Panic broke out among the Facebook friends of Nadine Booker, a Houston-area teacher who on Monday scrapped her profile photo and reverted to an old one, marking the 100th time she has done that.
By Tuesday morning, 138 out of 144 friends had “liked” the photo, yet most admit having done so only out of intense fear of appearing rude or unsupportive.
“It’s a good picture, I’ll give her that,” said one friend of the photo taken nearly four years ago while Booker was on vacation in Northern California with her boyfriend Thom and their dog Chesterton. “She looks healthy and happy, and the composition itself is quite nice, with a green vineyard and rolling hills in the background.”
“That said, does she really need us all to ‘like’ it again and again?” he continued. “I liked it the first time it was posted. I kind of liked it the 67th time. I hate it now. But there’s no ‘hate’ button. And even if there were, I couldn’t bring myself to click it.”
“Is this what my life had been reduced to, a Nietzschean nightmare of being eternally forced to spend my precious free moments doling out morsels of electronic social approval to someone I haven’t actually seen in person since I left college nine years ago?” he added. “It’s unbearable. Please, give me a way out.”