And I felt a bit weird because I don't get as many greetings as the previous years. I guess I've really gotten used to getting "attention" in FB so that when things "get back to normal" (like the time before blogging and FB), I felt a little deprived of all the attention, though I know that most people who congratulated me the previous years only did so because FB had notified them about my birthday.
I wonder how the future will be like...when the world is getting more and more connected so easily...it's so easy to succumb to the lures of getting more and more attention. In the past nothing like this is possible unless one puts on a huge sign on top of one's head "Today is my birthday", but then that would make others think that the person is such a narcissist or over-the-top or crazy.
There's a very fine line between sharing with others and "bragging" or "wanting as much attention as possible" and I really have to be careful in not crossing that line, especially since it's so easy these days to do such a thing without it being considered a crazy thing.
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I find that I have a similar problem. I don't really count the birthday wishes as belonging to that inclination, though. Or, maybe it does, but it usually has positive results. And, although people wouldn't know about your birthday without Facebook, they want to wish you well. I love reaching out to people on their birthdays -- it's an excuse to reestablish contact with someone when it might be hard or socially unacceptable to do so without a reason. It's silly, but I think that's sort of the way that the culture of Facebook works.
ReplyDeleteAside from that, I'm with you. It's good to be mindful of how all that attention affects us.
THANKS for sharing your POV with me. :-) I guess I'm just sort of still confused about this kind of social media because I still spent many more years without it, so still trying to figure out my limits, I suppose. :-)
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