Licorice
Twisted
People who get a lot of likes on Facebook:
1) Have a lot of people there to give likes.
2) Are actually social and like to talk to others, which makes them more likely to be noticed themselves.
It's the same as the offline formula for popularity, pretty much.
A like is just a like, though. Most of the people on my Facebook didn't post "Happy Birthday," but they merely forgot to say anything, didn't know whether or not it would be awkward since we haven't seen each other since three Christmases ago, aren't inclined to reach out to every single acquaintance every time something little happens, or greeted me in person and not on a website.
Facebook is only serious to people who are worried about social acceptance and looking for any way to gauge that, but what they tend not to take into account is that others don't view Facebook in the same light. Failure to respond is a sign of the same vague disinterest and absentmindedness that people give to a news article that isn't something they feel like reading about or an assignment they intended to do before finding YouTube videos to watch.
I think it's a bad idea to give undue power to words, while we're on the subject of Facebook and people's issues with it. "Friends" does not mean actual friends, it means online contacts as well as people with access to your information and vice versa. Not single person I know with hundreds of friends thinks that adding someone as a Facebook friend means they have the same kind of relationship with them as the people they've been close to for years. Thank goodness for that, otherwise adding my brother on Facebook would be insulting him by saying he's a friend and not family.
1) Have a lot of people there to give likes.
2) Are actually social and like to talk to others, which makes them more likely to be noticed themselves.
It's the same as the offline formula for popularity, pretty much.
A like is just a like, though. Most of the people on my Facebook didn't post "Happy Birthday," but they merely forgot to say anything, didn't know whether or not it would be awkward since we haven't seen each other since three Christmases ago, aren't inclined to reach out to every single acquaintance every time something little happens, or greeted me in person and not on a website.
Facebook is only serious to people who are worried about social acceptance and looking for any way to gauge that, but what they tend not to take into account is that others don't view Facebook in the same light. Failure to respond is a sign of the same vague disinterest and absentmindedness that people give to a news article that isn't something they feel like reading about or an assignment they intended to do before finding YouTube videos to watch.
I think it's a bad idea to give undue power to words, while we're on the subject of Facebook and people's issues with it. "Friends" does not mean actual friends, it means online contacts as well as people with access to your information and vice versa. Not single person I know with hundreds of friends thinks that adding someone as a Facebook friend means they have the same kind of relationship with them as the people they've been close to for years. Thank goodness for that, otherwise adding my brother on Facebook would be insulting him by saying he's a friend and not family.
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I don't always participate in debates, but I'm always learning something from them, about differing viewpoints or human behavior. 
I look back at my posts from ten years ago, and the sheer preponderance of whiny statuses of old (not that sharing problems is bad! but I sounded constantly crabby over the most trivial stuff) bore even present me! so obviously there's been some kind of learning happening. Likes are nice, and all, but I no longer make the mistake of using them as a goalpost. 
