One of my favorite parts of birthday parties has always been when other people open their presents.
It’s weird that opening presents myself isn’t what I love, but there’s just something about the way their fingers grapple at the tissue paper, the way a smile swings across their face as they scan the card, the way happiness lights their face when they finally get to the present.
It’s the relief and excitement that comes with knowing the thought put into picking “that perfect something” out for them paid off.
Being with people when they open well-given gifts is one of life’s little joys. It brings with it the happiest of nostalgias, remembering those birthday parties when you were little and ecstatic at the prospect of so many presents waiting to be opened.
Thanks to Facebook, though, one can now skip all of those silly sentimentalities and go straight to the gift-giving. Just clicks away and one can be done with the whole business. There never has to be an exchange a single word or even see the other person’s face at all!
The Facebook Help Center describes Facebook Gifts as the ability to “buy real gifts for friends to celebrate birthdays, new jobs and other big moments.” These are the sorts of things you celebrate in person. In fact, it only becomes a “celebration” because one has other people to cherish the moment with.
I love my birthday because I get to laugh until my cheeks hurt and be happy, surrounded by my friends and family. The part that makes the presents wonderful is having the people giving them near me. If ever I had to spend a birthday by myself, but with tons of gifts via Facebook, I would be heartbroken. It’s upsetting that we feel like we no longer have the time to celebrate these things with the actual “friends” themselves, or if that’s not possible, to give them a call, at least.
To make it worse, Facebook, in all its thoughtlessness, has provided us with this: “Once you send a gift, we’ll notify your friend … they won’t see the price of the gift, but they can choose a different size, color or style. They can even swap it for another similarly priced gift before it ships.”
At this point, Facebook has thrown gift-giving to the floor and spit on it. I don’t care if it’s a truly horrible gift; I don’t ever want the option to change someone’s gift before I get it. That’s just giving yourself a gift. What makes me happy about getting gifts is that someone cared enough to take the time to think about my interests and quirks and get me something based on that, not that they were physically capable of giving me money.
In fact, because Facebook provides the option to publicly display when one gives gifts to other people, it would seem that gift-giving, like so many other things, is going to lose its intimacy, its sentimentality, its meaning.
And it’s not just Facebook. It would seem that everything social media touch turns not to gold, but to a shallow, impersonal version of what it was before.
Relationships, for example, used to be beautifully intimate things. The laughter and memories shared were reserved for the couple and those close to them. Now, it seems like the greatest step of a relationship is making it FBO (Facebook Official). Everything is about making the relationship look wonderful all the time, which means taking every part of the relationship and eagerly sacrificing it to social media for the whole world to see.
Sure, we’re living the information revolution. Life is centered around the internet and the sharing of information. But living in a revolution means that the old way of life is phasing out, and a new way of life is beginning to take over. This means our generation is the last one that’s going to remember and truly understand the happiness and importance of the little things in life, like a scrawling, hand-written letter or a well-given gift.
It took seeing the concept of “Facebook gifts” to make me realize it, but I don’t know what I’d do without the little things in life to cheer me up. They’ve taught me the importance of a little privacy, intimacy and sentimentality every now and again, and that’s too important a lesson to lose.
Call me old-fashioned, but I maintain that letting the happy, nostalgic bits of life slip away in the intimidating face of social media would be a tragic mistake. I’m going to strengthen my resolve to stop social media from infringing upon my life, and to hold steadfast to those little things that make me so happy; it’s an effort I believe wholeheartedly in, and I urge everyone to do the same.
By Urmila Kutikkad