What Do Butterflies Have to Do with Post Comments?
by Addison Fisher
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How beautiful if we constantly felt butterflies every time we used social media!
When we comment on social media, we have the power to inspire all kinds of emotions—negative, positive, and everything in between.
It can be easy to focus on the negative aspects that social media can bring, with cancel culture creating divides and enemies. But what about the positive posts? Social media also has the capacity to do much good with engendering feelings of wonder, joy, and excitement.
These feelings can be described in one word in Filipino culture: kilig. The Oxford Dictionary defines kilig as “causing or expressing a rush of excitement or exhilaration; thrilling, enthralling, captivating” or, in other words, butterflies in the stomach. How beautiful if we constantly felt butterflies every time we used social media!
Upworthy
One such account that strives to do this very thing is “Upworthy.” Now before I discuss Upworthy’s content, I need to take a short side trip to discuss a little terminology.
When writers craft a message, they usually have some sort of intent about how they hope readers will react. Linguists call that intent an illocutionary act. But whether that intent actually happens is another story. So linguists call the effect the writing actually has on the readers a perlocutionary act.
So an illocutionary act is the writer’s purpose, and the perlocutionary act is the actual effect on the readers. Now let’s return to Upworthy.
Upworthy’s intent is stated right on its site—it’s to deliver “the best of humanity everyday.” But whether it achieves that purpose is another question.
To find out, I analyzed the effects of positive posts through the comments of nine of Upworthy’s most recent Instagram posts to find common themes. Notably, all 236 post comments were positive, and they had three1 most-frequent commonalities, as shown in the graphic below: heart emoji, gratitude, and compliments.
1. Heart symbols. The majority of the 84 (36%) post comments with heart symbols consisted of comments with one red heart, comments with several red hearts, comments with hearts and other emoji, or a short message with one or more hearts. According to Emojipedia, the heart emoji means “affection, gratitude, appreciation, and other positive emotional expression[s] (e.g ‘happy’; ‘good’; ‘great’).”
2. Gratitude. Of the 41 (17%) post comments expressing gratitude, many were expressed through a simple “thank you.” Vaughn E. Worthen, Ph.D., a Professor of Psychology at Brigham Young University, defines gratitude as “a positive experience that comes from recognizing gifts or blessings and feeling thankful.” He notes that gratitude is a virtue that has also proven to aid mental health.
3. Compliments. Twenty-three (10%) of those who commented on Upworthy’s posts mentioned how beautiful a post was, how much they loved a post, or how wonderful the person was in a post. Compliments are “an expression of… admiration,” but, unfortunately, are sometimes not voiced. How different our world would be if we took Camilla Kimball’s advice to “never suppress a generous thought.”
When our illocutionary act as social media users is to uplift and edify, the perlocutionary act can be feelings of kilig—specifically love, gratitude, and compliments—within the hearts of viewers. Let us know about your experience applying these principles to help others experience the effects of positive posts!
-Addison Fisher, Netiquette
Methodology Note
1Of the 236 analyzed posts, 88 fell in the category of Other. These comments included commenting with personal thoughts about the post, tagging friends, asking questions, or addressing the people in the post directly.
What Do Butterflies Have to Do with Post Comments?
How beautiful if we constantly felt butterflies every time we used social media!
When we comment on social media, we have the power to inspire all kinds of emotions—negative, positive, and everything in between.
It can be easy to focus on the negative aspects that social media can bring, with cancel culture creating divides and enemies. But what about the positive posts? Social media also has the capacity to do much good with engendering feelings of wonder, joy, and excitement.
These feelings can be described in one word in Filipino culture: kilig. The Oxford Dictionary defines kilig as “causing or expressing a rush of excitement or exhilaration; thrilling, enthralling, captivating” or, in other words, butterflies in the stomach. How beautiful if we constantly felt butterflies every time we used social media!
Upworthy
One such account that strives to do this very thing is “Upworthy.” Now before I discuss Upworthy’s content, I need to take a short side trip to discuss a little terminology.
When writers craft a message, they usually have some sort of intent about how they hope readers will react. Linguists call that intent an illocutionary act. But whether that intent actually happens is another story. So linguists call the effect the writing actually has on the readers a perlocutionary act.
So an illocutionary act is the writer’s purpose, and the perlocutionary act is the actual effect on the readers. Now let’s return to Upworthy.
Upworthy’s intent is stated right on its site—it’s to deliver “the best of humanity everyday.” But whether it achieves that purpose is another question.
To find out, I analyzed the effects of positive posts through the comments of nine of Upworthy’s most recent Instagram posts to find common themes. Notably, all 236 post comments were positive, and they had three1 most-frequent commonalities, as shown in the graphic below: heart emoji, gratitude, and compliments.
1. Heart symbols. The majority of the 84 (36%) post comments with heart symbols consisted of comments with one red heart, comments with several red hearts, comments with hearts and other emoji, or a short message with one or more hearts. According to Emojipedia, the heart emoji means “affection, gratitude, appreciation, and other positive emotional expression[s] (e.g ‘happy’; ‘good’; ‘great’).”
2. Gratitude. Of the 41 (17%) post comments expressing gratitude, many were expressed through a simple “thank you.” Vaughn E. Worthen, Ph.D., a Professor of Psychology at Brigham Young University, defines gratitude as “a positive experience that comes from recognizing gifts or blessings and feeling thankful.” He notes that gratitude is a virtue that has also proven to aid mental health.
3. Compliments. Twenty-three (10%) of those who commented on Upworthy’s posts mentioned how beautiful a post was, how much they loved a post, or how wonderful the person was in a post. Compliments are “an expression of… admiration,” but, unfortunately, are sometimes not voiced. How different our world would be if we took Camilla Kimball’s advice to “never suppress a generous thought.”
When our illocutionary act as social media users is to uplift and edify, the perlocutionary act can be feelings of kilig—specifically love, gratitude, and compliments—within the hearts of viewers. Let us know about your experience applying these principles to help others experience the effects of positive posts!
-Addison Fisher, Netiquette
Methodology Note
1Of the 236 analyzed posts, 88 fell in the category of Other. These comments included commenting with personal thoughts about the post, tagging friends, asking questions, or addressing the people in the post directly.
FEATURED IMAGE BY Naji Habib
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