The meaning of my "likes" on Instagram: a memory system... for Doctor Lucy McDonald Author. Doctor Terence Rajivan Edward (or 161__Rajivan, if that helps) Abstract. Various online sites enable users to like this or that by pressing a button: to like a philosophy paper, to like a video, to like a picture, messages, and more. Doctor Lucy McDonald rejects the view that an online "like" means "I like this" or is an expression of a positive emotion. She develops an account based on what she judges to be the social function of giving likes: to initiate or maintain a social bond with someone who has uploaded something onto the Internet or left some message. I report how I use "likes" on Instagram, in case anyone is interested. Instagram allows me to check my activity, including wherever I have placed "likes," so I use giving likes on videos, by means of a heart symbol, to record anything worth remembering. Draft version: version 2 (27th May 2026 appendix added and tiny edit - well, maybe this is version 3, with further reading now added; version 1 16th November 2025) Software used (freeware): Google docs, Instagram.com, jspaint.app Little signs of specialist training in writing this, Embarrassing: still I did not give it a miss I was watching a video called High School in 1986. It was nostalgia about the time before the Internet and cellular telephones were in widespread use. I was around but not in high school. I was causing trouble no doubt! I was six years old. In my experience, the Internet came into widespread use in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It is a global network of computers, or it was one if it no longer exists for you, any readers of the future. A person can upload a document and it is instantly available for reading all over the world, wherever there is access to the network, or upload a video or make a comment. Various sites keep lots of documents and for some sites it is available for readers to indicate which they like, by means of pressing a kind of button. You press on a thumbs up symbol, say. The site also tells you how many likes a given document has. But what do likes mean? I shall contribute to this topic below. Doctor Lucy McDonald rejects the view that to press a like button on a site - which registers likes for some object (a document, video, etc.) - is to say, "I like this." She also rejects the view that likes express a positive emotional attitude towards the thing liked. (What is the difference between these views? It is hard to explain.) Anyway (or anyways), McDonald offers her own view, based on an assessment of the social function of likes. A like is given to initiate or maintain a social bond with the person who made or uploaded the thing liked. On a site for philosophy essays, for philosophy papers, one maintains a social bond with the author of a paper, say, by liking it. I shall skip past the details of her view here, but I am interested in this emphasis on function. Some Internet sites keep lots of videos and you can like them too. A video is composed of a sequence of images, one replacing the next, and often has accompanying sound as well. I have been using a video site called Instagram soon after I joined a community of stand-up comedians based in Manchester, if I was not already part of it before. On Instagram, you press a heart symbol and it registers that you like a given video. But what do heart symbols mean really? What do these likes mean? Instagram has a convenient feature which allows me to look through my activity on the site. I can look through all the videos I have liked: all the videos I have pressed the heart symbol for. So it has a personal function for me of helping me remember videos of interest to me. Many of these videos are inwardly liked by me and I confess this: I feel uncomfortable to give a like to a video that I do not like, but want to take note of, for example to comment on it later. NEVERTHELESS, it seems the chief function for me, given how the site works, is as a recording device, an aid to memory. (Does one focus on the discomfort or the use when determining what the meaning is?) On September 5 of this year, Julia Raeside of The I Paper wrote: "Since the death of the sketch show on mainstream TV around a decade ago, British fans have had to scavenge the internet for homemade clips, vintage Horrible Histories and snippets of US shows to fill the void." I thought I would help overcome the difficulty with scavenging by going through videos listed on my Instagram feed and selecting the best ones, at least by my tastes. I would appear in a video of my own and beside it was a list of amusing videos I had found. As you can imagine, I often pressed "like" for any candidate for going on the list. I mostly like them, but the function of pressing like was not to initiate or maintain a social bond with the maker. It was as a way of recording which videos are of interest to me, given my project. This essay feels really lightweight. Can you even go this light? Is it dangerous to? Perhaps I should rewrite this as poetry, but I think shall not. Appendix: two notes (a) Instagram has a bookmarking feature, by which one can add a video seen to a private list of videos of interest to oneself. I didn't even realize this at first and I continue to use likes as a bookmarking means, though I occasionally do use this way of recording videos of interest. Does the presence of this bookmarking feature cause a problem for deriving the meaning of likes from my use of the like button, or the meaning of likes for me? (b) I have not found this topic discussed before Lucy McDonald's attempt: the meaning of Internet likes. (Do we simply assume "Like" means like?) It fits well with the analytic tradition of philosophy's focus on meaning, but I wonder: is there something especially astute about this topic choice, given normal ends? In some years hence, people will think, "This was a remarkably good move, writing on this topic"? This little essay of mine will surpass other essays on Internet culture, in terms of significance or how much it is valued, including essays of mine that I value far more? These essays show more independent thought and creativity or perceptiveness, they are better crafted, etc. ("What do you know? You making selections from your own writings is a hazard for your own future!"??? "Just blindly follow the tradition"?) References Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2025. Example of presenting comedy sketches I found. (Warning: I often do not sound very professional) https://www.instagram.com/p/DQbjqoZDibw/ Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2025. Christmas Essay: frameworks for social observation in universities and amongst Internet comedians: https://www.academia.edu/145579424/Christmas_Essay_frameworks_for_social_observation_in_universities_and_amongst_Internet_comedians (Example of an essay of mine on the Internet that I value more.) Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2026. "What? No chance!" picture: https://www.instagram.com/p/DYv6imaAgr-/ McDonald, Lucy. 2021. Please Like This Paper. Philosophy 96(3): 335-358. Available at: https://philpapers.org/archive/MCDPLT.pdf Raeside, Julia. 2025. Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping is ushering in a new era for sketch comedy. The I Paper September 5th 2025. Available at: https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/mitchell-webb-review-ushering-new-era-sketch-comedy-3900793?srsltid=AfmBOoommcjlymw08Ektg62S0zN4QaAHuHF27-7422STNojMs3bLnYQr Further reading Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2022. Inequality, Internet likes, and the rules of philosophy, by Ren*t* S*lecl. Available at PhilPapers: https://philpapers.org/archive/EDWIIL.pdf