{"id":2838,"date":"2011-08-02T21:30:37","date_gmt":"2011-08-03T01:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adam-jackson.net\/blog\/?p=2838"},"modified":"2011-08-02T21:30:37","modified_gmt":"2011-08-03T01:30:37","slug":"my-fake-facebook-birthdays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/08\/02\/my-fake-facebook-birthdays\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2605 “My Fake Facebook Birthdays”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slate<\/a>:<\/p>\n

At the end of June, I edited\u00a0my profile<\/a>\u00a0to mark my first fake birthday on July 11. Early birthday greetings began popping up on my wall on July 8, from a couple of “friends” who were going away and didn’t want to miss the big day. Why “friends” in quotes? I have a Facebook account primarily for work reasons: I use it to alert acquaintances to\u00a0Slate<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0stories and to post photos from\u00a0Slate<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0events. I do very little actual social networking on the social network. Of my 1,557 Facebook friends, I’ve probably met only 200, and I’d count only 100 as actual friends. (For example, I am not sure if I am friends with my wife.)<\/p>\n

By the morning of July 11, my wall was crammed with birthday greetings, and by the end of the day, 119 people had wished me happy birthday\u2014or rather “Happy Birthday!!” (which appears to be standard Facebook birthday punctuation). Only four old and close friends were skeptical that I was celebrating my birthday in July, though most of them attributed the confusion to their own faulty memories. One, the brilliant John M., sensed something profoundly wrong, posting: “Is this some\u00a0Slate<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0experiment about the Pavlovian response of people to Facebook birthday notifications?”<\/p>\n

My second fake birthday, two weeks later, was when things started to get strange. I received 105 birthday wishes on July 25, nearly as many as two weeks earlier. This time, nine people suspected something was awry. James P., for example, jibed: “It must be pretty nice having multiple birthdays each year, let alone in the same month!” But the skeptics were\u00a0far<\/em>\u00a0outnumbered by profligate birthday wishers. Of the 105 birthday wishes, 45 of them\u2014nearly half\u2014came from people who had wished me a Facebook happy birthday two weeks earlier. The highlight of my second fake birthday?\u00a0Playbook,\u00a0Politico<\/em>‘s\u00a0<\/em>famous Washington tip sheet<\/a>, included me in its daily birthday greetings, prompting a whole raft of non-Facebook birthday wishes from D.C. insider friends.<\/p>\n

Three days later I celebrated my third and final fake Facebook birthday. My social network was clearly sick of me. I received only 71 birthday wishes on July 28, down from more than 100 on my first two fake birthdays. And even more skeptics caught on to the experiment: 16 doubters, compared with 9 from three days earlier. Several of them observed that I appeared to be aging quickly, while Jen M. threatened, “I’m about to write an investigative piece looking into how it’s your birthday every day on FB …” The next day, July 29, Brian S. wrote: “I’m shocked that it doesn’t seem to be your Facebook Birthday for the first time in recent memory. ;)”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Two months ago, I stated that I would be deleting my birthday from Facebook. I said:<\/p>\n

I’m going to try and remember that on my birthday, I’ll be disabling my Facebook wall from any posts. I hate birthday wall posts from strangers and people I haven’t spoken to beyond one drink at some conference. True friends, real family and friends will call me on my birthday on my home phone. The rest of the people say their 2 cents and you won’t talk to them again until the next birthday. It’s pointless.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here is what my 1300 “friends” said about that:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Most people were pissed off but my point is that Facebook Birthdays are bullshit. Friends who know my birthday will write and say hello. I’m not going to see a HUGE list of 400 people saying “happy birthday” and many people who I haven’t spoken too in 3-5 years. I think it’s dumb. I actually lose friends on my birthday because people see “It’s Adam’s Birthday” and they go, “who?” and they remove me as a friend. That’s pretty common for me so I just want to avoid it altogether. My mom and dad will call me. That’s good enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Slate: At the end of June, I edited\u00a0my profile\u00a0to mark my first fake birthday on July 11. Early…\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[58],"class_list":["post-2838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-life","category-linked","tag-facebook-sucks","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-JM","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4682,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2015\/06\/07\/linked-bots-thanking-bots\/","url_meta":{"origin":2838,"position":0},"title":"Linked: “Bots Thanking Bots”","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"June 7, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"via 500 words: on Facebook\u2019s new feature that allows you to type 1 in the birthday box when someone is having a birthday and a bot automatically sends \u201cHappy Birthday!\u201d to them as you. 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