It’s the day before your birthday and the Facebook greetings are starting to trickle in.
You have over 500 friends (that’s friends, not “friends”). Not bots, or companies (that’s what Pages are for), but people that you’ve met or had conversations with. Your friends.
It’ll be a deluge tomorrow.
Don’t dread it
People either look forward to this or dread it. Dread it? Dread a friend wishing you a happy birthday? Dread an encouraging message from a dear family member? Dread affirming, spirit lifting notes on your wall?
If you do you’re one of two things:
- An ogre – if you want to be left alone, then get off the social media channels or stop sending out requests and accepting friend invitations. Ogre might be too strong a word, but you get the idea.
- A hypocrite – Facebook provides the option for you to remove your birthday from showing up in your profile.
Saying thanks
Some prefer to wait until the evening to give a big status update thank you. Others like every greeting. Some respond in kind.
I’ve come up with a few guidelines. Keep in mind that like Facebook, these are subject to change without prior notice, and may be incomplete:
- happy birthday (all lowercase) – this comes from someone who is busy (or kinda cool) but wants to acknowledge your special day. Or from someone who couldn’t care less, but feels obligated to say something. You can simply “like” and move on.
- Happy birthday, Mary! – An enthusiastic greeting. Note the exclamation point! Sometimes there’s more!!!! Enthusiasm is good. And, he even took the time to personalize it by adding your name. That’s significant. Thanks, Jim! is an appropriate response.
- HBD – that’s from the cool kids. A simple THX will do.
- Happy Birthday honey. U are awesome. Love you! – This is as good as it gets. Just “liking” this is a mortal sin. Be genuinely effusive in your response.
Saying Happy Birthday
It takes exactly 3 seconds to type in Happy birthday on someone’s wall. Maybe a bit longer if you didn’t take typing in high school.
If you pause before greeting someone on her birthday because you’re not sure if you know her well enough, or worse, not sure who she is, then pause a bit longer to consider unfriending her.
Expectations
Don’t expect greetings from everyone. They could be off the grid, taking a break or just missed it. I’ve missed many. And when you offer warm greetings, don’t expect the same in response. Sure it would be nice, but that’s not why you offered it.
Other suggestions?
