, a quick click or double-tap to provide what users of those forums crave like crack: Validation and approval, a metric for popularity they can cling to in moments when we all sit back, stare at the void, and realize we all might be fundamentally alone and isolated in ways social media can’t solve. Plus, it’s nice!
Favorites on Twitter serve another purpose. Sure, you can favorite something to indicate that you like it. (If you liked it enough to think other people should see it, though, you’d retweet it, the Twitter equivalent of throwing your arm around someone in public and saying, “She’s with me.”) But you can also favorite something as more of a nod — hey, I see you — or as a note-to-self — I’ll read that later — or as a personal favor, winking at your sister that you thought her joke was funny, but not actually funny enough to blast to everyone who follows you. A favorite can also just be the easiest way out of a conversation, a period at the end of a sentence. It’s a means of engagement that signifies disengagement, a way not to ghost people you don’t feel like talking to anymore.
If Twitter really wants 2 get real it should add an "I think this tweet is middling at best but I'm faving for professional reasons" button
— #rachelsyme (@rachsyme) November 3, 2015
The mean way to talk about this distinction — the way you would talk about it on Twitter, probably — is to say Facebook and Instagram are, at core, about a sort of socially-sanctioned sycophancy, about relationships-as-performance, about acting as both spectator and cheerleader for everyone in your life. On Facebook, you have friends. What you do not have is a “dislike” button.
Twitter has not just shifted the language here, but the iconography as well. Here, an unscientific breakdown of hearts versus stars:
Hearts are for romance, for passion, for middle school girls looking to dot their i’s with a little something special, for Taylor Swift’s hands, for the doodle on the back of your notebook in which you nestle your initials plus the initials of that guy you’ve got a crush on, for crossing and beating and bursting and breaking.
Stars are for straight-A students-in-training, for athletes, for celestial shapes, for Neverland navigation, for fate (the fault in, written in the, -crossed), for Hollywood, for emphasis, for attention, for twinkling and falling and shooting and wishing.
Twitter says stars and hearts are interchangeable. Hmm. Let’s see! Imagine swapping in hearts for stars in other arenas. Imagine referring to the center of our country as America’s Starland. Imagine the Confederate battle flag, its big, blue X dotted with little, white hearts. Imagine the night sky ablaze with flaming valentines. Imagine Chris Pratt: Heart-Lord.
And where's the 💔 button, @twitter?
— KimKierkegaardashian (@KimKierkegaard) November 3, 2015
By adopting the like/heart, Twitter is essentially unifying the lingual and visual currencies across all digital nations. The like is the Euro for the internet. And in making it easier for everyone to grasp everything everywhere — thereby lowering the barriers to entry to any of these sites, encouraging all humans to engage in every single digital platform known to man, so that The Circle can become our reality — it eliminates something that made Twitter unique among online spaces. All these sites are starting to look exactly alike. The singularity, like winter, is coming.
The best part of Twitter’s announcement is its very first line: “We hope you like what you see on Twitter and Vine today: hearts!” Well, we don’t really have a choice, now do we? It’s not like we can favorite it.