How to make a birthday fake

I have sometimes gone to great lengths to engineer birthday moments for unsuspecting strangers. Illustration by C Y Gopinath using Midjourney

It's your birthday soon. Here's a choice: would you rather receive a handful of heartfelt wishes from a few dozen cherished friends or a thousand or so birthday messages from casual acquaintances, friends of friends and strangers from all over the world?

In recent years, a depressing new trend has emerged. A dear friend or relative with nothing but the best intentions will go online to crowdsource birthday greetings for you from all and sundry. It's meant to be a surprise for you. On the special day, you will be deluged by wishes from thousands of people, most of whom might not recognise you in a transit lounge.

So - which would you prefer?

In 2019, when I received only 21 wishes on Facebook, I went spiralling into deep introspection, utterly crushed. I had received 219 wishes the previous year.

Wisdom dawned a day later - of the 219 well-wishers, 93 had been people I would have passed by on the street. Most of the others were Facebook friends of Facebook friends, responding mindlessly to
automatic reminders.

As for the handful of people who did and do wish me - they are mostly not social media users. Like normal human beings, those who truly love you and care for you are liable to forget your birthday and wish you, full of apologies, a few days later. Some will pick up the phone and talk.

I completely understand the panic that can grip a son or daughter (or husband or wife) at the thought that their spouse or parent might have a birthday no one notices.

In a different era, a warm, affectionate celebration with family and friends might have done just fine. But in today's world, you are judged by the size of your following. Spectacle, audience and numbers matter. Fortunately, each of those can be rigged.

Meet my friend Menaka Roy (not her real name) in Kolkata, widow, mother and grandmother who turned 75 two years ago. Her devoted son, planning a birthday surprise for her, posted a widely shared Facebook and WhatsApp invitation to just about anyone who happened to read it: Please send a birthday wish to my dear mother on her 75th birthday. It will make her very happy.

About 3,800 wishes came in, which the son compiled into an endless video and subjected the poor lady to for the best part of an hour.

"Who are all these people?" she asked me later, flummoxed. "Why are they all wishing me?"

Crowdsourcing birthday wishes went to a new level for a reader who wrote to me last month. He (and several hundred others) received a link to a Google Forms questionnaire from a dear friend planning a surprise for her husband's 60th birthday. The form clinically guided well-wishers through a step-by-step process for mining their memories, finding nostalgia, capturing the moments succinctly and even
suggesting a title.

I pointed out that many people don't have the time or, even with good intentions, forget. Questionnaires are efficient.

"I felt manipulated," he told me. "I don't need to be guided on how to remember a friend on a birthday."

What if the birthday child has a disability and few friends? Colin, a nine-year-old boy with special needs living near Kalamazoo, Michigan, turned 11 on March 9, 2014. He did not want a birthday party for the most heartbreaking reason: he could not think of anyone to invite.

His devoted mother, Jennifer, did what many might do: she decided to prove to Colin that not only did he have many many more ‘friends' than he had imagined but that they all remembered his birthday - even if she had to rig the whole thing.

Jennifer set up a Facebook page called ‘Mama Jennifer and Friends', inviting anyone and everyone to send birthday wishes to Colin. "Please join me in making my very original son feel special on this day," she said in her appeal.

A month before his birthday, Colin had received 40,000 likes. Jennifer set up a P.O. Box number to receive the birthday cards that many wanted to send. I checked the page minutes ago - it's still alive and thrumming, with 1.5 million likes and 1.2 million followers.

Colin has been love-bombed for nine years by people he has never met.

I asked one of my students, a child with Asperger's syndrome, how he would have liked such a torrent of wishes. "People like me are not very social," he said. "I'd have felt kinda exposed and embarrassed that so many people were being told about me."

Me, I like to keep my birthdays quiet. However, because I like surprising people, I have sometimes gone to great lengths to engineer birthday moments for unsuspecting strangers. Such as, in 2019, a middle-aged colleague living alone in the Philippines during the pandemic.

This year, as I turned 71, three of my birthday victims conspired to show up at my door, armed with cakes, balloons and smiles.

Three, they say, is a crowd. That's exactly the kind of crowdsourcing I like.

You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com
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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.