“Our acts of approval on social media aren’t always directly related to our judgment of quality, be it quality of design, editing, or humor. We aren’t really saying ‘Your life is wonderful and you’re a dab hand with a camera too,’ we’re saying, ‘I relate to that somehow.’ But we relate in both positive and negative ways.”
OLGA Agency shares a thoughtful analysis of why people like things on social media and how those motivations can be influenced.
There’s a lot at play when it comes to determining what we like including that our brains choose things that stand out (even over other things we prefer) and that we are more likely to like things that other people have already liked — because nobody wants to be the first to like new things.