The Facebook Birthday Effect

FB Birthday Barrage: There’s nothing like a birthday to bring oddballs out of the woodwork on Facebook. Your wall quickly fills with well-wishes from those close to you and those you only vaguely know at all. It’s a nice but empty gesture. It was a funny coincidence that this article by Slate’s David Plotz, “My Fake Facebook Birthdays: What happened when I celebrated my Facebook birthday on July 11. And July 25. And July 28” was published this week, on my birthday. I did indeed experience the FB Birthday posts barrage. I did not, however, as Plotz did, then change my birthday on Facebook two more times to see if people still posted birthday messages on my new fake birthdays. The results of Plotz’s little FB birthday social experiment are at once comical (there were many “repeat-greeters”), sad (there were many “repeat-greeters”), and, I guess, a little reassuring (some of his actual friends knew his real birthday and paid enough attention to his FB activity to call him out on his prank). P.S., thanks everyone for all of the birthday wishes!! Slate

Browser IQ Hoax: Sorry all of you Internet Explorer users, you aren’t stupid after all. As it turns out, that study (which we and many other media outlets covered) about the correlation between the browser you use and your IQ was actually a hoax. It is not clear whether or not the company that released the research, ApTiquant, actually exists; its website was only created within the past month and its staff images were copied from a real business in Paris’ site. Sketchy. So anyway, we’re not going to judge you anymore, Internet Explorer fans; and Chrome and Opera users, you can stop feeling superior. BBC