I have never really celebrated birthdays. Getting older seems like our job as humans, not something to celebrate. It is, at the very least, something unavoidable, so why celebrate it? I don’t.
When I signed up for Facebook, I never gave much thought to my birthday. I randomly tossed a date out and never thought about it again – until I started getting “happy birthday” messages from dozens of people on that random date.
At first, I though it was just a mistake. The more messages I got, I knew something was up. After ignoring more HBD’s than I get on my real BD, I finally noticed the date I’d put on the Facebook page. March 3. Not my BD. I had also listed the year as 1979. My god, I graduated from high school before that. Anyone who has actually seen me knows I was not born in 1979. If so, I have clearly suffered a reversed Benjamin Button-ish disease. I am not 30 years old. I don’t know anyone who would believe that.
I made an attempt to correct the misguided joke, by using another wrong date. I thought it was funny. Here’s what I learned: no one has a sense of humor when it comes to Facebook birthday information.
One person accused me of birthday fraud. Birthday fraud? Fraud assumes that you are trying to defraud, that there is a purpose to your deception. I just tossed out a date, like when you go on a beer company website and they want a birthday, so you just type in something handy and move on, a frivolous legality.
Not on Facebook. This shallowness is serious stuff. People read those things. People in Siberia read them. Lives hang in the balance based on what you say on your update. Hell, I felt like Alan Greenspan back when he’d say something like, “This orange juice is a little too sweet” and orange juice futures would plummet in the market. My credibility fell faster than the Dow last week.
The New York Times even wrote about the lack of privacy on Facebook. The article talked about how Facebook should err on the side of member privacy instead on the side of giving your information away. But if the information we give away is false, we solve that problem, right? Maybe not.
A good friend (I thought she was anyway) said I was a jerk for not giving my real birth date and hasn’t talked to me since. Okay.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked her.
“This is Facebook!” she screamed at me exactly like the over-muscled actor in the movie “300” when he kicked his opponent into the big hole, yelling, “This is Sparta!”
Another friend of mine said, “Screw that. Why should you put personal information like your birthday on the worldwide web?”
I nodded vigorously.
“Who are your friends?” he asked.
I responded that the NYT article had this to say about that: “For many members, “friends” now means a mishmash of real friends, former friends, and non-friends: younger and older relatives; colleagues and, if cursed, a nosy boss or two.”
“Do you owe people that information?” he said. “Hey, I’m your friend, what’s your Social Security number? Where are your medical records? Give me that information.”
I must allow that he is a bit of a curmudgeon. He refuses to participate in Facebook because he doesn’t have a computer at home. He hates email at work (where has does have a computer but can’t surf the web). He has no cell phone, no iPod, no cable. Technically, he is nearly off the grid. Fifteen years ago, he would have been the average person. Now he is a Luddite freak. Or is he?
When my Facebook birthday FUBAR happened, I immediately thought of him. He said something that put it all into perspective. I actually wrote down what he said on a scrap of paper:
“The economy is screwed,” he said. “Banks are insolvent, our life savings are gone; the auto industry has been flushed down the toilet; we are probably in a depression; bankers, investment companies, CEO’s and politicians are oblivious to suffering because they think they are owed privileges not extended to average people. We get laid off and fired for no reason beyond the truth that someone in charge was incompetent and drove the whole bus into the ditch. We can somehow live without a job, but we can’t live without cable TV, Internet access, emails, cell phones, texting, or Facebook. Maybe we need to start actually making something again. China makes stuff. All we do is talk about it on some website.”
All of that, just because I put the wrong birth date on my Facebook page. Amazing.
