WASHINGTON — More than two weeks after it began as an April Fools’ joke, hundreds of thousands of us are spending/wasting time staring at an online countdown clock and corresponding digital reset button, and wondering “press it now, or wait?”
Me too.
“The Button” is a social experiment feature on Reddit, the social media website where registered community members can submit content, post links, and comment on other posts.
On April 1, “The Button” premise was posted on a page dedicated to the button.
A clock starts at 60 seconds and counts down to zero. Anytime a redditor around the world pushes the button, the clock resets at 60 seconds and resumes counting down.
Sounds simple, right?
Here’s where it gets interesting, and more challenging: The longer you wait, and the closer the countdown clock is to zero, the more points you get, or color-coded “flair,” as it’s called on Reddit .
The colors of flair are:
- Purple: Between 52 and 60 seconds
- Blue: Between 42 and 51 seconds
- Green: Between 32 and 41 seconds
- Yellow: Between 22 and 31 seconds
- Orange: Between 12 and 21 seconds
- Red: Between 0 and 11 seconds
- Gray: Someone who has not pressed the button
But here’s the rub — each redditor can only press the button once. Ever.
That raises the stress-inducing dilemma: “Should I press the button now, or wait until it’s closer to zero, and what happens if somebody else presses the button and resets the clock to 60 and I have to wait again?”
That’s why people are sitting, staring, and strategizing.
As Vox points out, “the button is powered by two of the most powerful forces in human societies: status competition and boredom.”
The phenomenon has prompted discussions comparing waiting for zero to waiting for the inevitability of death. Others, including my boss, are “saving” their push, and contemplating when they are most likely to get more desirable flair.
The button has been pushed almost 800,000 times so far.
Nobody (except the people who coded the original Reddit post) knows what will happen when the clock strikes zero. Mathematicians are calculating when every Reddit user will have used up their sole button push.
Which brings up another soul-twisting reality: only Reddit users who had accounts prior to April 1 are allowed to push the button.
That means people who are late to the Reddit party — like me — can’t play the game.
When I, and others fascinated by the button phenomenon, signed up for Reddit and tried to press the button, I was spanked with the message: “Your account is too new.”
The ultimate social media humiliation — being declared ineligible to jump on the already-aging bandwagon.
Desperate for inclusion in the current big thing, I posted something, hoping to be get colored flair — any colored flair, next to my name.
Nothing. No flair. Just white space.
Psychologist Krystine Batcho says it’s not surprising to feel left out.
“The experiment creates a privileged ‘in’ group and the excluded ‘out’ group,” says Batcho. “People hate to be excluded.”
What makes the button non-pusher more resentful is the unfairness of being excluded on the basis of a criterion the person has no control over.
Batcho says the actual process of pressing the button isn’t what fuels the frustration. “The fact that pushing the button is meaningless makes the demonstration all the more fascinating.
Still, my inability to qualify for the game has reduced me to the pitiable position of watching the countdown clock, for minutes on end, thinking “If only I could I’d press that button now.”
Alas, just like gambling with pretend money, the payoff doesn’t exist, beyond personal satisfaction.
How unsocial — there’s no flair to compare, no status to flaunt, no humblebrags to create.
I can’t push the button.
Sigh.
