Can we talk for a minute about birthdays? I’m speaking specifically about Facebook birthdays: those daily reminders you receive.
If you’re like me, there’s always someone you know celebrating a birthday. Thanks to the Facebook Birthdays event tab, you receive a daily notification about them.
Facebook makes it easy for you to wish your connections a happy birthday.
Sometimes, it goes a little overboard, though. If you have, for example, photos of you and the birthday girl or boy, it’ll suggest you post that photo with your birthday wish.
I almost never do that.
Sometimes, if they’re trying to raise money for a good cause, it’ll suggest a contribution as a birthday “gift.”
I don’t do that, either. (How do we know where the money even goes?)
But I do take one simple action. I post a quick “Happy birthday” on their profile. It takes so little time and it’s a nice gesture. Most of us like receiving those birthday messages. Most of us like them even when they remind us how old we just turned.
It’s not always easy to do so, though.
It seems that there are a handful of you out there who make this a little more difficult than it needs to be.
Some of you block people from being able to post directly to your profile. So the notification I receive doesn’t have the little space to type anything. I usually see a button to press to send a private message. But Facebook long ago screwed up its messenger platform to the point that there are some messages I must have sent back in 2014 that I’m still waiting for the recipient to see.
And you thought the post office could be slow!
I rarely send those messages anymore because most people don’t respond anyway.
Then there is a handful of you with joint accounts. On the one hand, it’s sweet when spouses have one account with both their names. We can assume from seeing those joint accounts that you two much really trust each other.
Although there are times when my devious mind wonders if you two really don’t trust each other. Maybe you’re so suspicious that you actually must see every incoming message to either party.
The problem, when it comes to Facebook birthdays, is that I never know which spouse is celebrating the birthday since I only get a single notification a year. What do I say? A plain “Happy birthday” seems impersonal. Ignoring it seems worse. There you go: the generic “Happy birthday” it is!
Once in a blue moon, I’m the one who makes it difficult. A day goes by and I miss someone. I actually stress out about going back to wish a “Happy Belated Birthday” in those cases.
It’d be easier if Facebook could automate those birthday wishes. But that would defeat the purpose of them, wouldn’t it?
So short of that, some of us just have to deal with the occasional oddity that may or may not allow for as personal a birthday wish as we’d like to offer.
But I always hope your birthday is nice, anyway.
