Neuron Activation & Upvotes

17 Jan, 2026

I've been reading a lot of blog posts recently. I noticed posts, usually outside the Bearsphere, especially ones with no upvote feature, tend to be on the longer side.

It's fun because I get to peek into the authors mind a bit and see how they formulate and explore their ideas. They're not in a rush, just languidly putting their thoughts out there.

The temptation to write longer form posts has always been there for me, but early on I noticed posts tend to be more short and sweet on Bear. So I think I tried to emulate that and keep my posts shorter. Subconsciously I think I was preoccupied with the like counter a little too much.

Upon realizing this, I had one of those cognitive forehead slaps one gets when they miss something that should be incredibly obvious. My logic and approach in this aspect to my blog was, by my own goals, flawed.

One of the (many) reasons I ditched social media was because I didn't vibe with the dopamine chasing of "seeing number go up"¹ for likes on posts. Why was I bringing that old mindset to my little corner of the internet? Probably just detritus from old habits.

So a couple weeks ago I was playing around with hiding the numbers. Seemed to work fairly well. Then noticed a blogger on here hid the ability to like posts altogether. I resonated with this, so I decided to do the same.

I've always found the times where I've felt the most satisfied with a post is when I get an email appreciating or critiquing what I've written. Looking back, I had way more fun getting an email than a number on an upvote counter.

So I've decided to do away with the feature in it's entirety.

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