To have a birthday on Facebook was affirming. But it was also often annoying. At first, the wave of well-wishes was sweet. But by lunchtime, when everyone had shared the same dead-eyed platitudes, it began to feel a little empty. By dinner, it all felt less like birthday cheer and more like spam.
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Despite the emotional labour of feeding the Facebook birthday machine, those reminders kept me on the site longer than any other feature. It allowed users to outsource remembering someone’s birthday, and made us all look like good people who really cared in the process. Long after I made my profile private, I’d still check each morning to see if I needed to text anyone. But over time, even this habit has fizzled.
I rarely miss Facebook. I can live without being tagged in 400 blurry digital camera pictures every weekend. But when I jolt awake at 3am realising it was my mum’s birthday the day before, and I missed it, I do lament what was lost. Facebook stole a lot from me – primarily time and data. But it also robbed me of the executive function to remember anyone’s special day.
Eventually, a few people did remember my birthday this year. No one wrote on my wall (is it still called a wall?), but they did text and call instead. With each “Happy birthday”, I marvelled at their memory and asked how this crystal of information had formed in their brain. Some remembered my star sign and worked backwards from there. Others knew that my birthday was just after Halloween. One person had written it on a physical calendar. Uniting all these messages were intimate details that pinned us together.
And despite the reduced volume of well-wishes, I felt more loved this year than I ever did on Facebook.
Wendy Syfret is a freelance writer based in Melbourne.
