Last Thursday evening, disaster struck Caity Dalton ’14 when her Facebook status update received zero likes over a period of more than four hours. At 8:32 pm, Dalton posted the following new status: “spent all day shopping for bikinis with @Angie Marshall and @Genna Thomas ;)” She recalls logging out of Facebook feeling confident that at least five, if not ten or more, of her Facebook friends would promptly like the update.
“I keep this spreadsheet with the number of likes I get for every status,” she explained to reporters, “and I had been getting sooo many for the past few days.” She went on to point on several features of the status that led her to believe it would garner many likes. “It was totally fun and flirty, plus I used the winky emoticon. I mean, I even tagged two of my friends, which basically obligates them to like it as soon as they see it.”
To Dalton’s shock and dismay, when she opened Facebook over three hours later, she found that none of her 924 Facebook friends had liked the status. “My first thought,” she described, “was that Facebook wasn’t working so nobody could even see the status. That would have totally made sense. But then my roommate said that the site was working fine! I was super embarrassed… I almost deactivated my Facebook right then.”
Fortunately, Dalton was able to keep a level head and take actions to rectify the situation. “I did some quick damage control by texting all twenty-three of my besties and asking them to like the status. Within a few minutes, I had eight likes AND two comments!”
Despite this positive outcome, Dalton remains somewhat traumatized by the whole fiasco. She has not updated her status again since that day and is not sure when she will feel ready to do so again. During the interview, she looked right at the camera and made the following poignant remark: “I’m trying my best to be strong again since I know this is definitely a loss for all 924 of my friends and honestly for the whole Facebook community. Sorry everyone! Maybe next time you’ll think twice before not liking my status.”
