My Luddite Birthday by Andrew Ridker

Ijoined Facebook when I was 14. The first status I posted, on 5 September 2006, at 11.42am, read, simply, “Cold lampin’”. (I was a big Public Enemy fan.) All that cold lampin’ must have worn me out, though, because at 4.27pm, I updated my status to read, “Exhausted”.

Whenever I think to delete my Facebook account — which, since Mark Zuckerberg’s charmless testimony before Congress in 2018, has become a daily occurrence — I remember that the company already has a record of my thoughts and feelings going back more than 13 years. Facebook knows, for instance, that on 23 September 2006, at 9.59am, I was “getting my Jew on”.

At 1.20pm that same day, I was “blasting music and shouting ‘Wu-Tang! Wu-Tang!’” Facebook knows that on 3 October of that year, I was thinking of auditioning for the freshman play, and that on 4 December I was “worried about the play”. By 5 December I was “praying for the freshman play”. Combing through these early posts, a few key themes emerge: being Jewish, listening to hip-hop, and, of course, the freshman play. Nothing I post at 27 years old could be more banal or embarrassing than whatever I posted at 14. Why quit now?

Many of my friends have left Facebook for Instagram or Twitter. So has Generation Z. (I guess “Generation Climate Disaster” doesn’t really roll off the tongue.) But me? I’m still on Facebook with the Baby Boomers. I never saw the appeal of Instagram, where people post pictures of food I’m not eating and beaches I’m not lounging on, like they’re running their own personal Fyre Festivals. Twitter is like having a conversation with a friend over coffee, except that you can only talk for six seconds at a time, your friend hates you, and the coffee is poisoned. Also, the café is full of Nazis. Facebook, too, is terrible. I don’t like that my data was harvested by Cambridge Analytica. I don’t like that the company manipulates my newsfeed to conduct psychological experiments. I’m not so troubled by the fake Russian troll accounts —have you seen their posts? — but I’m sickened by the platform’s role in the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Myanmar.

Nonetheless, Facebook and I have a history. It knows where I went to school, what movies I like, and who I’ve dated. It knows where I’ve been, which politicians I support, and could pick my face out of a crowd. Much of this information I have given over willingly. (Much — but not all.) Facebook has a record of my entire adolescence. What would happen to that data — which is to say, my memory — if I left the site completely?

And then there are the unexpected ways the platform has insinuated itself into my life. Take the birthday feature, for example. I can imagine that in the olden days, you might take the time to memorise your friends’ birthdays, or at least write them into your papyrus day-planner. I’ve never had a need for that. Facebook remembers my friends’ birthdays for me. Better yet, Facebook remembers mine.

Every year since I was 14, I could count on receiving dozens, if not hundreds, of posts on my birthday, from close friends and distant acquaintances alike. I’d go 364 days without thinking of my pre-school playmate, or my high school French teacher, but then, on my birthday, they’d suddenly materialise. Better yet — they’d wish me well!

A funny thing happened on my birthday last December. I woke up, checked Facebook, and was surprised to find that I hadn’t yet received any birthday posts. I have friends in foreign time zones, and could usually depend on a handful of posts appearing overnight. I didn’t think much of it until 9.00am rolled around, then 10. Still nothing. I’d received texts and phone calls from close friends and family but nothing was happening online. I checked Facebook again. My birthday was still listed. What was happening? Where was my high school French teacher?

My younger sister informed me that people just weren’t using Facebook anymore. That might have explained the drop in birthday posts. But zero? By late afternoon I was despairing. I’d planned to spend the day walking to my favourite bookstores, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave the apartment. I would have settled for a single post. Zero was intolerable. What had happened to me over the past year? I had let my relationships deteriorate. In splitting my time between the Midwest and the East Coast, I had neglected friends in both places. I’d grown selfish and antisocial. I spent too much time alone. In devoting myself to writing, I had forsaken human connection. By sundown I was reevaluating my entire life.

That evening, on my way to meet my girlfriend for dinner, a friend texted to wish me happy birthday. She would have posted on my wall, she wrote, but Facebook wouldn’t let her. That’s when I remembered: I had disabled that feature months ago. Only I could post on my wall. It was like a twist out of Maupassant, except there was no moral and I hadn’t learned anything. But there was irony. I had disabled my wall in an effort to use the site less. My plan was for a slow withdrawal: first I’d prevent friends from posting, then gradually I’d stop posting myself, until I became a digital hermit and abandoned the platform entirely.

At dinner, sitting across from my candlelit girlfriend, sharing a plate of highly-edible chickpea fritters, I put my phone away and vowed to leave the site by my 28th birthday. We’ll see how that goes. I still have a few weeks left.

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