Love it. Want it. Have it. Hate it. Sold it. Want it Back.

Have you loved anything today?
It's funny how often we "love" things, thanks in part, to social media. The other reason we do it is because we can. And why wouldn't we?  I often talk about love when it comes to social media; how it killed a Facebook plant, how it determined our superbowl marketing dollars and how bad fake love is for real love.  But it's the idea that there is increasing more pressure to show love, or like, or want or whatever, to the rest of the world that interests me. Why? Because at the end of the day, we all want to be loved and all we want is to be loved. It's quite a social conundrum.

And this idea of instant love-want-desire is not a new thing. Who among us does not remember clipping, circling and dog-earing pages of catalogs, back in the day when glossies made their way to our mailbox around October or so, just in time for holiday shopping. Now, we have catalogs, all right, just in a different type of glossy.

Take a look at the Quadrus Widget in the screenshot; it's from a product wiki article that was originally composed in 2006. We were already bastardizing the idea of love for the sake of social media back in the dark ages of 2006. "Love it. Want it. Tag it." was something of a hot topic then and still continues to be a strategic topic when it comes to building engagement around communities. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I just think there is a ton of opportunity to build something better, something more human.

Quite recently I ran into someone I haven't connected with in a long time and we both struggled to get to that place of familiar kinship as we awkwardly exchanged pleasantries. When he recognized a particular product I happened to own, he lunged forward and grabbed my arm, shouting, "I love that! I want one, too!" and we instantly fell into an intimate conversation that dealt less with the product and more with our emotions attached to desire, love, affinity and friendship. It was like no time at all had passed since the last time wa saw each other. It was nice and I look forward to the next time.

And now, here I am, telling all the world about it.