A piece in today's New York Times elaborates on the Facebook birthday and the comments that follow it reveal reader discontent that got my attention. Virginia Heffernan's Opinionator piece titled "The Social Economics of a Facebook Birthday" causes me to emerge from a birthday wish stupor to once again be reminded that every point has a counterpoint and catch myself saying, "Hmmmm..didn't consider that."
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/the-social-economics-of-a-facebook-birthday/?ref=opinion
Ms. Heffernan's article captures the efficiency of Facebook greetings and expands on the pluses and minuses. Yes, there are minuses. The disjointed Greek chorus of comments is in full voice and I find myself agreeing with some of the points made.
Part of the allure of reading articles on line is the collection of comments they consistently attract and the 120 comments as of this writing that follow the Times article did not disappoint.
Concern about personal information floating across the internet and in fear of identity theft were popular warnings from some readers. One reader stated that "Facebook is not social. It's financial." I argue it is both. Jennifer from New York referred to the networking site as "Fakebook" in her terse tirade. I think she's had a less than good experience.It was the remarks regarding friendship and how friends reach out that interested me the most. It seems to some that the FB posts represent a bare minimum outreach from folks on the perimeter of our lives, making the volume full but insincere. If someone knows its your birthday and purchases a card that resonates, writes a personal note, addresses it and remembers to mail it, the effort made outperforms some quick keystrokes and exclamation points. Yet, FB has a message feature that allows me to write a personal message to any friend which is just seen by them - this also shows sincere effort even if it is intangible. (The fact that the US postal service is planning to cut one third of its workforce, some 120,000 workers, by 2015 confirms the impact of the electronic message).
I am consistently hopeful that the mailbox at the end of my driveway will contain something personal each day that I collect the mail. I am disappointed 95 percent of the time (I repeat, an easy target am I), but on those few occasions when a note, a card, or, gasp- a letter sits among the hodgepodge of junk mail and bills my spirit lifts. No amount of emails or FB posts can match that feeling for me. David Plotz, whose article from Slate was the basis for Ms. Heffernan's piece, spits lightening barbs as he tests the insincerity of FB birthday wishes calling FB "a form of social lubrication that makes a mockery of everyone connected to it." He changed his birthday three times during July to see if anyone noticed and by far he received three days of good wishes with just a few 'friends' recognizing his greed. (His birthday is really in January). http://www.slate.com/id/2300637/pagenum/all/#p2 Mr. Poltz's FB account is a work page so his 'friends' are mostly Slate readers, not real friends. I did appreciate his point and his methods of proving it even if he is a bit of a curmudgeon.
I am not a FB malcontent. As we star to some degree in our little reality shows by posting on FB, it does raise the question of what purpose is really being served here? Many comments sighed with a shrug wondering what harm was being done to receive a pleasant "Happy Birthday." "It's nice. It's gracious. It's low-key and civil," noted one reader. Why squeeze a negative out of a simple good wish?
I think the Mad Hatter had the most original approach as he and his friends greeted Alice in Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" by wishing her a very merry Un-Birthday. It's different yet sincere. And no one gets hurt - well at least not until the Queen of Hearts shows up but that is for another day - certainly not a birthday! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InSn2BLDwfQ
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