Do you remember… the Facebook poke?

Nobody ever knew what it meant, and that was rather the point. Most Facebook profiles had a button that let you poke their owner. They got a notice saying you’d poked them, and they could poke you back. That was it.

Was it flirting? A hello? A way of saying you’d seen their holiday photos without admitting it? Facebook wouldn’t say. Its own help pages explained that the company thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose, and left the rest to us.

So we filled the gap ourselves. Poke wars between friends ran for weeks, each side refusing to be the one who didn’t poke back. Poking someone you barely knew was a bold move indeed.

The poke never really went away. In 2024 Facebook made it easier to find again and said people were poking each other far more than before. Some mysteries, it seems, are timeless.