     Facebook Demetricator demetricating likes, shares,
comments, and timestamps. Original (top), demetricated (bottom).
What's going on here is that these quantifications of social
connection play right into my capitalism-inspired desire for
more. This isn't surprising as we're living in a time when our
collective obsession with metrics plays out as an insatiable
desire to make every number go higher. How much money did I
earn? How many choices do I have? Perhaps the most destructive
example of this is the recent financial crisis, when a constant
desire for more led the global economy into financial ruin.
Bringing this back to Facebook, I find myself asking questions
about how it affects user behavior. Would we add as many friends
if we weren't constantly presented with a running total and told
that adding another is "+1"? Would we write as many status
messages if Facebook didn't reduce its responses (and their
authors) to an aggregate value? In other words, the site's
relentless focus on quantity leads