Whatever Button

The Whatever Button is an extended feature for the Google Chrome web browser that can be added to Facebook, the world’s largest social networking service. The Facebook “Like” button, which carries the ultimate in low-res information (clicking it allows you to share your approval of content appearing on Facebook), has overrun the Internet at astonishing speed. By installing this free online feature, you can “Like” everything — the good, the bad, the things you think you ought to like. With one click you can automatically click every “Like” button that appears on the screen.

This work, in which users compete to “like” as many things as they can using the Facebook “Like” button on every possible webpage, can in part be seen as a criticism of online conditions since 2010. At the same time, the heroic actions of the scripts built into the Google Chrome extension button (and the “Like” buttons that serve as the central theme of the work) have an intriguing style. While obeying conventional hacking etiquette, the work is imbued with a richness that transcends any criticism.