Of course that maybe just a sign of the times, increase in membership numbers rather than the buttons fault.
Probably worthy of a separate discussion, but the last ten years have seen a huge explosion in photography. Many newcomers (in the last 5 years??) have probably come from smartphone photography and the explosion of Instagram. I would say about 80% of my students fit that bill with the rest being older people who were trying to move from film to digital and get confuzzled by all the buttons and the digital side (memory cards, photoshop/lightroom and posting images online)
[Edit -I say "you" in this post quite a bit, but I mean the reader and not you personally Chris...]
If one looks at another photo sharing site - Flickr, there has been a large downturn in membership and investment in the community.
I suspect many people equate "good photographs" to "what gets lots of likes on Instagram" and thus it's no great leap to equate likes with good photography. If you add the majority of YouTube photography channels, this enforces that belief. Of course many people also know that that's simply not true, but I think they are in a minority.
I use the like button very much as an "I agree with what was said and there is no point in me posting the same thing". When I get likes from people, I assume the likers are doing the same. I tend to "like" photos that I like and very often do it when I see an image posted with no supporting text. Maybe in the "Show us yer..." threads, and other threads where different people post images on the same theme. (Panoramas, IR, Film Photos, Leica, black & white, street etc). I see the emojis as being a bit like guns. Not dangerous in themselves, but dangerous when used incorrectly
I rarely go near single images posted with no context. Mainly because I'm bored of saying "it looks a little under exposed" only to get "That was deliberate" as a response. If people want constructive feedback, then they should post what they were trying to achieve, and where they think they failed.
Occasionally, someone will do that and if I spot it, I will try and engage. Those threads are useful to me (because I get to try and put into words what I think about the image) and hopefully useful to the photographer (because they get another opinion).
Back in the olden days (IIRC) TP had a "Critique" subforum that ran alongside all the genre forums, and it was generally accepted that
only photos in that subforum would get feedback. That was changed at some point to make
all the forums "critique" friendly, and just have the one "photos for fun" subforum for no critique. Perhaps that was to try and get more people commenting?
The 52s are interesting and an anachronism to the overall "no feedback" we see in other threads. and whilst there are a lot of "great shot" posts, there are many people willing to offer feedback which is on the whole, gratefully (or at least graciously!) accepted. And I find the number of likes is very much reduced.
I suggested a long time ago, that it might be cool if there was a disclaimer/announcement type thing in the "Post an image" threads that says, "if you are looking for feedback, please give some sort of description of what you were trying to achieve, and if possible, what you think is missing or needs improvement" along with a "Feedback Reqd." tag of some sort to focus the eyes of people who want to give feedback onto the threads that want to receive it.
If you are posting an image with zero context and hoping for feedback - what exactly are you looking for people to say? You're wanting them to study your image, evaluate it based on their (very personal) idea of what constitutes "good"? Is that really going to be helpful to your photography? Or secretly, are you just wanting the likes and positive affirmations? If the latter - then I would suggest that Instagram is a much better place for that.
[There is a lot of generalisation in this post, but hopefully you get what I mean, and apologies for the length!]
