Culturebox: My Fake Facebook Birthdays

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technology My Fake Facebook Birthdays What happened when I celebrated my Facebook birthday on July 11. And July 25. And July 28. By David Plotz Posted Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2011, at 7:02 AM ET Good manners, of course, are just artifice--formalized rituals, designed for social lubrication, that mean nothing. From the cotillion curtsey to the subway-train "excuse me," they create automatic mechanisms for encountering strangers and papering over conflict. They are false, but they are necessary. Yet there is one manifestation of good manners that appears to have exactly the opposite purpose, a form of social lubrication that makes a mockery of everyone connected to it. I refer to the Facebook birthday greeting. The Facebook birthday greeting has become a symbol of all that is irritating about the social network. Every April 11 or June 7 or Sept. 28, your Facebook account suddenly chatters with exclamation-point-polluted birthday wishes. If you are a typical Facebook user, these greetings come mainly from your nonfriend friends--that group of Facebook "friends" who don't intersect with your actual friends. The wishes have all the true sentiment of a Christmas card from your bank. The barrage of messages isn't unpleasant, exactly, but it's all too obvious that the greetings are programmed, canned, and impersonal, prompted by a Facebook alert. If, as Facebook haters claim, the social network alienates us from genuine friendship, the Facebook birthday greeting is the ultimate example of its fakery. To continue reading, click here. David Plotz is Slate's editor. He is the author of Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible. You can e-mail him at dplotz@slate.com. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Senate Easily Passes Debt-Ceiling Bill. Look Who Voted Against It. Hitchens: What It Means That Turkey Has Pushed Out Its Top Generals Why Did Seven Heads of State Attend the Opening of This Shopping Mall ... in Kazakhstan?	Advertisement
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