What does it mean to poke someone on Facebook?
Is it flirty, friendly, or even annoying?
The answer is all of the above, and somehow, none at all.
Photo: Alena TS (Shutterstock)
THE POKE IS HAVING A MOMENT, said Facebook in all caps onThreads.
Theres been a 13x spike in poking on Facebook in the past month.
So, be honest: whos poking who?
Facebook made a few small changes that are responsible for the massive increase in pokes, first reported byTechCrunchTuesday.
Reportedly, more than 50% of these pokes are coming from users aged 18-29.
But the question remains: what even is a poke?
And what does it mean?
It never went away, but I personally havent heard of anyone poking in the last five years.
A Gizmodo article from 2014 answers a readers question aboutwhether Pokes are creepy or funny.
It can be interpreted however you want, and thats part of the beauty of it.
Its also a terrifying part of it.
Weve all received a poke from someone that sent a shiver down our spine.
Was it that distant relative you havent seen in a while?
Whoever it was, you probably interpreted their poke in the worst way possible.
Thats the danger of poking it really depends on the context of your relationship.
The poke feature came directly from the genius brain of Mark Zuckerberg.
Even the notification noise that first played when you poked someone was just Zuckerberg himself going poke.
So mess around with it, because youre not getting an explanation from us.
The poke encapsulated a lot of the good and bad about social media.
Pokes, like Facebook, connected people in strange ways they never thought of before.
There was a delightfully random connection to it that was fun and exciting.
However, it was also extremely weird and, arguably, completely unnecessary.
The poke also was a precursor to the random dopamine reward systems that are now common on social media.
If the mere mentioning of pokes returning to Facebook slightly stresses you out, Im right there with you.
Poke also became the name of afailed social media messaging appfrom Facebook that aimed to compete with Snapchat.
However, the legacy of poking lives on.
Now, younger users may be experiencing poking for the first time.
News from the future, delivered to your present.
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