Birthday Post #11

I really only care about social media 1 day a year. Just one day each year I indulge my vanity by counting how many people wish me happy birthday by text, e-mail and various social media sites. Well this year, that one day just happens to be the same day as National Unplugging Day, where you are supposed to put down the phone and not wish your favorite blogger happy birthday. What a cruel irony.

Despite the unplugging day, I still had pretty good birthday numbers, so thanks everyone for ignoring national unplugging day just so you could wish me happy birthday. On to the chart:

I wasn't expecting a full Rachel Morgan meter or a Ray Smith, but I was a bit surprised I didn't get called Fartface after getting one 7 of the last 8 years.  Everything else seems pretty much in-line with what I would expect.

Thanks again for the true friends of the blog who continue to wish me a happy birthday just for the stats.

10 Years of Birthday Posts

I first started tracking my birthday facebook posts in 2011 due to a fluke. I was two years out of college and had moved across the country. Many of my facebook friends were from college and I was no longer seeing them regularly and I was starting to realize how much smaller my social circle was as a young professional in semi-rural Washington state than it was in Ann Arbor. Then my birthday rolled around and almost no one wished me a happy birthday on facebook (except my family) which only confirmed my suspicion that I went from being someone with lots of friends to someone with no friends.

What I didn't know when I created the initial post about how I was a friendless loser, was that I had inadvertently hidden my birthday on Facebook. The following year I was in DC for my birthday, and although I had gone out for drinks with some people from work, I found myself alone that evening and decided to blog about my birthday, but I didn't even include a chart that year (but that was the year that I started tracking my first non-FB post stat - Mr. Ray). What I failed to mention is that my numbers rebounded back to my average from college. Year three is when things really solidified into place for the annual birthday post tradition.

Year 5 was a big year. It's the first year I started tracking some of numbers-behind-the-numbers (total facebook friends, fartface, and double Rachel Morgans). In year 6 I started adding non-facebook messages received to the chart going back to 2014. Year 7 was my thirtieth birthday, so I added my total number of facebook friends line to the chart. Year 8 was bittersweet getting the coveted Double Rachel Morgan, but for the first (and last) time since meeting her I didn't get called a fartface by my friend Beth. Last year was year 9, and I totally revamped my chart for optimal tracking.

It's been a wild ride. So now here we are in 2020, my 10th birthday post and 15 years worth of facebook happy birthday data:

For those who may not remember:

- My friend Beth normally wishes me happy birthday fartface so there is an icon for that. 
- My goal of getting both former Rachel Morgans to wish me a happy birthday fell one Rachel Morgan short. A full Rachel Morgan meter is a very rare feat. Perhaps in 2021.
-Ray Smith is a guy who facebook friended my after we had a 20 minute conversation in 2008. He then wished my a happy birthday pretty regularly until he suddenly ceased in 2017. Since he was the first thing I really tracked I feel obligated to put him on the chart. I tried to use his face for the icon, but he has deleted his facebook account, which likely means no more happy birthday messages from Ray. So without his picture I was forced to use that of Ray Smith the Welsh actor who played the tough-talking police chief, Detective Superintendent Gordon Spikings from the British television series Dempsey and Makepeace.

As for the analysis, I'll keep it brief. My numbers are up this year, and the 6 year decline has ceased. I'm back at 2018 numbers. It's still a long ways to go, but my group texts continue to be a growth area for me.

Thank you for joining me on this journey of self-absorption and pettiness. I guess I'll keep on doing this every year until either I die or facebook ceases to exist.

The Dirty Thirty

Ol' man Russell here with another installment of my annual birthday post. It's been a good ride so far. Maybe time to look back at some accomplishments of the first 30 years of my existence.

In no particular order:

- Procreated

- Driven across the country

- Learned to ride a unicycle

- Built a chicken coop

- Drove a bus

- Graduated college

- Ate a spaghetti taco

- Watched all of The Wire

- Solved a Rubik's cube

- Sung a love song, like the way it's meant to be

- Shredded a Double Black Diamond (EXTREME)

- Went on the Price is Right with Bob Barker

- Slammed Poetry

- Fell in love

- Won a salsa contest

- BLOGGED FOR OVER A DECADE!

Alrighty now, enough of that.

In my first 30 years, I've also been a few places. Not probably as many as I would like, but I'm looking forward to going to some new spots soon.

Countries I've visited.

Counties I've visited.

OK. NOW THE MAIN ATTRACTION:

The annual chart of how many people wished me happy birthday. 

• The numbers: 36 facebook posts, 2 calls, 4 cards and 8 other electronic messages (texts slightly nudged out snapchats). Twitter remains a weak birthday message medium.
• My facebook posts are slowly declining. Maybe it's because I'm getting older and there are more facebook friends that I rarely interact with. But I did hope this would be a big year for me since I had a substantial birthday AND because it was on a Sunday which is a day that I assume people spend more time on facebook than other days of the week. Maybe in the future I'll track the day of the week as a data point.
• As promised a year ago, the feature you've all been waiting for is finally here. The facebook friend trend line. It's so scale-skewed! But I have the same number of facebook friends as last year.
• Speaking of facebook friends, I'm considering purging some of my friends. There are considerable numbers of facebook friends who I have no idea who they are, or why we became friends in the first place. I've been waiting until after this data pull to do it, but next year I might have 100 less friends. But I'm planning to not delete anyone who wishes me happy birthday to hopefully lose the dead weight and improve my ratio.  I recently did the same thing with my phone contacts. It was a sober reality that I'll likely never call/text the 20 girls I had crushes on in High School ever again.
• While my overall numbers have remained in the 50s, I'm pretty sure the number of people that actually wished my happy birthday is much lower. I had several people call or text and then also throw something on facebook just to get their stats in. Pathetic. It really calls into question the meticulous data I've been gathering.
• Ray = Total Fraudster. He's auto-happy birthdaying for sure. There's no doubt anymore. I'm not even going to mention him next year.
• It's the 5th annual "Happy Birthday Fartface" post. So that's still happening.
• No double Rachel Morgan this year again :(
• Going international. I got facebook posts from both Africa and Australia. I'm branching out worldwide!
• People often ask how to get mentioned in this post (Forno). There you go.

Happy 5th Birthday to my most reliable content!

THE INTRODUCTION!
For a five years now I have annually blogged about how many Happy Birthday Facebook posts I receive. I now have 11 years of data going back to 2006. I think I can safely say that I am the only person in the world who blogs about about their yearly Facebook Birthday posts going back to 2006.

This year didn't see anything earth shattering. I clocked in at 42 Facebook posts. The exact same number as I pulled down in 2015. But for the first time I have also included other birthday messages in the chart using data I have going back to 2013. The non-facebook breakdown came in at 5 text messages, 2 snapchats, 3 emails, 2 calls and 2 cards. I got nothing on my newest social media platform Instagram even though I posted a picture of me having a birthday beer. 

THE CHART!

As Brick pointed out - I was a real asshole in 2011.

THE DETAILS!

I'm down a Rachel Morgan. This year I received a facebook post from only one of the two Rachel Morgans in my life. This is disappointing.

Total Friend Count. I'm officially at 600 Facebook friends, which is up from 590 last year. There were several messages from my newer facebook friends. So maybe I need to make at least 10 Facebook friends each year just to maintain my status. This seems like a lot of pressure. Eventually once I have a little more data the bar graph will feature total friend count as a line on the chart. I gotta save some new features for next year.

The Ray-Man. For the 7th time in 8 years Ray has dutifully left a "Happy Birthday" post on my wall. It's always exactly the same message "Happy birthday". I'm starting to wonder if Ray has a Happy Birthday facebook bot, which apparently do exist! Which would be cheating. But then why didn't I get a message in 2011, and how come in both 2009 and 2010 he left "Happy Birthday" with a capital B? What's the story here? I implore each and every one of you to become friends with Ray Smith and track his birthday postings.

*Also, what if you have a FB Happy Birthday bot, and then the person dies and you wish them happy birthday after they are dead. That would be bad.

More Investigation. In my quest to determine more about Ray I went to another Michigan Alumnus's FB page that has a birthday on March 4th and saw that he too had a "Happy birthday" post from Ray. I suspect he is equally as acquaintanced with Ray as I am. But the real shocker was that with only 690 facebook friends this guy is getting 79 facebook posts on his birthday. You guys need to step your game up.

Lastly. I have now been called a fartface on my birthday for four years in a row by my friend Beth. 

Sustained Success

It's time for everyone's favorite post. My annual birthday facebook post analysis. For new fans of the blog, the general process is to count the number of "happy birthday" facebook posts I get and then either gripe about it being lower than last year, or celebrate it being higher.

As you may have guessed the title "sustained success" is there because overall this was a pretty good year. In fact it's the third year in a row that I've been happy with my results since a disastrous 2011. Overall I clocked in at 42 FB posts, 2 emails, 3 texts, 2 calls, 1 set of flowers, 1 card and 3 snapchats (a first). So here is the updated chart of facebook posts that you have all been waiting a year for:

Onto the details:

Statistics
Taking out 2011 which has been deemed an outlier, I now have N=9 data points. For a first time in birthday post history I've done higher level math. The mean number of posts is 40.6, and the standard deviation is 6.63 posts. With 42 posts I'm just above average, but I think I'd have to use a T-score to know exactly what the probability of this is, which is a bit too much math.

Total friends
Last year was the first year I tracked my total number friends, since I theorized that my post number might be dependent on the number of friends I have. Last year I had 587, this year I have 590. Which means I'm losing FB friends almost as fast as I make them, and probably not a major factor in the number of posts.

Fartface
There was more than just sustained success in number of posts. I also received my third annual "happy birthday fartface" post from my friend Beth. I enjoy how she remembers to call me a fartface each year without fail.

Ray
Since profiling Ray in my 2012 birthday post I've been tracking whether my most acquaintance-ish facebook friend wishes my happy birthday. This year he came through with a simple "Happy Birthday". The guy might have 1,900 facebook friends, but the 20 minutes we spent together in 2009 must still be fresh in his memory. Thanks for keeping the faith Ray!

Double Rachel Morgans
I got a happy birthday post from BOTH Rachel Morgans I know. If there is someone I know named Rachel Morgan it's pretty much a guarantee that they will wish me happy birthday on facebook.

The self-aware poster
I did have multiple people mention this post in their birthday post. But surprisingly it turns out it's the nearly the same people who mentioned by birthday blog post last year. Which means I can safely say I have 2 people that post on my facebook because of the blog post implications.

Twitter
In other news I did tweet on my birthday that the Statute of Limitations on all my underage drinking officially expired on my birthday. That got 2 favorites, which is the only twitter birthday interaction I've ever received. I guess twitter is just not a good birthday message medium.

Back on Top!

It's the post you've been waiting for an entire year to read. It's my now yearly post on the number of happy birthday facebook posts I receive and subsequently gripe about. Let me give you the executive summary:

I'm Back On Top, Baby!

That's right. I came in at a whopping 46 posts yesterday. It was a veritable who's-who of friend, family and acquaintances. I don't know what got in to people yesterday, but it seems like there was a pretty solid amount of posting. Include in that 2 email messages, 3 text messages, 4 physical cards and one facebook message; it was quite the haul.



Notes:

• A return of Mr. Ray. After a mysterious year off he showed back up to wish my a happy birthday. Thanks Ray! 
• Should I start trying to track this by percentage of facebook friends who leave me posts? My number of facebook friends hasn't grown much in the past few years, but it would be nice to measure this as a rate as opposed to absolute numbers. For future reference I currently have 587 facebook friends.
• Do these blog posts influence the number of FB posts I receive? Some of my facebook posts did make mention of the blog post regarding their facebook posts. So who knows?

Either way, I'm now officially in my late twenties and it would seem that the high school and college friends that make up most of my facebook friends have been slowly drifting away from me. So to have so many of them wish me a happy birthday is just really special. Now to count how many people tweet at me for my birthday. (Hint: it's less than one, but I have to have something to gripe about!)

"Happy Bday Bruss"

In what has turned into a very sad yearly exercise for the blog I now present my annual gripe about the number of birthday Facebook posts I receive. I've updated the chart from the 2011 post to now reflect the last two years worth of data.

Birthday Facebook Wall Posts by Year

So I'm back up to my historical averages, and I've officially attributed 2011's pathetic haul to a fluke that hid my birthday on Facebook. But that does provide insightful data that only about 6 people remember my birthday without the help of Facebook  In addition to the wall posts, I got 3 emails, 1 Google chat status, 4 text messages, 2 phone calls and 1 card. The winner of best text message goes to my sister Laura who sent me "Birthday Boy!!" continually throughout the day at perfect 2 hour intervals.

Unfortunately there was no post from Mr. Ray.

This post title is from the hands-down most common facebook post I received  although a younger me would have gone with the exceptional "Happy Birthday Fart Face" from my friend Beth.

Proof that less people care about me

This is a graph of how many people write me birthday messages on my Facebook Wall.

During my peak college years I was getting about 45 birthday wall posts a year. Just a few short years later I'm down to receiving 7. Even the breakdown of the 7 was a little depressing. 6 from my family and one from a guy at work. And one of those 7 was a very suspicious post from an Aunt followed immediately by a post from her husbands account. I know the only reason her husband even has a Facebook is so she can go and play more Farmville on it.

I'd like to chalk this up to people using Facebook less to wish people happy birthday, but they didn't make up for it with 38 texts or calls. It's just another data point of the trend of me having less friends than I did in 2009.

But here is some interesting analysis.

This chart adds in the number of blog posts that I write in a year to compare with the number of birthday FB wall posts. 2011 is projected. Maybe there is some correlation between blogging and people caring about me. Perhaps if I blog more this year, I'll have more birthday well-wishers next year. Hell, it's worth a try.

Time Zones

Ya know what really dunks my donut? When times zones are unrepresentative of people sleep habits. I mean really. It's like the bane of my existence.

It's like this, people don't go to bed when the sun sets, and they don't get up when the sun rises. Without Daylight Savings Time, the sun would rise at 5am and set at 8:15pm in June. In January the sun rises at 8 am and sets at 5:30 pm. Sure maybe half the population is awake at 8am but no one goes to bed at 5:30. That's dumb.

This is a chart of the percent of people awake at any given time of day for Ann Arbor Michigan. I made it using my best estimate of when people go to bed and wake up. The blue box is the sunlight times in summer with DST, so it is shifted over an hour.

My point is that the box should be put in the center of people's day. The boxes should be centered around 2pm. And why don't we observe DST all year round? Does anyone really like the sun setting at 5pm? Why not have the sun rise at like 9am and set at 6pm.

Furthermore, I live on the western edge of my time zone so people on the east coast have the sun rise at 7:15 am and set at 4:30 pm in the winter. Even with daylight savings time the sun rises at 5:30 am in June.

I feel like I'm the only person who cares about this. Everyone I try to explain this to doesn't think it's a big deal. But even Venezuela decided to change it's time zones by 30 minutes to fit peoples lives better, and if Chavez can do it why can't we?