NOTE: I put this into the schedule, so don’t read too much into the post’s date in determining who inspired me to write it.
Facebook has that “happy birthday” feature which I think is pretty neat because it encourages connection. Where it gets weird for me is people who are dead. I don’t feel comfortable posting in those cases. Can it be happy? They are dead. “Sad birthday” seems petty. “Meh birthday” seems ennui. There’s not a good option.
But, it also means me retaining a list of people in my head who passed while having their birthday set. Facebook is still sending me those prompts, so as my mental list of who is dead gets longer, I start to hit doubt.
Lately, doubt means going to the person’s profile and seeing if they’ve recently posted. But, then I got the person who prompted this post. They haven’t posted in 5 years. It’s only people posting happy birthdays. (It took me way too long to notice this person liked those going back 2 years.) No Facebook posts about them being dead. Lots of spam tagging them. I think… they aren’t dead, They just don’t engage in Facebook.
Well, I guess I’ll do the HBD prompt.
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