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[0:00] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Today on Support for This Podcast.

[0:04] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: So I was not gonna engage in the Facebook birthday scenario.

[0:10] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: And I came back from my trip, and there was some real ugliness online.

[0:17] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh, everybody loves Facebook birthdays, but enjoying all of that Facebook birthday love can come with a hidden cost.

[0:26] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Today on the podcast, we speak to Garrett Gardens, a 46-year-old man from Iowa who experienced firsthand the dark underbelly of Facebook birthday love.

[0:36] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: He'll share his thoughts on proper birthday love etiquette and why coral lipstick is the quickest way to catch a criminal.

[0:44] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Whoever it was, not gonna throw any relatives under the bus, wink wink wink wink wink.

[0:48] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: But whoever it was had not only coral lipstick at their disposal, but a sharpie and wrote on my forehead, this is the guy.

[0:59] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Join us, won't you? I'm Emily Amy Lauren Becca, and this is Support for This Podcast.

[1:18] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Hi everyone. I'm so happy to be here with Garrett Gardens.

[1:22] Garrett Gardens: Hello.

[1:23] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Hi, welcome.

[1:24] Garrett Gardens: Thank you.

[1:24] Garrett Gardens: Thank you so much for joining us.

[1:26] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Now you're here to talk to us about a pretty interesting 21st-century phenomenon, which is the celebration of birthdays experienced through Facebook.

[1:37] Garrett Gardens: Yeah, yeah, and it can be such a wonderful thing, you know. You see all the love in the comments from people you know and love and people you don't really remember, and they have to look them up and like, how do I know this person?

[1:48] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: So for people who are unaware, I don't really know who those people would be at this point.

[1:48] Garrett Gardens: At this point.

[1:53] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yeah. Maybe really old people or really young people or off-the-grid kind of people.

[1:59] Garrett Gardens: Yeah.

[1:59] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Or people who pretend that they don't know. Anyway, can you explain just what it's like to have a birthday on Facebook and what happens? What goes on?

[2:05] Garrett Gardens: Well, you know, when you first sign up for your profile, you enter your birthday. So presumably Facebook just remembers that. And so when it comes back, you know, the next year and the next year, your friends...

[2:19] Garrett Gardens: You know, not your friends like from the real world, but your friends from online, know this or see this or are told this, and they can wish you a greeting. They can wish you a birthday greeting.

[2:30] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh, sure. Okay.

[2:32] Garrett Gardens: Yeah. Now, why don't you take us back? So something kind of eventful happened. Was this your most recent birthday?

[2:39] Garrett Gardens: Yeah, yes, this is my most recent birthday, and yeah, something eventful and not so good, unfortunately. You know, I just, in years past I've really gone out of my way to respond to every birthday comment.

[2:54] Garrett Gardens: You know, a couple years back, I can think of one event, I'll just I can read it off to you. My friend Liam, and I should use that term lightly because I don't really know him. He's like an acquaintance, he's a friend of a friend.

[3:04] Garrett Gardens: He just commented HBD on my page, which stands for happy birthday. It was like lowercase, didn't even, you know.

[3:09] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Lowercase, yeah.

[3:11] Garrett Gardens: Yeah, didn't even do the shift or whatever.

[3:13] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: I pictured uppercase.

[3:15] Garrett Gardens: Well, that reads to me as more like, uh, enthusiastic. But lowercase is just, you know, it was offhanded, but I was like, well, it was nice of him to remember that we met through mutual friends at the bar once.

[3:25] Garrett Gardens: So I wrote back and I said, um, hey, uh Liam, thank you so much for the greeting. I really appreciate you thinking of me on my birthday. I hope that you're getting better after your knee injury.

[3:38] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh.

[3:40] Garrett Gardens: Because the last time I saw him, he was on crutches.

[3:43] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh well, yeah, let's hope.

[3:44] Garrett Gardens: So uh thank you so much. And I hope I run into you again. Thanks again for the wishes.

[3:51] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Wow.

[3:51] Garrett Gardens: And then a thumbs up.

[3:52] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh.

[3:53] Garrett Gardens: So that takes a lot of time. If you get 200 of those, that's like a full day of...

[3:54] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Wow. You get around 200 happy birthday posts.

[4:01] Garrett Gardens: Yeah, I don't want to like brag, but yeah, it's like 200 about like that. My commenting like that continued for a long, long time. Um for years and years of being on Facebook.

[4:11] Garrett Gardens: And then last year, I just decided, okay, I'm gonna just do one blanket thank you because this is taking a lot of my time and you know I want to enjoy some of my birthday, and like, you know, in years past I had canceled plans so I could make sure to get back to everybody, right?

[4:26] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Because you know, you want to get...

[4:26] Garrett Gardens: So you just spend your birthday sitting at home on your computer.

[4:31] Garrett Gardens: Yeah, I mean maybe like a piece of cake on hand, but yeah, it's like a full-time job, it really is.

[4:36] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yeah.

[4:37] Garrett Gardens: So last year I did a blanket thank you to everyone, and I just said, Thank you, all my friends for thinking of me. All this love.

[4:43] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Wow, exclamation mark.

[4:46] Garrett Gardens: And then what happened this year?

[4:49] Garrett Gardens: Well, to get right into it, um, I decided that I really wanted to have a me day and I wanted to have an unplug day. I wanted to go see the ocean.

[5:01] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh.

[5:01] Garrett Gardens: Um, and I wanted to drive there. And I live in Iowa, so that was gonna take a while. I wanted to leave adequate time to get there.

[5:10] Garrett Gardens: So I was not gonna engage in the Facebook birthday scenario. And I came back from my trip and there was some real ugliness online.

[5:24] Garrett Gardens: Oh yeah. Yeah, there were a couple of um people who had sort of disparaging things to say, or a friend of mine passively aggressively wrote something on her page that was like, it's so much nicer when my friends thank me for their birthday love rather than not saying anything in response.

[5:46] Garrett Gardens: And I knew that was about me because she tagged me afterwards.

[5:49] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh at Garrett Gardens.

[5:52] Garrett Gardens: No, no question there.

[5:54] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yeah. Gosh.

[5:55] Garrett Gardens: It was very pointed. At first it was very unspecific and then it got very specific.

[5:59] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Have any of your friends talked to you about this in person or has this feedback all been through Facebook as well?

[6:05] Garrett Gardens: I've gotten like some scowls, but no, no, they're I think they're more happy to hide behind the computer. Sad as it may be.

[6:12] Garrett Gardens: They're hiding and yet they're not totally anonymous because they are your Facebook friends.

[6:18] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Right.

[6:18] Garrett Gardens: I have their name and their photograph.

[6:20] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Right, right. Did you get any private messages?

[6:23] Garrett Gardens: I did. Unfortunately, uh, my parents were extremely upset.

[6:29] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh.

[6:29] Garrett Gardens: And I forgot that, you know, they like a response in the form of a phone call and an email or a text and online, like they want me to advertise the...

[6:39] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Well, did you speak to your parents off of Facebook for your birthday?

[6:43] Garrett Gardens: They're not picking up. You know what I mean?

[6:45] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yeah.

[6:48] Garrett Gardens: I don't have children, but if I am so lucky to have them, if they didn't call me back on their birthday, I would feel really hurt.

[6:57] Garrett Gardens: Well, you should meet my mom and dad, because they're really on the same page as you.

[7:01] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Really?

[7:01] Garrett Gardens: Uh where that's concerned, for sure. Well, especially, you know, growing up in Iowa, I'm sure it's kind of like farm the land, have supernatural experiences in baseball settings. Talk to your children on their birthdays.

[7:14] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yeah.

[7:15] Garrett Gardens: I don't know what else. Repress, repress, repress.

[7:17] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Sure, sure.

[7:18] Garrett Gardens: All that. But your birthday could be the one time where you do express, you say, Happy birthday. I'm happy that you were born.

[7:25] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: That's probably as close to hearing I love you as did your parents tell you that they loved you?

[7:29] Garrett Gardens: It wasn't an I love you. It was more like, uh, um, uh, that'll do.

[7:34] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Sure. Does your dad wear suspenders?

[7:37] Garrett Gardens: All the time. How'd you know?

[7:38] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh.

[7:39] Garrett Gardens: It's just this image you concocted of Iowa, but it is, it's true. I've seen Field of Dreams, so I think I pretty much get it.

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[8:53] Garrett Gardens: So your parents obviously were very upset.

[8:56] Garrett Gardens: Yeah, but not as upset as my grandma.

[8:58] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh dear.

[9:00] Garrett Gardens: So Grandma Nan, you know, 85 if she's a day, is from Sicily. Very sweet.

[9:07] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh.

[9:08] Garrett Gardens: Yeah, very sweet older woman. Bridges of Madison County, your family history.

[9:13] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yes.

[9:13] Garrett Gardens: In fact, I often wonder. I don't know. Is your grandma Nan on Facebook?

[9:18] Garrett Gardens: She is.

[9:19] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: She is.

[9:19] Garrett Gardens: And you know, she's so cute. When she first joined, she would do things like she just type nice to run into you, but post it on her wall.

[9:27] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh, grandma Nan.

[9:28] Garrett Gardens: I know, so cute. Probably the biggest fallout to come from this was, you know, I got back from my trip a couple days later, and I go on Facebook, and there's a comment from her that's really, really long, and she's like, Oh, what the fuck, you fucking cocksucker. What the fuck are you?

[9:45] Garrett Gardens: Do you think you're doing fucking not responding? I'm just reading her words, not responding to my fucking birthday message. Happy fucking birthday, asshole.

[9:57] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: I know.

[9:57] Garrett Gardens: It takes my breath away.

[9:59] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yeah. Why would she speak to you that way?

[10:01] Garrett Gardens: I think she was really upset.

[10:03] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Wow.

[10:03] Garrett Gardens: Yeah, I mean, and unfortunately, the fallout to that of you probably know was the Huffington Post article that, like, watch this, watch this dumbass get schooled by his grandma.

[10:13] Garrett Gardens: I couldn't even that was me.

[10:15] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: That's actually how we kind of found you.

[10:17] Garrett Gardens: Yeah.

[10:17] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Um, because that article, it was stunning.

[10:21] Garrett Gardens: It was, yeah.

[10:22] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Not in a beautiful way, just you know, you're stunned by it.

[10:25] Garrett Gardens: I thought it was like really poorly written, you know, but yeah.

[10:29] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Mariska Hargate wrote that piece.

[10:32] Garrett Gardens: I'm having a... I think it's the same one.

[10:34] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: I assume. It can't be that common of a name.

[10:36] Garrett Gardens: Oh, it could be, yeah. Perhaps.

[10:38] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Did you hear from anybody who on the flip side understood your position and applauded you for what you had done?

[10:47] Garrett Gardens: I did. My childhood friend, Louise Lisa, she just sent me a message like, oh, isn't this exasperating? And also, can you return my poncho?

[11:00] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh.

[11:01] Garrett Gardens: I had borrowed her poncho.

[11:01] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Oh.

[11:01] Garrett Gardens: So I don't know if it was an effort to make me feel better, or she just used making me feel better as like an excuse to ask for her belongings back.

[11:12] Garrett Gardens: But you know, not entirely unfounded. I'd held on to that poncho for a long, long time.

[11:17] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yeah, sometimes you gotta kill him with kindness, you know.

[11:20] Garrett Gardens: Yeah.

[11:20] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Kind of say, I know where you're coming from. Sorry where you're going, what you're going through, and I have my poncho back.

[11:27] Garrett Gardens: That was actually the alternate title to call me by your name.

[11:29] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Yeah.

[11:31] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Now, as I understand this affected your friendship with one very important person in your life. Can you tell us that story where your friendship is at these days and if it's recovered?

[11:42] Garrett Gardens: Yeah, I mean, it's an important friendship just to get through my day, which is a kid I went to grade school with is now the checkout person at the one line at our local grocery store.

[11:59] Garrett Gardens: And he was really offended. I mean, almost more than anybody else, in the way that it was like truly saddened that he didn't get thanked for...

[12:11] Garrett Gardens: Um, and so he will not check me out. So eating has gotten harder. Whoa. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What wow. So you so you go up to the checkup line, checkout line. Yeah. And he just He just stands there. Just stands there, and it's a look of such sadness. And and have you apologized? No. Oh. Do you think? So I should think about that. Yeah. I'm glad we're talking about this actually, because that's not a bad idea. Yeah. Could try. Huh. I just look at them like, uh help me out here. Right. Am I gonna have to go to the Polynesian restaurant again? Yeah. I don't. It sounds like you've that's what other option do you have? None. Do or maybe um do you have your own chickens or something? That's a stereotype.

Oh, I'm sorry. No, that's it's fine. Okay. So so just to clarify, so all of this happened, um, and your reaction has not you've just kind of gone gone um silent. You radio silent. Sure. You have not um done a belated thank you post. Well, when the Huffington Post article came out, I did repost that with a sort of self-deprecating caption, like sometimes the jokes on you. Oh, okay, eye roll-y, you know, face. Yeah, okay. Did you get any likes on that? No, I got a couple of those angry faces. Oh, wow. I was like, what's what's with the outrage? I mean, it's the ship has sailed. Sounds like your friends need to lighten up a little bit. They do. It's it's dark this time of year, literally. Sure.

So I think it's partly that. Partly that. Okay. Let's talk about birthday etiquette in general. Now, for your closest friends, I can understand, you know, the whole world can wish you a happy birthday on Facebook. I mean, friends, people you kind of know, people you don't even remember how you know them. But for your actual good friends, is it enough for them to just wish you a happy birthday on Facebook? Do you you you probably I'm kind of asking this as a loaded question, but what do you think is the proper way to hear from your close friends on your birthday? Well, I guess to me it doesn't matter a ton, but I think to other people, it's really separate. It's like you have to do the in-person or the phone call text situation that's like private, and then you also have to do the version that's like advertising, you know, broadcasting, how much you are friends with this person or whatever.

I I regret what I did if I didn't make that perfectly clear. Like, yes. Oh, okay. People bothered to write me, I should write back. Now, do you think it's enough? Do you think it's enough to just to do the thumbs up, the liking of each post, or do you think you have to you you have to write a message? Well, I was thinking that might be a good strategy for next year. You know, if um if uh I still have any Facebook friends left. Sure.

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[16:49] Garrett Gardens: What's your Facebook general your activity on Facebook like? How often are you on it? What do you mostly use it for? I love filling in all the personal details of myself, even if there aren't a lot, you know. Oh. Just like um in a relationship with single. Oh. I love um talking about like where I went all the schools I went to, um, all the sports I don't play, and the instruments I sometimes think I should learn. Oh. I think that's fun. I like filling in those details. Yeah. And there's nothing um dangerous or unsafe about um putting as much personal information on Facebook as possible. Well, I suppose, you know, at some point something might happen where uh our our our stuff is taken, but um I don't see how that's too different from when I was robbed.

Do you want to talk about it? Well, I came home, this is very recently, and you know, all the stuffin' was ripped out of my couch. What? And out of my stuffed dog. Oh, a taxidermy dog or full taxidermy. It was expensive too. It's jerks. Whoa. And um my wall was written in uh coral lipstick, I think. Uh you better thank me next year, bitch. And I'm not gonna say that was Grandma Nan, but I'm not gonna say it wasn't. That's upsetting. But she is Sicilian, you said, so kind of expect I don't you do this uh yeah. Now, uh experiencing everything you've gone through, have you are there any are you a aware of any um support groups for people who've experienced similar kind of I don't know if I'd call it online bullying, but um kind of a traumatic experience seems to have occurred just because you simply didn't thank people for all the birthday love.

My local high school has uh an anti bullying after school class. I'm forty-six, but I thought it might be the place for me to go. So I came in and unfortunately that day I was wearing sunglasses at a trench coat. So they did ask me to leave. But I I tried. I tried. I tried to get some counseling, some free therapy. The trench coat, um, is that just a coat you enjoy the style of? I love the way it feels against me when I'm naked. So yeah. And you could say the style too, I guess. Sure. Well, it's kind of like a dress and a coat. Not to uh not to emasculate you, but do it. So after all this happened, after you were turned down from the high school sport group. Which, you know, what makes sense.

Absolutely. Um I get it. Did you ever consider deactivating your Facebook account? No. Oh. No way. Oh my god, to think about that. It's like having a having a limb removed. I love Facebook. I love quizzes. I love seeing what my high school friends had for dinner. Yeah. I love seeing, you know, they they don't have pictures of themselves, but they have pictures of their kids and their profile. I think that's fun. That's real fun. Yeah. It um I think it kind of starts with um you have your own picture, then when you're in a relationship, you have a picture with your partner. Then when you have kids, it's your kids. Um and it doesn't it's it's healthy because it shows that you no longer you put your children first, you completely lose your own identity, and that is the key to successful parenting now.

Mm-hmm. Do you ever get recognized around town as the guy who forgot to thank everyone for the birthday love? I didn't until um I should have mentioned when my house was robbed. Yeah. Um, I was there. Oh and just passed out. Oh. Alcohol, Benadryl, Xanax. It takes a lot to get me down. But when I'm down, I'm down. And there was a, you know, this scamp with uh um a Sharpie did write on this scamp? This this this whoever it was, I'm not gonna blame a scamp. It's like a shrimp, but like a a shrimp who's mean and breaks in or does something, you know, to that effect. Something evil. Uh so this whoever it was, not gonna throw any relatives under the bus, wink wink wink wink wink. But whoever it was, um had not only coral lipstick at their disposal, but uh a sharpie and uh wrote on my forehead, this is uh the guy and I that's why in part do think it might have been my grandma because it was like written in like sort of phonetic Italian.

Phonetic it was written in phonetic. This is uh the guy. She added the uh you see what I mean. What an interesting way to Well, you know, sometimes when kids are learning how to write, it's like just sounded out. So for her Yeah, for her. Yeah. Allegedly. Yeah. So I do get recognized after that. Okay. Well, because the Sharpie was still on your you couldn't wash it off all the way. I didn't want to. It was like going to a concert. You want to preserve the memory. Oh, even though it was such it was kind of a tricky. It's hard to explain. You know, my time with my grandma's probably limited. I wanna uh preserve what I got. Listen, uh everyone's family dynamic is complicated and I think that that's a in addition to the universality of a Facebook birthday, I think family and um complicated family dynamics, that's something we can all relate to.

Yeah. Even when it's just you and your husband, it gets complicated in ways that you never thought when you were making your marriage vows. Are you you're referring to my grandma and her husband? Or I just lost it for one second. Oh, I'm so sorry. No, I Oh, you meant you. Mm-hmm. Oh. I just lost it for one second. The old me. No, the me right now. The me who I want to be. I don't even know her yet.

[23:10] Emily Amy Lauren Becca: Well, thank you so much for joining us. So welcome. It's been a real pleasure, and I hope that it it serves as a stark reminder to everyone on Facebook that um if you if you've if you have a precedent of thanking people on Facebook for all the birthday love, you you best continue that, or else you could end up like Garrett Gardens of Iowa. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Since this interview, we ascertained that Garrett Gardens had another birthday, and once again neglected to thank everyone for all of the Facebook birthday love. When asked how his grandma Nan reacted, Garrett said he didn't think she was bothered by it, but found it odd how the day after his birthday, he found a rattlesnake in his mailbox. I'm Emily Amy Lauren Becker. Thanks for listening. And as always, for supporting support for this podcast.