Facing My Birthday

I celebrated my birthday last week. It was a good birthday. I got a present from Basecamp—thanks everyone!—and my parents offered to babysit my toddler so my husband and I could see The Force Awakens. I also got a copy of Kim Kardashian’s “Selfish,” which I read immediately.

But in the morning, before any of that happened, I went on Facebook. And as I logged in, I wondered: How should I handle my birthday greetings? Should I hit Like on every single one, or should I post a blanket “Thanks for the birthday wishes, everyone!” message at the end of the day? Even the 10 seconds of mental energy I devoted to this etiquette question seemed tedious, but if like me, you have a strain of mild social anxiety humming constantly in the background noise of your inner life, you’ve probably thought about this too.

I looked at my Timeline and…nothing. It’s early, I thought, and it’s the holidays. Everyone’s busy. Also, who cares? The Facebook birthday message is the most meaningless form of social interaction. Who cares, right?

I looked at my phone when the credits started rolling after Star Wars. I had gotten some lovely emails and emoji-filled texts, but my Facebook Timeline was still barren, and it stayed that way for the rest of the day. I didn’t know how to feel about this. On one hand, I was liberated from the awkwardness of responding to birthday messages from high school classmates with whom I had never spoken in our four years together. On the other hand, it’s nice to have people—even ones who are practically strangers—wish you well, in the same way that one of my favorite parts of pregnancy was having older ladies give me knowing, benevolent smiles on various kinds of public transportation.

I thought my Facebook messages might have somehow ended up in my “Other” folder, but it was empty. Was there a queue of posts to approve in Timeline Review? Nope. I felt my self-loathing grow with each click. Finally, I discovered that I had taken my birthday off my Facebook profile. I like to review my privacy settings every couple of months, and I must have tweaked my profile to remove my birthday from public view, presumably to save myself the stress of worrying about Faceboook birthday etiquette in the first place.

I had unwittingly conducted a little social experiment: Who remembers your birthday without a Facebook notification? In my case, it turns out, the same people whom I call and email and text and send cards to on their birthdays: my family and a cluster of close friends. The joke here is that my past self had been trying to give my future self a birthday present and it just resulted in more neuroses, and also that I am maybe a terrible person. Facebook has done such a good job of social conditioning—and I’ve been so susceptible to it—that I missed the birthday messages, even as I was insisting that they didn’t matter and I was immune to that kind of inanity.

A couple days after my birthday, I was going to bed when my phone buzzed with a Facebook Messenger notification. The message was from someone I’ve known since elementary school, although we haven’t spoken since our 10-year high school reunion in 2009. It began: “Your birthday was a few days ago right?!” I started to get a warm fuzzy feeling. She remembered my birthday! I read on: “I wanted to let you know I am selling Rodan + Fields skincare…” I paused. Rodan + Fields is a “multilevel marketing” business that, as far as I can tell, consists of “independent consultants” selling skincare products in Facebook posts that get Likes and rabidly supportive comments from other Rodan + Fields consultants.

“I am offering to reimburse the $19.95 enrollment fee to anyone who signs up to be a preferred customer (within 30 days of their birthday),” she wrote. “Just a little birthday treat. Hope it’s your best year yet!!

There, in the form of a perky message asking me to buy anti-aging creams, was proof that someone outside my close circle did remember my birthday without a Facebook notification. And you know what? It felt nice. Because I am, as Kim Kardashian might describe it, a little bit selfish.