The Great Social Media Birthday Experiment

The Great Social Media Birthday Experiment

Friday, December 14, 2012

My birthday has past and the day itself wasn't all that different from previous years. The party was held over last weekend and a good time was had by all and then some. However, little did many people know what I was about to do on the actual anniversary of my birth. It has been something I've been planning for over a year, just because I am a curious sort of human being. The results were somewhat surprising but very much appreciated.

Facebook has made it brain-numbly easy to know when a person's birthday is and post to their wall. It really takes the thought and effort out of recognizing a person's birthday; it's just too easy. Since last year, I haven't said happy birthday to a single person via Facebook. I said it a number of other ways to a select group of people that are close to me and unfortunately I meant to say it to a few others that I merely forgot to but, none of it was done online. In total, I've probably acknowledged roughly a dozen birthdays out of the near one thousand people I'm acquainted with this year.

For the past few years prior to this, I posted to friend's walls less and less for their birthday's until this year which was none (as far as I can remember). Even without acknowledging anyone this year, I was counting on people posting on my wall. This wasn't entirely because I think less of the people I'm acquainted with, it's just what is socially expected. However, I don't do things that the socially acceptable way and rather socially experiment instead. Here's the details of the day:

Just before the midnight prior to my birthday, I blocked everyone from posting to my wall. My thought was that people would have to be more creative to send me a birthday message, rather than simply clicking twice and typing the message. This immediate result of this didn't go as planned. Apparently, after blocking my wall post, Facebook gives the option to send a message instead. The bulk of my happy birthday messages came this way, which was also what I was expecting if they came at all. The only reason I know this is because one person contacted me after the initial post disappointed it was sent as a message instead of a wall post. However a handful of people noticed that my wall was turned off and sent angry birthday messages (which sounds like a social oxymoron).

Half a dozen people posted to their own wall and tagged me in the post. This required a bit more effort and thoughtfulness. This also bypassed the block on my wall since I was allowing people to tag me, which also publishes the post onto my wall. Afterward, a great deal of people piggybacked on these posts to wish me a happy birthday. I'm assuming most of this was because people would see the post in their feed, feel the urge to post to my wall and find out they can't and just comment in the thread they saw initially. Interestingly, the people who piggybacked weren't as upset about the wall being blocked as the people who tagged me. I'm figuring this is because people who tagged me had to do the extra step of tagging. The most creative tag was of a picture that was of a few beefy male bodies with the words happy birthday underneath it.

The other surprises were of the actual people who said happy birthday under the circumstances. Some of the messages were from people I haven't even met but became friendly with online, others from relationships that didn't work out and haven't spoke to in years. All good surprises and I'm glad it's over. It takes a hearty amount of self-discipline it takes to hold back from what everyone else does. However, I sincerely appreciate those people who wished me a happy birthday. Thank you!