‘Happs bday x’
Article published by HERD.
Birthdays. Eagerly awaited by some, dreaded by others. An annual marker of the passing of time, the ticking clock.
For some, it’s a day that extends into an entire month, materialising as an abundance of hedonistic ventures and excuses to knock back the Prosecco every night. For others, it remains a day-that-shall-not-be-named, preferably breezed over like a minor pot-hole in the road; a day significantly insignificant, buried in the back of mind and only discussed in hushed voices. Once urging the years on, we begin to will them to slow down, dreading the climbing number of our age like an electricity bill.
In the earlier days, it was the thrill of a packet of Marlborough, escaping the paranoia of a fake I.D, and striding into the 15-rated film at the cinema with confidence. Later, it becomes the beckoning of the menopause, freedom bus passes and wrinkled foreheads.
Though many live in denial of birthdays — my aunt’s turned 21 for the past 45 years — or see age as a social construct, which we don’t have to adhere to, birthdays remain a constant throughout our ever-lengthening lifespans. They function as both a personal and a universal marker, with the culture and rituals around this annual celebration enabling us to reflect upon how society has changed and developed over the years. With technology having drastically affected modes of connectivity and communication during my brief time on this earth, each birthday marks a distinct chapter in our social evolution.
Somewhere in my house, there is a plastic folder stuffed full of birthday cards from my youth, yellowed with time. Though short and sweet in sentiment, these cards were utterly reliable and greatly anticipated. Arriving like clockwork, a week-premature, they sat promisingly on the hall table, a test of patience; the warm familiarity of Grandma’s cursive alongside that of an obscure, distant family member who never missed the date.
Balloons, streamers and a Barbie cake were all it took to please — and an oversized, light-up badge for the special years. During term time, it was the honour of bringing in cupcakes for the class, and the relished — albeit fleeting — social status that came with that. During holidays, balloons tied to the front door were all that notified the outside world of the occasion, along with a disco-ball, Britney spears, marzipan fuelled bash if you were fortunate. The dependable call from my Grandparents was the only time spent on the phone, during which they would sing ‘happy birthday’ down the line in glorious — albeit unintentional — canon. Every year; without fail.
BBM (Blackberry Messenger) was a phase that took the Millenials and Gen Z’s of this nation by storm; a notable shift in the pace of conversation and accessibility, a time soundtracked by the collective clicking of plastic keys and the threat of thumb strain. On birthdays, the iconic red light would flash in overdrive like a firework display. With our phones glued to our palms, and scarcely coming up for air in a tsunami of messages, we began to acclimatise to this new volume of attention on our birthdays.
The accumulation of a triple-figure catalogue of Facebook friends had a colossal impact on birthday culture. When Facebook was still in its prime, birthdays involved a mass inundation of public wall-posts and declarations of appreciation — helpfully prompted by a notification. “Friends” re-emerged from every corner of life, plastering your Facebook wall with messages of varying sentiment:
Happs Bday and
HBD x
Lacking in charm, maybe, but racking up the quantity nonetheless, successfully helping surpass last year’s haul. Well-wishes from friends of varying integrity: your oldest friend, a girl you met at Butlins aged 7, a stranger you snogged at a house-party once last year (who’s name you didn’t know), and that infamous year above who you wouldn’t dare share eye contact with the following morning at school. All played a vital role, contributing to the dopamine-filled day you had looked forward to since the previous year; a lingering stamp of popularity, proof of your worth stacked up neatly on your profile.
Obligatory photo collages from your best friends were to be expected; a collection of your most undignified and unrefined moments from the past 12 months, and entire lifetime, captured and stashed for this special day. Evidence of memories you need no reminding of — the aftermath of a whole bottle of Glenn’s vodka in the park — dusted off and brought to the light year upon year. Your intimate moments revealed to everybody, a gift of pre-meditated humiliation from your nearest and dearest. Though never acknowledged, there was implicit competition between friends, with the quality of collage a clear sign of their place in the social hierarchy — the more spectacular the collage, the most legitimate the friendship.
A couple of years ago, Facebook began a slow, withering demise. Instagram took centre stage, as the former was left to rot — kept alive only as a sprawling address book, and by middle-aged gardeners sharing snapshots of their allotment successes. With this, came an ambiguity around birthday etiquette.
We continued to turn to Facebook for its previous gratification, but were now met with a disheartening response: birthday posts that you could count on one hand — from the stragglers who hadn’t yet got the note about moving on— tumbleweed rolling across our profiles, the whistling of sinking hearts and deflated egos. But rather than a sign of social extradition, this was just a sign that communication had progressed, and birthday culture would soon adapt to its new home.
Instagram has now been part of our lives for a decade, growing and metamorphosing alongside us over this time. Once just a place for poor quality photographs and rainbow filters, it’s now a superpower that has taken worldwide interconnectivity into a whole new realm. It functions simultaneously as a tool for business, a political platform, an artistic portfolio, a dating-profile, a means of communication, social promotion, and a personal mood board. With the mass migration to Instagram, birthday culture adapted into what we know it as now...
Unlike Facebook, Instagram doesn’t dutifully remind followers of the birthdays, hence it has become our personal responsibility to prompt people ourselves. We must lace the feed with triggers, so that our followers simply can’t miss news of the big day —photos of ourselves, basking in the ‘birthday glow’, surrounded by silver helium balloons and sporting a plastic tiara, with the caption “21!” below.
After giving a gentle nudge, we can sit back and watch our handiwork unfurl, taking the form of likes, comments and messages. Facebook collages have now been replaced by Instagram ‘stories’, chopped up into a million mini morsels of appreciation and odes to the past, with length the new measure of appreciation. We watch as images of our face spread across social media like wildfire, and re-share these ‘stories’ of our time on earth to our own profiles — for all of those that might have missed the previous prompt.
Shops such as Paperchase and Scribbler have succeeded in keeping the birthday card alive and kicking — though cards are now far less common, commonly crude and often based around an avocado-themed pun — and websites such as Moonpig and Funky Pigeon have also helped shift card-giving into the contemporary.
Possibly instilled in me by a Mother who wrote me a card for every possible occasion — ‘good luck’, ‘well done’, ‘thinking of you’, ‘just a note’ — I am still a great advocate for the power of the birthday card, and believe they’ve taken on a whole new weight: a signifier that you are worth the time and effort of handwritten words, the intimacy and closeness felt through their hand-smudged ink, the lick of their saliva sealing the envelope, the knowledge that you were in someone’s thoughts (before you reminded them). Though less fruitful than it used to be, receiving the post on my birthday might still be the thing I look forward to the most.
Despite the torrent of contact and hype we now experience on our birthdays — thanks to social media — I can’t deny feeling a little empty when the day comes around; although full on emojis and gif-laden photographs, I find myself unsatisfied. The love feels removed, trapped behind the glass of my phone screen.
Technology has connected us to a number of people that would’ve been simply unfathomable two decades ago, however this dissatisfaction I feel implies to me that it’s not the number, but the quality of relationships that feels significant on my birthday. I’d argue that, through the process of evolution, birthday culture has lost some of the effort, thought and care that makes the day feel noteworthy.
There remains something in the handwritten card, the bunch of flowers, the home-made cake, the phone call, that can’t be emulated through social media; a physical manifestation of love and thought that feels tangible between your two hands. What we really desire on our birthdays, is a sense of authentic human connection, something Instagram alone will never quite fulfil.