Facebook Celebrates Star Trek’s 50th Anniversary With Custom Like Buttons

This year has been a busy one for Star Trek. The cult sci-fi series is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2016 to commemorate the creation of Star Trek: The Original Series. As such, several exclusive documentaries have aired this year detailing behind-the-scene secrets from the Enterprise crew, and the series even saw a big-screen return when Star Trek Beyond hit theaters. And, now, Star Trek has taken over the world’s most popular social media site as it makes (first) contact with Facebook.

To celebrate the franchise’s milestone, Facebook has gone all out to honor Star Trek by creating custom ‘Like’ buttons for users. The cute collection features exclusive Star Trek graphics which will thrill Trekkies and still make sense of those who have never seen the series.

In a statement by Lindsey Shepard, the spokesperson explained how Facebook decided which images should replace their site’s traditional ‘Like’ buttons. “We decided to add another element to the celebration with custom Star Trek reactions. In order to make this understood by all Star Trek fans, we chose the most iconic and recognizable characters and symbols from the original Star Trek series, as well as the Next Generation,” they said.

“We also wanted to honor the original design and spirit of Reactions, so we needed visual cues that were easy to identify at a glance, like Geordi’s visor. This led us to our final cast: Kirk, Spock, Geordi and a Klingon,” the release reads.

And, when it came down to selecting which character went with each button, Lindsey had a perfectly sound reason. It’s so good in fact that Spock might dare call it logical.

“In our custom set of reactions, “like” stays true to form but with a little added sparkle, and “love” is represented by the Vulcan salute. We also think it makes sense that Kirk, as the first captain, is first up after “like” and “love,” and that a Klingon should be the “angry” reaction given that they are easily agitated,” they explained.

These buttons will be available to Facebook users in the U.S. and Canada for a limited time as Star Trek‘s 50th anniversary fever comes to pass. So, for now, Trekkies should take advantage of the cute icons while they’re here. After all, who wouldn’t want to react to someone’s status update with a ‘Shocked’ or ‘Surprised’ Spock emoji.

It might be the most emotional any casual fan has ever seen a Vulcan express.

[H/T] Medium