HAMILTON, ON – Local communications officer Amanda Pilith measures her value to society in terms of how many ‘likes’ she receives on Facebook posts for her random musings, attempts at witticisms, and reshares of social activism initiatives she believes in, according to sources.
“She’ll definitely lose sleep if one of her posts gets less than four likes,” explained one of her co-workers and Facebook friends Alexandra Tamaway. “I’ve seen her stay late at the office on days where she had a few misses on her personal social media accounts, and she’ll stick around crafting new posts to make up for it.”
One of her friends, Jacob Samuel, recalls an incident where Pilith made a post referencing a Miley Cyrus article about the pop-star’s work ethic in which Pilith wrote, ‘more like hardly twerking’. The comment received only two ‘likes’, and Pilith was “crushed for days” according to Samuel.
“She wasn’t herself anymore for a while after that one,” Samuel said. “I had to make up a story about how I meant to like it but then I forgot. She wasn’t convinced until I found the post and actually clicked the like button.”
Added Samuel: “It was a bad joke though.”
Other posts that friends have had to pretend to ‘like’ in order to preserve Pilith’s likes-dependent self esteem include, among other items, poorly lit photos of her homemade kale chips, selfies in which she makes a pouty face in front of large loads of laundry, and one-word only experimental posts that are, according to friends, possibly “supposed to convey a mood or some kind of statement.”
Pilith, who, outside of her online activity, maintains an active habit of sending quick SMS texts to persons she knows will write back immediately, had previously also tried posting on Google+ as an additional means of boosting her self-esteem, but gave up when the extreme difficulty of getting +1s caused her clinical depression.
