Curiouser and Curiouser

A little while back, Roy Robinson complained about the disappearance of the "curious" button from his possible reactions to a post. At the time, I (like many of those who responded to his post) still had it, but now it has disappeared from my options too. It appears that it was removed from the app first (which I do not use)

I was curious in reading the post and comments about what Roy and those who commented said they used it for, a form of negative feedback we might broadly describe as incredulity, or more coarsely as "WTF" (Italians have a hand gesture for this which would make a great emoji). Now, even the most careful pruning of your LinkedIn feed offers you content to which "WTF" is the only reasonable response.

Of course you shouldn't respond at all, as any response at all promotes the very nonsense you are objecting to. This may be why LinkedIn have dropped the button. It was intended to show interest in content, and a desire to know more: you know, curiosity. Simple-minded fool that I am, I used it in that way, and saw others using it on my content as wanting to know more. Now I'm wondering that people meant when they found my posts "curious"!

It appears that the tidal wave of WTF-able content offered by LinkedIn meant that people felt the need to appropriate this button, much as the aubergine (eggplant) emoji is misused.

Commentators on my earlier post about this suggested that we also need a FFS button, a TLA defined in my dictionary as

1. see "fit for service"

2. (profane) An expression of exasperation, perhaps at something or someone considered unfit for service

It think it likely that they meant the second of these. FFS differs a little from WTF, but both are expressions of exasperation.

I find exasperation to be a common response to the garbage LinkedIn presents me with. Who wants more management, (or worse still, HR) bullshit? More handwritten student lecture notes? More greenwash or drug-addled treehugger propaganda? More promotion of what might most generously be called fringe science by scam artists, fools or eccentrics? More puff pieces for pointless research by third rate academics on the basis of obviously spurious links to real world applications? More links to help you steal copyright material? More virtue signalling?

Not me, but I see lots of this every day, despite me doing the most effective things you can do:

1. Do not respond in any way to the content
2. Unfollow whoever presented you with the content
3. Block them if the content is really over the line, and you want to make sure they cannot interact with your posts in such a way as to promote their nonsense

If this seems a bit supine, I'm afraid I have come to think of the internet in general and social media in particular as unfixably shot through with errors, and run in accordance with social rules which I profoundly disagree with. I'm here for business purposes, and just fixing the most consistent spelling mistakes (like "Principle" instead of "Principal", in people's own job titles, FFS!) on LinkedIn would keep me busy, and make me no money.

So I'd like a button which shows interest. Clicking on it would keep me abreast of developments on the post. I won't be needing a WTF or FFS button, unless it had a different effect to all other buttons, and automatically blocked the author of the offending content. Those who have been using the curious button in this way have made a rod for their own backs, engaging them with exasperating content.