Enough with the Facebook birthdays. Sure, Facebook might have allowed the Russians to rig the election so that a real estate developer/reality TV star is now the leader of what was once the free world but let’s focus on the bigger issue - Facebook’s insidiously nagging push for me to write birthday messages for every person I ever befriended in an attempt not to be rude.
If founder Mark Zuckerberg has to pretend to apologise for anything, it’s this. The average Facebook user has 338 friends - which means not a single day now passes without most of us having to write at least one message to someone we barely know.
People talk about Facebook’s algorithms and the maths geniuses behind them but what really drives this platform is both simpler and more devious: guilt.
I’d like to do a survey on how many people leave birthday messages out of genuine goodwill - because I doubt I’m the only one who does it out of obligation.
After all, if you look through the messages people leave, you don’t see messages with heartfelt emotion. You don’t see any unique messages reflecting a genuine friendship. No, instead you usually just see the most hackneyed two-word phrase in the English language: "happy birthday". That’s even worse than not receiving any message.
I’ve wrestled with this situation the way some people wrestle with real problems. For years I refused to leave birthday messages, thinking I can’t offend anyone if I do it to everyone. Wrong. I’ve offended plenty. Then, in an effort to atone, I tried sending belated greetings. That offends even more.
This leads to me sharing one hard-earned tip: never, ever apologise for missing a birthday.
In the same way that being calm in an argument often infuriates the other person, apologising for missing a birthday will inflict far more damage.
So then, in resignation, I began leaving the damn birthday messages on a punctual basis.
Then, when my unique birthday message was posted, I’d console myself with the knowledge that at least it was now payback time - for the guilt had finally completed its dark circle.
- Dan Kaufman is a writer and editor
