Dear Friends Who Wished Me Happy Birthday on Facebook
Here’s why I still haven’t responded
Hey guys,
I owe you an apology. My birthday was more than a week ago, and I haven’t even acknowledged your kindness. I totally suck.
I was absolutely planning to scroll through your thoughtful congratulations and acknowledge each one with a “Thanks!!” or even just a like. It’s the least I could do. (In fact, it was designed by some of the top engineers in the world to be the least I could do.)
That or I could have just dropped a single thank-you post on my timeline. I even had something prepared: “Thanks for the birthday wishes! So happy to see this site has some utility beyond denying the Holocaust and outing pedophiles who don’t support our president!” But then I thought better of it — lame sarcasm still feels better suited to Twitter — and tried to cook up something nicer and more sincere, and before I knew it, a week had gone by and it seemed weird to bother.
Oddly, I only got 51 happy birthdays this year. That’s down 19 percent from last year, when I got 63, and reflects a worrisome 37 percent drop from 2016, when I got 82. Who are the 31 friends who gave up on me in the past two years? I can’t bring myself to dig into the data, but Facebook certainly knows. Hell, maybe Russian…
