I Hate The Facebook "Care" Emoji

It fills me with an irrational amount of rage.

I hate the Facebook “Care” emoji. You know, the hugging heart person with the eyebrows. This one:

If you’re wondering if I still use Facebook, the answer is BARELY. The fact that this one emoji on an app that I basically don’t use bothers me so much is most likely proof that I must have some serious issues. Seriously, why does it bother me so much?

It’s those damn worried eyebrows. I know they don’t look that worried in the image above, but they move when you put your cursor over the word “Like” in order to browse the reaction options.

You don’t need to pity me, Facebook smiley face guy. I know you exist to show sympathy. I know that a hug without the facial expression wouldn’t be the same. But I don’t care. Also, you can’t tell me Zuckerberg has ever felt that kind of loving care for another person in this life. Okay, ever is a stretch. But surely he doesn’t go around giving people these sad sympathy hugs, and if he did try to give me one, I’d be like, “Get away from me.”

But to claim that my entire issue with this smiley is a moral issue with Meta would be a lie. I’ve always had a problem accepting sympathy. When I was young, I used to loathe sympathy from adults because it made me angry to think that people pitied me. When I saw those worried eyebrows looking at me like I was a sick puppy, I felt like I was being mocked or looked down upon. I’ve improved greatly in this regard, but maybe not as much as I thought, considering the rage I feel toward this emoji.

Even when people give that reaction to others on Facebook, I get angry on the other person’s behalf. That person doesn’t need your pity, I think. They need someone to talk to. Or someone to send them money. Or someone to boldly scroll onward without doing anything, like me. My callousness is better than your hug emoji! Okay, maybe not. Maybe, on some level, I’m just jealous that someone is receiving sympathy, and that that person has the capability to accept it without getting all weird about it like I do.

There’s a reason I’m saying “sympathy” and not “empathy.” In times like this, we very much need empathy. I don’t want to give the impression here that empathy is bad, because we have enough people on the wrong side of history spreading that message. I’ve never been able to put the difference between sympathy and empathy into words, but I do know that sympathy can sometimes feel more artificial, and therefore more annoying. I can’t truly know the intent of another person, but I’m going to give myself the leeway to say that there are times when other people’s “care” at least feels phony. There are times when their actions are incongruous with their words. There are times when their eyebrows do that worried thing and all I can think is, “I wish you would stop putting on this act when you barely even know me.”

As it turns out, I’m not the only one who feels this way about the “Care” emoji. When I Googled the emoji just to insert a picture of it above, I got this Reddit post in which a person expressed their disdain for it, saying “I always feel like it's a pity emoji and I'm like ew I don't need your pity.” Many people agreed, with two people equating it to the patronizing phrase “bless your heart.” And I came across this just by Googling the emoji itself, with no hint in my Google search that I hate it! I will say that some of these people were complaining about getting this reaction on a post that isn’t sad, like a selfie (can you imagine that? I’d scream), but I’m going to take this as a win and say that I found community.

Of course, there must be some people who like that emoji reaction. Maybe the lesson here is that social media has added yet another layer to the complexity of the human condition. It has added difficulty to the question I’m always asking myself: how can I treat others how they want to be treated when I don’t know what’s going on in their heads? The simple answer is communication, and communication has overall become much harder due to social media, no matter how many tech companies try to tell us otherwise.

One thing’s for sure, interacting with humans, even through a screen, is a lot better than interacting with AI. So if you must give the “Care” emoji reaction, please at least don’t give it to one of those AI images of a person crying next to their birthday cake that somehow has a million candles on it.

Thanks for reading!

XOXO,
Zola