Birthdays in the Age of Online Social Networks

Last night, I left an optimizing program running on the five year old computer (with the ten year old display), in hopes that the computer might run a little more quickly today. I got up early and came down to see if there were any speed improvements and to start working on a blog post. There are some interesting topics I want to explore around Casey Alexander, Nancy Grace and Melanie Klein, as well as the debt ceiling and unemployment.

Unfortunately, the computer isn’t really running that much more quickly. On top of that, I had over 100 messages on my Facebook wall. You see, today is my birthday, and many friends have been sharing birthday greetings on my wall. A while ago, I started making it a practice to wish most of my friends happy birthday on their walls. I don’t know how much that has influenced the great outpouring of birthday wishes to me, today, but they have been great.

I decided to take a bit of time and respond to as many as possible. I’ll probably stop responding as much when I go offline for various events around the state, but the past couple hours have been great.

It made me think about how wonderful it is to have many people saying, “I hope you have a great day.” While sharing a birthday greeting is a great way to stay connected with people, especially if you have lots of friends on Facebook, expressing hope that the people around you have a great day seems even more powerful.

So, I’ll return to talking with friends on social media sites for a little while before heading off on my great adventure today, and with that,

I hope you have a great day.

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