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Facebook is trying to bring the “poke” feature back from the dead and everyone, depending mostly on their age, is experiencing different feelings about its unexpected return.
Backing up to the beginning, when it was first introduced, the feature on Facebook was described this way by the company: “A poke is a way to interact with your friends on Facebook. When we created the poke, we thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose. People interpret the poke in many different ways, and we encourage you to come up with your own meanings.”
For more than a decade, however, almost no one used the feature on Facebook. In fact, many people just assumed it had been removed from Facebook altogether. For example, the last time I was poked on Facebook was in 2017. Prior to that I have to go all the way back 12 years to 2012 to find another one.
Surprisingly to many, it never actually went away and now, according to Facebook on Threads, “THE POKE IS HAVING A MOMENT. There’s been a 13x spike in poking on Facebook in the past month. So, be honest: who’s poking who?”
Seriously, what is going on?
According to TechCrunch, who also wants to know what is going on, “The company announced on Tuesday that it recently improved the platform’s suggestions on who to poke and also made made it easier to find the poking page through search. Plus, Facebook added the ability to poke a friend when you search for them on the social network.”
But… why? And, just like Facebook asked, “Who’s poking who?”
For that answer we, naturally, go to X (formerly Twitter) to find out.
“Facebook returned the Poke function and it feels very retro, almost like a second youth,” one person revealed.
“More than 50% of pokes are coming from 18 to 29 year olds,” one person on X reported, then asked, “How does Gen Z even know about the poke? If you’re part of this I need to know why??”
“My coworker started a poke war with me on Facebook. You Will Not Win!” read another comment, which might explain things.
Facebook co-founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg got in on the jokes with a ‘nature is healing’ comment on Threads:
Post by @zuckView on Threads
That’s probably next.