Facebook's birthday grind saps the magic

February 18, 2009|By Mary Schmich

Birthdays used to be a measure of intimacy. Who remembered yours? Whose did you remember?

The club was small, typically limited to family members, two high school pals, four college friends, two co-workers and one person you broke up with a long time ago.

In your birthday entourage, greetings were extended no matter where you or the other person was on the big day. These friends were so few and so precious that you were allowed to sulk slightly if they neglected your birthday. You were also honor-bound to feel guilty if you forgot to mark theirs with at least an e-mail sent before midnight in their time zone.

But birthdays, like so many things, are different in a Facebook world.

Facebook is a giant non-stop birthday party. Every day, it reminds its members which of their "friends" are about to mark another year, which means that Facebook members are now likely to get more "Happy birthdays" in a single birthday than they've gotten in all their past years combined.

"Did you see my 40 birthday messages on Facebook?" one friend e-mailed recently. "I didn't even KNOW some of the wishers."

Who cares? As in so many things on the Internet, when it comes to birthdays, it's quantity that counts. The Internet is one giant popularity contest, and just as having a whole bunch of Facebook friends confers status, so does having a humongous pile of birthday shout-outs.

That same friend -- whom I consider a real friend, though previously not in my birthday entourage -- was writing in response to the birthday wishes I'd sent her.

"That you even remembered shows the vitality and health of your brain," she wrote, which was very sweet, but I'm sorry to say it showed no such thing. It proved only that I, too, had been prodded by the Facebook birthday nag.

The Facebook birthday nag can be a beautiful convenience, but it leads to a question: When birthdays are made impossible to forget, is remembering them significant?

Facebook isn't the only place where birthdays greetings have become a cheaper commodity. I've received computer-generated birthday greetings from mortgage brokers and a car dealership. The guy at the health club front desk swiped my card one day and then chirped, "Happy birthday!" My reflex was to be deeply moved. He remembered!

But then I got suspicious. How'd he know it was my birthday? (It must have popped up on the card reader.) Then I got resentful. Who was he to be treating me like his cherished friend? And who was he to publicly announce this private information, which I'd been seduced into providing on an application form?

"Why, thank you," I said, once I'd run the full circle of emotions and come back around to the appropriate one, appreciation of his friendly tone.

Some people claim they don't care about their birthdays, but Facebook, the mortgage broker and the health club understand that many of us, from the time we first huff at the candles, want to be honored on the day we were born, even if that means a virtual cupcake from a stranger.

But just as "friend" has a new meaning in the online world, so does "Happy birthday."

Your close friends remain the ones who pick up the phone to convey their birthday wishes, or send you a card that arrives approximately on time, or know, even if you didn't post your year of birth on Facebook, exactly how old you are.