Changed my birthday listing on Facebook. Feeling great!

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There's so many questions and concerns floating around these threads, so I thought I would mix things up by sharing a success story. It all started out with a prank, but ended up helping me with identifying who my good friends are and aren't (not an easy thing for an NT, much less one of us!)

I changed my birthday listing to April 1st, 1900 just because I'm stopped being comfortable with putting my real birth date on social media. I don't know how many other nations are into this, but in the United States April 1st is known as April Fools' Day, a casual "holiday" celebrating jokes and pranks. I figured it might make for a good joke once the date rolled around, and all my friends would get notifications telling them to wish me a happy birthday.

Honestly, I was surprised at its success. I knew a few of my more gullible contacts would shoot me half-hearted birthday wishes, because that's what we're all programmed to do now, but I received dozens of earnest and thought-out Happy Birthday messages on April Fools' day. At the end of the day I revealed the joke and everyone involved was entertained.

And my real birthday was even better. I received several messages from people who knew my real date of birth (friends, not just family!) I'm very bad at identifying close friendships, and I have a tendency to assume that no one cares a great deal about me, so this was a great reminder that I'm not as unlikable as I think I am sometimes. Since then, I've put extra effort into staying in contact with those who remembered, since I know I have a tendency to alienate myself.

So, no cries for help today. Thanks for listening, people!

I used to have over 300 "friends" on FB, 99.3% of whom I had never met other than online. Most of that 99...% I never communicate with but ws "friended" just because of shared interests. I really do not like attention, especially on my birthday so after having had my page flooded with birthday greetings for 3 years, I hid my birth date and unfriended all but family members and a half dozen people I knew from online only but had communicated with as real online "friends." This year is the first time I got through my birthday without all that patter on my page. I specifically contacted family members and asked them to not publicly say anything about it on my page.

Everyone will think you are 114 years old, if you put 1900.

when i had my FB, i set my real birthday to be visible and still i got hardly any birthday messages.
oh well, no complaints.