Browsing through Facebook you’ll see all sorts of posts from people sharing a song they like, something that annoys them, something good happening to them, and of course, there are plenty of bad things too.

But what exactly do you do when you see a post about bad things?  Do you hit the like button?  Doesn’t that seem a bit weird? For example, what’re you supposed to do when you see a post that goes, “I can’t believe I’m having the worst day of my life!  I’ve been let go from the company, my S.O. left me, and now I’m homeless. When will I get a break?”

You might see responses like, “OMG, I’m so sorry to hear that,” “dude you can crash with me,” or other messages that shows how people sympathize with them. But the one thing that people most definitely shouldn’t do is hit the like button, even if they’re sympathizing, because the author of the post might misconstrue that you’re laughing at their misfortune.

Ever wish Facebook has an “I feel yah bro” button, because sometimes you just don’t know what to say?

It might sound weird but Facebook is apparently considering such a thing, according to a report in Time.

Facebook engineer Dan Muriello stated that Facebook has considered adding a Sympathize button, an experimental feature that was first suggested during a Facebook hackathon.

But how will this feature work if it does go live?

For one, you won’t be seeing a Like and Sympathize button on posts.  If someone selects a negative emotion from Facebook’s list of feelings such as “sad” or “depressed” the Like button will will be relabeled as “Sympathize.”  This will obviously eliminate the awkward situation of liking a very sad post.  You can just sympathize with your friends, rather than try to think of something to say.

“It would be, ‘five people sympathize with this,’ instead of ‘five people ‘like’ this,” Muriello stated during a presentation at Facebook’s Compassion Research Day.

“Which of course a lot of people were — and still are — very excited about. But we made a decision that it was not exactly the right time to launch that product. Yet.”

Although the Sympathize button is a product of a Facebook hackathon, that doesn’t mean it will never go live. Consider, there are many Facebook features we enjoy today that also began life in hackathons, including the famous ‘Like’ button, Friend suggests, Facebook Chat, and Timeline profile pages.  So Facebook could soon become a very sympathetic place.

Plus, according to a Facebook spokesperson, hackathons are “the foundation for great innovation and thinking about how we can better serve people around the world.”  And even if not all ideas from hackathons are put into play, they “often help us think differently about how we can improve our service,” added the spokesperson.

But does Facebook really need a Sympathize button? It could be argued that it does, especially when so many people share different emotions and circumstances on their profiles.  We’ve all seen people pouring their hearts out on Facebook, only to receive zero comments in reply because people don’t know what to say.  But this could leave people feeling like they’ve been abandoned.

For that reason, a Sympathize button could be a great feature.  But, and this is a big “but”, there is a chance this could backfire and make Facebook a much more dreary place to be. If people receive too much sympathy over every little thing that goes wrong in their lives, we could end up seeing an awful lot more negative posts – and who seriously wants to wake up to everybody else’s depressing news each morning?

Having a ‘Sympathize’ button could obviously have both negative and positive effects, so if it does ever appear, let’s just hope people won’t overuse it.