The benevolent gods of social media have finally heard our prayers. Facebook is adding a "dislike" button. It's been an uphill battle, guys, but your high school self's dreams are at last about to become a reality. Mark Zuckerberg himself confirmed Tuesday in a question and answer session that progress is being made towards creating this social media unicorn. "People have asked about the 'dislike' button for many years, and probably hundreds of people have asked about this, and today is a special day because today is the day that I actually get to say we are working on it, and are very close to shipping a test of it," he said to an audience in Menlo Park, California. He added that they were planning to test it on a smaller pool of Facebook users before making it available to the entire platform.
Can we all just take a moment here to soak in the beautiful implications of this? Never again will you be forced to "like" a status about a dead pet or fender bender with the comment "liking for moral support"! No longer will you have to scroll past someone's charged political post without passive-aggressively making your own opinion known! No longer will you lay awake at night with the existential question of: But what would happen if I "disliked" my own selfie?
Zuckerberg said that Facebook has been hesitant to add the dislike button in the past because it might make the platform into more of an "upvote, downvote" culture, similar to sites like Reddit or Ranker. He said of the change of heart, "If you are sharing something that is sad ... then it may not feel comfortable to 'like' that post." He is hoping that the new feature will make it easier for people to express empathy on the site, rather than promote negativity.
There's no word yet on when we can expect the official launch. But in the meantime, I'll be doing all the necessary cross-training to make sure that my fingers and limber and ready for all the ~dislike button~ slammin'.
For those of you who fought the hard fight for this button: Bless your nefarious hearts. I'll see you on the other side.
Images: Getty Images; Giphy(2)
