Yesterday people at my job were wishing me happy birthday all day. It wasn't my birthday. Then I realized... it was my facebook birthday.
These colleagues were people I had not friended on facebook, either, except for one. And after that first person said it to me -- and I thought he'd know me better to remember my real birthday, since he had been invited to the party some two years before -- I just stopped telling the rest that it wasn't my real birthday after all. I just gave up, and took all the new birthday wishes in stride, kind of rejoicing to have a brand new birthday, the second one this year.
I don't feel comfortable exposing true personal identity data on any of these sites, and I've been on them since friendster pre-history. It always shocks me how much intimate information people post on this thing, and not surprised when it bites them in the ass.
It made me realize exactly just how powerful facebook has become. It just creates whole new realities for people, pushing their real-life events to a questionable back file in their brain.
Upon signing in to fb of course I had a slew of birthday wall posts, and they also included several other people who had been at my IRL birthday party previously.
I thanked them all profusely.
