Electronic Birthdays

The approach and arrival of the fifth of September causes a stirring in the code that is tied to my e-mail address, facebook, and many various accounts across the internet. Sometimes in advance of the fifth and sometimes just at midnight that code will execute and a flurry of electronic birthday wishes filled with generic pre-conceived text that artful scripts have stitched my identity into in a effort of personalization. The in-box of my e-mail accounts will sprout a giant crop of special birthday advertisements from all the companies that have a hold of my e-mail and know when my real birthday is like mushrooms after the rain. These messages may once have been written by some person but any meaning in them is watered down by all the hands that touched the project and the number of years it's been since the message was first hammered out. The messages are further made cold by the hard coding that executes them. There is no person at one of these well-wishing companies that knows that today is my birthday and yet through the power of code and universal time systems I get a message telling me that everyone at this company wishes me a happy birthday.

I hate electronic birthday messages. Initially I found them mildly startling but now I tend to delete them without even looking inside. Because nothing said in that message is going to be remotely worth the several seconds they take to read. A long theoretically deeply heart-felt pile of text meant to endear me to some company whose service I already subscribe to is never going to be as special as a message in person or a phonecall from someone I actually know. But unfortunately the electronic birthday messages do not stop with the execution of some scripts to send me e-mail. Because social-networking sites don't stop with e-mail. They alert all of those people that are supposed to be my friends that the fifth of september is my birthday and prompts them to wish me a happy birthday.

What is wrong with Facebook reminding my friends of my birthday? Some people don't remember things like that very well. I know that's true. My brother's phone reminds him of things like mother's day and my birthday because his memory for that kind of thing is terrible. My memory isn't the greatest either but I remember the exact birthdate of about a dozen people and roughly when the birthday of a couple dozen more people are. These are the birthdays of the only people I want to wish happy birthday to. Not that I wouldn't wish a happy birthday to anyone else I know including random customers in the store but if your birthday is important enough to remember all the time or spend hours programming into my phone so I will remember it's important enough to at least call and leave you a message about. Otherwise you're probably not going to be terribly upset if I forget. I imagine you would agree with that.

So again, what's wrong with Facebook reminding my friends about my birthday? The fact that today I will receive many birthday wishes from people who haven't so much as said a word to me, even via the medium of Facebook, since the last time they were reminded to wish me happy birthday. Congratulations Facebook, you figured out how to create human spambots. I don't count these messages as being any more special than the ones written by someone in the marketing department of a company I happen to shop at because they're all electronic birthday messages. Every wall post I get that contains less than five words and at least one of those is "birthday" is  no less of a code-execution than any that showed up in my e-mail box from my cellphone service or internet provider.

In conclusion, if you want to use Facebook as a means of remember when my (or other people's) birthdays actually are you're more than welcome to but if you see that message and only take the few seconds to assuage yourself from any possible guilt you might feel at not saying it to tap out thirteen letters and hit enter then you have effectively become a spambot. If you want to take a little more time and write something whole lines long you have graduated to human being. But if you actually want to wish me a happy birthday as a friend or relative and not merely a fellow human being and you aren't going to see me in person in the near future to say it then that requires the whole minute or two of effort to find my phone number conveniently listed on my facebook page, punch it into your phone, and leave me a voicemail if I don't pick up. Otherwise, don't waste the few seconds of effort on fourteen keystrokes and contribute to the spam on the internet.