Opinion: The Weaponization of the ‘Haha’ React Emoji

In late February, one of the country’s biggest media companies posted a social media art card on Facebook in relation to the pre-trial proceedings involving former President Rodrigo Duterte. The post was a quote from the mother of one of the drug war victims, which was shared by ICC Office of Public Counsel Paolina Massidda.

“My son has been discarded like an animal,” Massidda quoted the mother’s testimony. “I was not even allowed to touch or embrace my son’s body. Even in death, my son was not treated with dignity. It was like they just throw my son out like a pig (sic). I finally found him at the funeral home where I have yet to pay to recover the body. I had nothing. I was bargaining, as if I was buying fish. In the end I paid approximately P45,000 to take my son’s body for burial.”

Having been posted by a well-known local media outlet with millions of followers, the art card expectedly drew thousands of reactions on the social media platform. But what’s interesting is the share of reaction emojis on the post. Of the over 21,000 reactions, about 5,300 were of the tearful emoji, 5,500 were thumbs up, and a vast majority, at over 9,200, were of the haha emoji.

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Even if you factor in an army of paid trolls whose only job is to hijack social media posts related to news and current affairs issues in order to sway public opinion (which is fodder for another story in itself), getting nearly half of all reactions to be “laughing” at what’s objectively a sad and depressing topic is mind-blowing to me. It’s probably pointless to even attempt to rationalize the behavior of users especially in a country as obsessed about social media as the Philippines, but I can’t help but wonder about the psychology of the people who think the appropriate reaction to grieving mothers whose kids were executed in the so-called drug war is a hearty laugh.

And it’s not even an isolated post. A quick scan of Facebook content—whether they’re stories, art or photo cards—about the most pressing and consequential news of the day would make it seem as if LOL is the default reaction of most, if not all of them. Yes, news about the thousands killed during the drug war, impeachment complaints versus the highest officials in the land, the flood control fiasco that has impacted real Filipino lives, and even the latest air strikes against Iran by US and Israeli forces—all attract readers and casual online bystanders whose best, most significant contribution to the discourse is to press the react button and scroll over to the little laughing yellow emoji.

There was a time when the only option Facebook gave us to engage with anything on the platform was a thumbs-up. Eventually they gave us a few more: heart for love; crying for sad; wow for shocked or surprised; care (yellow emoji hugging a read heart) for support, empathy, and sympathy; and of course, the haha emoji, which is apparently officially called the grinning squinting face emoji.

In the beginning the reasoning for this wider variety of react emojis was simple: allow people to interact with posts on Facebook with a more accurate depiction of how they truly feel about the post. Was it a fairer, more democratic way to figure out the temperature of the social media-using public? Sure, if it was done correctly. But as with most things introduced to the general public online, people rarely ever stick to using them as intended.

It wasn’t long before the haha emoji devolved from expressing happiness or amusement to one of derision and mockery. When we use it, no, we’re not just laughing at a friend’s joke or a funny cat video, we’re ridiculing a lawmaker’s unfortunate choice of words or the President’s new mass housing policy. We’re not just amused at the funny meme du jour or chuckling at a clip from our favorite sitcom; we’re demonizing victims of sexual assault and expressing contempt for those who dare speak up against corruption and injustice. And when we see that a vast majority of Facebook users elect to use the haha emoji for content that hardly calls for it, we’re witnessing how people can reduce complex, world-altering issues into nothing more than shallow, throwaway content on the feed.

We’ve weaponized the haha emoji and turned it from a simple reaction to a measure of manufactured ignorance and scorn. We’ve given the troll farms and social media hijackers too much power to control the narrative, and in a nation with a population that has proven to be easily swayed by what they think is popular on social media, that’s a huge deal.

And it’s definitely no laughing matter.

So what can we do? Short of laying off social media and maybe picking up a book (which, let’s face it, isn’t happening any time soon), what I’d like people to realize and understand is that not everything posted on social media needs your reaction, or interaction. (Believe me, the irony that this is coming from an online publication with a success metric that includes social media engagement isn’t lost on me). We scroll through our social media feeds to escape the mundanity of our everyday lives, and the algorithm surfaces content that we’ll likely find interesting, and yes, engaging.

But there’s really no need to broadcast how we’re feeling at every other post that comes up while were scrolling. Exercise restraint, but if you must engage, do it with intention. Think of your reaction, especially to important events of the day, as a public record of your morality for all the world to see. We’re so careful of how we act in front of our peers and colleagues with our flesh-and-blood selves it shouldn’t be a stretch to extend the same discipline and self-awareness to our personas online. There’s not much we can do with the troll farms who pay people to seize the discussion and make it seem like it’s going one way or the other, but I find that sticking to what’s decent and right, even if it seemingly goes against the grain, to be the true test of character.

And that means limiting the using of the haha emoji to things that are empirically funny—puppies chasing their own tails, those skits by Davao Conyo, and maybe the occasional harmless prank. When in doubt, it probably doesn’t deserve your engagement, but if you absolutely feel the need to react, do so at your own risk.

No one could have predicted that a laughing emoji could be a weapon, but here we are. (Now let’s see how many ‘haha’ react emojis this post gets).