Achi news desk-
Facebook wants us all to start “poking” again.
On Tuesday, the tech company said it has been redesigning the platform to make its poke feature much more prominent. The new design faces the button alongside any name a user has searched for, making poking as easy as it was in the old days of 2011.
For those who need a refresher, the poke feature is basically a virtual boost – you know, poke! – which you can send to another user. They get a notification and poke back, if they’re so inclined.
Technically, the poke button never really disappeared; as tech reporter Katie Notopoulos wrote for Business Insider, the feature was so hidden that you’d need to type “poking” into Facebook’s search bar to find it, or bookmark the exact URL of the poking page.
But while the poke button has gathered dust for the rest of us, Gen Zers are apparently really into it now. Facebook said the superficial changes to its design had caused pokes to become 13 times more common in the past month, with more than 50% of pokes coming from 18- to 29-year-olds who had missed out on the world earlier of prodding.
As any millennial will tell you, poke was a polarizing feature among early Facebook users; while some kept their poke wars going for years, the trait was unpleasant for many, especially women. For some, it felt like the digital equivalent of “where’s my hug?” coming from the guy you’d least like to hug.
“At its height in the mid-2000s – 2009-2011-ish, from what I remember – the poke feature was used almost exclusively by men towards women they didn’t know well,” recalls Aly, who 31 years old, who is a colleague. -host of the “Let’s Get Haunted” podcast.
“I have fond memories of checking my social media before school and discovering that my art history was TA [teaching assistant]a random guy I met at a party or my boss at work potted me at 2 in the morning,” she told HuffPost.
“To this day I don’t know if people thought they were being smooth or creative, but at the time it was almost always interpreted as corny or awkward by the recipient,” he said. “But Gen Z is good at subverting the corny and making it cool, so more power to them!”
Surprisingly, sometimes prodding-as-flirting actually worked. Ever an evangelist for his own technology, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged this week that he was a bit of a prick guy back in the day. In fact, this is how he made one of his first moves on future wife Priscilla Chan, and she was stunned! (Daughter, come forward.)
Other times, poke flirting went completely over people’s heads.
“I had this high school classmate that I would constantly poke back and forth well into our college years. But being an oblivious young adult, I had no idea she was probably flirting with me,” she said. Azad paid35-year-old head of social media at Klaviyo, a software company focused on email marketing for e-commerce.
“Later in life it kind of clicked, and I wish I’d realized it at the time,” he said. “For me, [poking] so reflective of the early days of social media, when nobody really knew what we were doing or what was going on.”
Others used the poke feature as a low-effort way to keep in touch with friends and family in far-flung places – a sort of digital hello “wave” to remind a person that you still exist.
“In theory, I loved the idea of a low-pressure way to say hello to my friends,” he said Maggie There’s Fish, a 31-year-old actor. “I think that’s definitely the appeal. And it makes sense that Gen Z embraces its charm, especially now that social media now includes so much pressure to perform. “
Jesse J. Anderson, author of “Extra Focus: The Quick Start Guide to Adult ADHD,” thinks the trait probably helped him maintain friendships for years longer than he currently has.
“Everyone made jokes about the poke button, but we all still used it too,” said the 43-year-old.
“So much of social media has become very self-serious or wild and spirited. I’m all for bringing back stupid social.”
– Jesse J. Anderson, author of “Extra Focus: The Quick Start Guide to Adult ADHD”
Eventually, Facebook’s bloated suite of features and capabilities overshadowed the poke button, and most of us forgot about it.
“Once Facebook added direct messaging, you could reach out and connect with the people you wanted to talk to,” says Lia Haberman, a Gen Xer who writes a social media marketing newsletter called ICYMI. (It’s hard to believe, he says, but messages weren’t baked into the platform when it first launched.)
There was an attempt to revive the poke in 2017, but it did not catch on. This time, Gen Zers’ enthusiasm for the feature may change that.
“It’s crazy that Gen Z has rediscovered the poke and is actually using it,” says Haberman.
Millennials and Gen Xers may scoff at the feature — boomers are too busy engaging in poke wars they started in 2011 — but Anderson thinks the feature’s eventual return is a refreshing and welcome blast of the past.
“Bring back the stupid, careless internet!” he said. “So much of social media has become very self-serious or trollish and spirited. I’m all for bringing back silly social. Maybe we can bring back blogrolls, Winamp skins, and Strong Bad emails while we’re at it?”
