This post is a response to a question that was asked in its complete format: “What do people think of others who react with a laughing emoji to a serious or tragic post on Facebook? Is it worth going through the list and giving them all a nasty pm, or would this be a rather pointless and sad exercise?”

That list you imagine going through to castigate people individually is often over one hundred people and can sometimes be several hundred to over one thousand.

Going through one list of even just one hundred people would easily chew up your entire day.

You would also have to deal with pushback and people reporting you for intrusive messages on their DM.

You would likely find yourself consigned to Facebook jail for your efforts.

Even the process of blocking on Facebook is onerous enough where if that’s all you did was block one hundred people, that would easily chew up a few hours of your day…

On just one post.

Odds are excellent, and you could find at least half a dozen such posts that motivate you to block hundreds to thousands daily.

It could be a full-time job just blocking people, and you would still find a never-ending supply of names to block within a user base of two billion.

Blocking one thousand people daily would take three years to block one million people.

If you were to go by statistics that bear out at one in five people having severe mental health issues, you would need to block 400 million people.

That would be a lifelong job working every day from morning until you fell asleep without any break from that task.

If that’s how you wish to spend your life, it’s your choice, but you may find other approaches to making your point more beneficial to your sanity.

You can post a public comment on a post where you can chastize all inappropriate laugh reactions at once. I’ve done that, and it can feel rewarding when you get a lot of feedback from people who appreciate someone publicly criticizing lousy behaviour. You will also find that you’ll get laugh reactions on your complaint that you can address.

If you think you will have a discernible impact on behaviours, then you’re not being realistic because succeeding on that level will require years of effort.

You may want to consider lobbying Facebook for improvements to their blocking process because it sucks. It’s onerous and constantly redirects you to pages you probably don’t want to see repeatedly.

Change.org has a petition that has already gathered 296 signatures, and as of this writing, it requests that the Laughing Emoji be removed from Facebook altogether.

Sign the Petition
I recently wrote feedback to Facebook about something that’s been bothering me about their emoji feature. Here is what…www.change.org

If it gains enough traction, we might see at least some changes to their emojis if the laughing emoji isn’t removed altogether.

Here is another article calling for its removal:

No laughing matter: Why it’s time to cancel Facebook’s haha reaction
That squinting, grinning idiot is poisoning Facebook.thespinoff.co.nz

Whatever you decide to do at this point, it’s probably wisest to consider it more personal venting than instigating social change. Otherwise, you will tire yourself into a frustrated frenzy while spinning your wheels and going nowhere.

A helpful quote you should keep in mind for whatever you choose to do is from Winston Churchill.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do.