The Death of the Facebook POKE; We All Need to Get Along Here

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More LIKES, fewer POKES. (Do you have a POKEY JOE? Someone you'd rather POKE than LIKE?)

The POKE on facebook is: benign, irritating, a form of interaction, not a form of interaction, a lazyman's social media, a lascivious suggestion, an aggressive act, a source of confusion, a false indication of friendship, saying nothing, get tiring, demands a POKE-back, created people on facebook known as POKEYS.

The other day, in honor of my end of POKEing, I created this graphic. And anyone who POKES, or attempts to POKE me will be tagged with this image.

Screen shot 2011 05 06 at 6.34.10 AM The Death of the Facebook POKE; We All Need to Get Along Here

So, it's not that I don't understand the POKE. It's a PING, it's a FLIRT, it's a "Hi, I thought about you when I saw your picture on facebook and I wanted to…"

POKE?

There used to be an app called SuperPoke. And at least it lended variety to the POKE (nudge, wink, toast) options. A couple of my favorites were, "just threw butter at you," "tossed a round of margaritas your way," "launched a sheep at you."

Maybe POKE is okay, but I want it to be more. If you saw something I wrote on Facebook, or you just wanted to say hi. Well, just say "Hi," on my wall. If you wanted to reach out and give me a hug electronically, well, just say something like that. Because all this POKEing, now carries no meaning. What ARE YOU SAYING when you POKE me?

A few months back a local social media leader ran a facebook app that showed him a graphic of the friends who interacted with him the most. He and I were a little amazed when I was crowned his NUMBER 1 FACEBOOK FRIEND. We shared a good POKE or two about it. And indeed we do interact pretty frequently on facebook, but the thing that we did most, was exchange meaningless POKES. So maybe it's become an indication that, even in this busy world and this crazy web I have time to POKE YOU on facebook. It's something.

Or is it nothing?

I mean, throwing a sheep or wet horse blanket at least carries some form of expression. The POKE has nothing. (I guess you can get a grin out of new facebooker's expressions, of "what's a POKE?" and all the innuendo that gets passed around in the comments. All that is fine, BUT…

From now on, if you want to interact with me you're gonna have to do something a little more creative than POKE me.

@jmacofearth
permalink:  http://uber.la/2011/05/poke/

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