Happy Birthday to Me,
Happy Birthday to Me,
Happy Birthday Dear Stever…
Happy Birthday to Me.
“Happy Birthday, Stever!!”
—Automated email sent by a website I’m registered with
Unlike most of you, I’ve been using the Internet(1) since 1977. All my middle-school friends were people I met online. Until tenth grade. After moving to San Diego and making some real, live friends, it was a revelation: people are a lot more fun in person than they are online. Life since then has been an ongoing search for community, companionship, and friendship.
People made fun of me as a geek thirty years ago. Today, they’re where I was, and I have no sympathy whatsoever.
It’s my birthday. What did I get? A bunch of e-cards. If you’re someone who sent one, I appreciate the thought. Sort of. Here’s what goes on in my head when I get an e-card:
Ooooh, I feel so … loved. Someone took time for me! They browsed a web page, clicked their mouse, and typed my email address. In some cases, their automated Birthday service even sent the ecard automatically. Wow! What a warm fuzzy feeling! Technology lets them be my friend so … efficiently. That’s the point of life, after all, to be efficient. The alternative is almost too horrible to contemplate. Did you know, in the olden days, they would have, say, picked up the phone and dialed(2) ten digits. It would have meant lifting a finger instead of just moving one up and down, but that’s OK. They’d probably just get my voicemail anyway. After all, who has time to talk on the phone any more?
And this, gentle readers, is what passes for friendship in lovely 2006. Next year, if you’re tempted to send me an e-card, don’t bother. I won’t feel loved. It will just clutter up my inbox and waste my time(3). If you want to show you care, get out a pen or pencil and write me a postcard. In hand-writing. And use my name (spell it correctly, please). Do anything to show that it’s really you writing, and you’re deliberately, purposely writing to me.
I don’t want a relationship with your automated Birthday Mailer.
I don’t want cheerful, Arial 10 greetings with optionally bolded text and a link to your 6 favorite BLOGs.
I don’t want a cute animated “Happy Birthday” logo.
I want human connection. Is that too much to ask? In 2006, the answer would seem to be Yes.
— Stever
(1) Then, the ARPANET. I used MIT-MC (no domain names back then), which ran ITS (The Incompatible Time-Sharing System).
(2) Now I feel old. For all you millenials, phones used to have dials instead of buttons. That’s why we “dial” a phone.
(3) I’m in hour 2 of trying to figure out which firewall, spam blocker, and cookie collector is preventing my Dad’s JacqueLawton.com eCard from displaying. Just think, if I’d known in advance this would be so hard to view, I would have just called Dad. But now it’s too late. I have to go set up for my birthday party. All my time, used up by the card. No time left to talk to Dad. Is there a relationship here? Sure. It’s between me and JacqueLawton’s embedded Flash Object. We’ve spent more time together than I spend with most humans. If I ever talk to Dad again, I’ll have to remember to thank him for introducing us.