Today, Twitter announced and implemented hearts, replacing the ‘favourite’ stars. While some obviously welcomed the change, others are completely against it. After all, people are creatures of habit and dislike change. Hence, the heart-shaped star wars raged on Twitter and other social media platforms. Just have a look at the trending section with the hashtag #heartgate.

Here are some funny and serious tweets about the change:

Note to Twitter. A 'favorite' is an action that related to me. It's a way for me to remember. Heart'ing, is an action relating to the tweet.

— Thomas Baekdal (@baekdal) November 3, 2015

So why did Twitter change the favourite button from a star to a heart? How can we low-key like our crushes' tweets now without any suspicion

— DLSU Amphiturtle (@Amphigong) November 3, 2015

Twitter removes all share count data, but replaces a star with a heart. Yeah, that was a good trade-off. Thanks.

— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) November 3, 2015

A Tale of Meaning and Habit

Personally, I liked the star as it was more generic and could be applied to and in a lot of situations. The heart is – in my humble opinion – more limited and more loaded. But, in the end, it does not matter at all. It’s kind of like Star Wars vs Star Trek (I like both, though).

And after all, we attach meaning to the pictures, icons or emoticons we use. A smile, a heart, it can be whatever you want it to be. Hence, Tobias van Schneider’s tweet sums it up:

Twitter replaced the star with a heart? I'm fine with that, who cares anyway? It could be the poop icon as well. https://t.co/NjZcKNj5uB

— Tobias van Schneider (@schneidertobias) November 3, 2015

If you want some more fun, this collection from Mashable has some more tweets.