There are quite possibly better ways to run reactions than the way current social media does it. However, I think it's easy to miss the important role/use that

There are quite possibly better ways to run reactions than the way current social media does it. However, I think it's easy to miss the important role/use that these devices play. The article "the silence is deafening" just the other day noted how non-verbal cues in conversation and I'd add that social media reactions and similar devices allows people to be "loosely engaged" with each other in the way that who attend the same event without exchanging words are loosely connected. And these kinds of perfunctory attachments are important (as COVID also shows). These kinds of attachment were also manipulated even before the Internet, with store clerks instructed to say "have a nice day" and such even in the 1970s. Which is to say, likes, memes and emoticons may seem kinda silly and annoying from one perspective but they're a way to emulate "the stuff of life" and we need to think about how to do that better.