Today is not my birthday.
Let me explain.
A few years ago, I started temporarily changing the date of my birthday on Facebook a few years before the actual day (the real day is January 9) so that people didn’t know my birthday was coming up. The reason was that I’m really not very fond of getting Facebook wall posts on my birthday. (waves to everyone who posted on his wall today)
So today, two coworkers–who I’ve lovingly identified on Facebook as “old lady coworkers” told me that they noticed today that they no longer had the little box in the upper right of their Facebook homepage that told them whose birthdays were coming up.
I suspected that it was simply that none of their Facebook friends had birthdays today or tomorrow. To put this to the test, I volunteered to change my birthday on Facebook to August 18.
That’s when the trouble began.
Apparently if you change your birthday on Facebook, you can’t change it again for at least a week, nor can you hide your birthday after you change it (that seems particularly odd to me). So for the next week, my birthday on Facebook is August 18.
I’ve put up multiple status updates telling people that today is not my birthday. But “happy birthdays” are still slipping through to my wall. I’ve decided I’ll just let it slide. These people are well-intentioned, and maybe they feel good about wishing me a happy birthday on my wall. Yay.
So word to the wise: If you change your birthday on Facebook, you better mean it.
Your post made me think about this story I read a few weeks ago:
https://www.slate.com/id/2300637/
I saw that too! I can now relate to that guy.
You two can share your horror stories about the awfulness of people wishing you a happy birthday. 😉
It’s actually been somewhat whimsically delightful today since I know it’s not real. 🙂
I believe the same thing goes for your name.
A few friends of mine had a habit of changing their name frequently on Facebook and one day, Facebook wouldn’t let them do it anymore. One of these friends had “Darth Vadar” as part of her name for about a month before Facebook let her change it back.
That’s awesome! Well done, Facebook. You win this one.
I hate facebook wall birthday wishes. It’s become a joke now. Every June my fiance and I (our birthdays are 3 days apart) try to guess which fb friend we talk to the least will wish us a happy birthday. It’s so meaningless. You don’t care it’s my birthday person-from-college-who-was-mean-to-me-a-year-after-we-became-fb-friends. I know you don’t care because I know you do not care about me.