During middle school and for the most part of high school, I absolutely loved my birthday. And it wasn’t because I was finally going to be a teenager or get my license, it was because of Facebook. Your birthday—in my case November 13th—is the holy grail of Facebook posts and notifications. People I know from kindergarten, girls I attended Sunday School with and guys from my seventh grade bio class all take a moment out of their day to say “happy B-DAY” to little ‘ole me.
I try to comment happy birthday to as many people as I can, but I can’t get on Facebook every day and wish everyone happy birthday. So, for the entire month of November, I purposefully look to see who’s birthday it might be and if it isn’t too awkward, I’ll write a “Happy Birthday!,” post. Because, (1) I’m hoping they’ll see my generosity and think to comment back on my birthday and (2) growing up there were a bunch of kids who had their birthdays around mine and it’s interesting to see where we’ve all ended up.
So I figured it’d be cool to find out other’s take on the whole Facebook – birthday-wishing ritual.
SAS sophomore Tatiana Blackman agreed, “It’s nice having a bunch of people wishing you happy birthday, especially when it’s someone you haven’t seen or spoken to in a while.” She continued on by stating, “It’s a cool way to know if someone is still thinking about you.”
So each year on November 13th, every single one of my thousand or “friends” gets a little notification on their homepage, letting them know it’s my birthday, urging them to take a second out of their day and wish me well. And while all of this might sound incredibly vain, think about it.
How often do you get Facebook notifications? I mean ones that aren’t from the Rutgers Class of 2016 group or someone inviting you to an event you most likely won’t attend. Being incredibly honest, I don’t get very many.
All the posts I get on my birthday are like treasured gold nuggets and I account for each and every one. Initially, I would manually count how many people commented on my wall. One year I didn’t look at the notifications until the end of the day so the tally would remain intact. When I turned 14, I counted them up hourly and when I turned 16 it was by the minute. But then it became a competition. I met a girl, Sidney* she and I had the same birthday. The entire day a friend of mine, Alexandra*, would count the posts on my wall and count the posts on Sidney’s wall reassuring me that I was still ten posts ahead at any given time.
But now, Facebook tallies it up for you. So on the big day, and on the one’s following, when you check it’ll say, “78 friends posted on Sidney’s timeline for her birthday.” If only this technology existed when I actually cared how many people commented on my wall.
Facebook isn’t really what it used to be before. People take their thoughts and comments to twitter, pictures to instagram and videos to vine. Now it’s more like a way to keep in touch with estranged friends from high school, prying parents or that guy you met at the beach three summers ago.
Suffice to say, this year I’m not expecting too many “H B-day” comments…But I might still be counting.
*The names have been changed