Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Social wishers

The challenge used to be in making the effort to remember birthdays. Earlier, you had to make a note of it in a diary or embed it in memory. And you only reserved this privilege for the important few. Now, people know it’s your birthday because Facebook tells them. You can write a wish without having to look at the date. Coz, hey, Facebook will prompt you next year as well. With minimal effort, you can hammer out a few words and then get on with checking someone’s vacation photos, or comment on someone’s status.
Here's Absolute Lee on Facebook birthday wishes (and the changing nature of birthday-wishing in general). I once wrote a rant on the subject too. This year I went to Settings a few days before my b-day and changed the date, to avoid a repeat of last year's creepy outpouring of good wishes, mostly from people I don't know. (Since I use Facebook mostly to link to my writings/spread info about the books and not for personal stuff, I accept friend requests from pretty much anyone.) As I've grown older and greyer I've become a little more tolerant of birthday wishes in general, but I draw the line at being wished in a manner that reminds me of the spam ads in my Gmail inbox.

9 comments:

  1. People usually become jaded and somewhat tried of birthday wishes as they grow older. Benjamin Button effect?

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  2. Read this if you you haven't

    http://www.slate.com/id/2300637/pagenum/all/

    a slate columnist changed his bday date on facebook thrice in a single month was "wished" on some occasions by the same people...

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  3. People usually become jaded and somewhat tried of birthday wishes as they grow older.

    Marvin: seems the other way round for me. I was extremely jaded and ungracious about birthday wishes when I was young - more tolerant now.

    Dhairya: thanks for that piece - makes complete sense to me, but it's worrying to see the many comments made in defence of serial birthday-wishers (especially since the article wasn't nasty or anything). Also, it's bizarre that people can't understand that a writer/columnist might use his Facebook account for purely professional reasons, and might therefore have many "friends" who he doesn't actually know.

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  4. Agree with the piece completely. I’d love to try one of those experiments and see the number of wishes and the vitriol I get!!

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  5. Jai: Thanks a ton for reminding! My birthday is round the corner too, and I will slyly use the technique to avoid replying to several people who I barely know!

    And unlike you, who uses FB for professional reasons, I've used it for what it was meant to be-a "place" where you could meet your old classmates and wonder, "Oh, she's become so fat!".

    Celebrating Birthdays itself is so boring! I mean, come on! Everyone gets older eventually, what's so special about that?

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  6. Jai - people don't care. like in LSD, a character says, "logon ko news nahin, prime time entertainment chahiye" waise hee, FB pe bhi entertainment hee to milta hai logon ko.

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  7. "This year I went to Settings a few days before my b-day and changed the date" - I do the same!

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  8. I removed my birthday off Facebook last year, and most of the people who wished me were friends from school, who knew my birthday outside of facebook!

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