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brianhelge.com [blog]

A little experiment

May 15, 2008
Most people know that I'm not too fond of Facebook. It's obviously a good site, but I can't understand why people spend hours and hours (a day) checking up on people that they're not really friends with. Last year I had a bunch of people wishing me well on my birthday and I'm sure some meant it and was sure that even fewer actually remembered without a site telling them.

Hence my experiment.

This year I removed my birthday from the public view to see how it would differ and thanks to Google, I even set the blog post on my birthday to be displayed at 11:59 pm so no one would see it until the next day.

Outside of my immediate family I received one text, one email and one Facebook message while two others meant well but were shopping for housing supplies all day. Ben even added a comment saying that since it wasn't on Facebook, he didn't remember. Is this what life is coming to? Outside of my family, I know at least 10 people's birthdays and I let them know through a call, in person or a simple email every year. It's the same thing as how people don't memorize other people's phone numbers because they are conveniently stored in our cell phones. So what happens if the internet crashes and we lose our cell phone? Do we just render ourselves obsolete?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not someone who wants everyone to call me up. Lately it's just been the opposite. I like to keep the day low key and will never tell anyone unless they ask. I just find it very interesting that online sites like Facebook have completely taken over my generation and that's the only reason people said something a year ago.
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