Twitter changed the favorite stars to little animated red hearts a few days ago and, of course, users lost their minds.
What is this CHANGE? they asked, readying their pitchforks hashtags and torches of trending topics.
Why have you taken this thing that was familiar to us and made it ever so slightly different? they railed, as if the very fate of the free world somehow rested on a minuscule change of icon that didn’t actually effect the functionality of the button in any way.
Won’t someone PLEASE think of the journalists, they begged, who used the favorite button to bookmark tweets, a thing they can still do as the only thing they changed was the shape of the icon.
Hearts are too girlie, railed that one sexist moron we all know but can’t unfriend because he’s married to our aunt and she makes that really good crumb cake. (Seriously, it’s like 85% crumb.)
Change it back! they screamed to a cold and unfeeling Twitter that should probably fix some of their harassment and safety issues before they start fiddling with useless icon changes.
Those of us who’ve made the questionable life choice not to tie all of our sanity and well being to a meaningless icon on a social network were largely unfazed by the change. Or so I thought. Because I, who had always been reluctant to use the favorite button because, I mean, OK, your tweet was good but was it my FAVORITE? suddenly found myself hearting things left and right. It was as if a button that always had a weird loaded meaning, suddenly had a real purpose, and since hearts are 6% up in use over favorite stars, it looks like they are here to say.
Those bastards. Looks like they’ve won this round!
But the real take away from this is that maybe everyone should chill a little bit about every tiny change a platform might make, particularly when they don’t actually change anything other than a single graphic. After all, all that stress can’t possibly be good for your heart!
Oh, I’m sorry. I mean your FAV STAR!
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