Hey Facebook, They Like It

We all like to be liked. No matter what any of us say, that is something we realize. It feels good to know people like you, and what you do. It isn't the main reason most of us do what we do, but it sometimes motivates people to keep doing it. Positive reinforcement works and that is something we all learn at a young age.

Since facebook has made "liking" things such as comments, status's, funny pictures, regular pictures, songs, film clips and just about anything you can think of, we have all gotten in the mode of doing that and hoping for it when we post something. It is equivalent to   becoming popular in high school. If lots of people "like" what you do, then you are the popular one, the popular kid that all other kids wanted to be in high school. 

However it seems to have gotten out of control to the point it is almost meaningless. You make a new friend and the first thing they do is send you a "like" request for their page to hawk whatever it is they are hawking, a book, a music band, a cause. Whatever.
I have never understood the desire to have thousands of people just click "like" on your page. It is simply a numbers game that gets you nowhere. You have 500 "likes" and you now aim to get 1000 "likes". When you reach that number, you proudly state that you have now achieved that.
So what? 99 percent of people who "like" whatever that page is will never go back to that page. I myself could not tell you any of the pages of authors or musicians I have "liked" and I rarely, if ever, go back and look at them. To me it seems like a big waste of time. Maybe it works, I don't know, but it seems like it is a lot of fluff and hype over nothing. This works the same as having many followers on Twitter or members on your blog. The real indicator is the interaction. The real interaction. Comments, responses and continued feedback. That actually means something. A simple "like" means almost nothing and is virtually meaningless.
I see the same thing with Authors who have books they sell on Amazon. They are quick to post if they make any list, even a very insignificant baked up list that nobody notices or cares about.
Your book is number 87 on the "historical fiction with a twist of lime and served cold" list. Big effing deal for you. Nobody cares about your half baked list that somebody created so that authors can delude themselves into thinking that they are on their way to being a bestseller. In reality, you probably have sold next to no books, and the ones you have are to relatives and friends, and in many cases you have given away many of those for free. You have really not done much of anything in the sales department. They call it a "bestseller list" because of the sell part. Many forget that part. Being on a bestseller list should mean you are actually selling books to people for real money.
When I was growing up and really into horse racing it used to be a big deal if a horse got a world record, or even a national record. If you had a stallion whose offspring achieved that, it upped the studs value. These days, just as with the phony "likes" and overinflated book sale numbers, it means virtually nothing. They have created all sorts of sub categories where a record can be broken every week, and nobody pays any attention to any of it.
Today's  horse racing record holder could easily be the fastest horse with 4 legs trained by a trainer who eats Frosted Flakes for breakfast and drives a Ford F150 who also has a wife named Susan.

So, why do you think people hit "like" when they really don't..and why do people ask you to "like" their page or cause instead of letting you come on your own?