HBD Sucks

No, it's not a new viral disease though I'm treating it as such seeing more and more people are using it. It's contagious.

I'm referring to the way people use text-speak to greet people on their birthday.

HBD = Happy Birthday

You see what's wrong there?

HBD is made up of THREE letters, which means it's an acronym for THREE words. Now look at this:

Happy Birthday

How many words do you see?

Unless Merriam Webster and Oxford announces that we should start splitting the word "birthday" into two words, I don't see why people should keep on insisting using HBD.

Happy Birth Day

But then again, using HB will confuse a lot of people. HB can mean a lot of things:

HB Pencil

Hot Bread

I'm not a grammar Nazi, nor am I a title holder for any quiz bee championships. But it really annoys me whenever I see people using HBD. It's okay to shorten words, or group of words such as okay to ok, as soon as possible to ASAP etc. But I'm drawing the line when it comes to birthdays. Come on, everybody wants to feel special on their birthdays!

I personally think that using HBD instead of typing it in its entirety gives off an impression that you don't really give a rat's ass on whoever's celebrating his/her special day. That you're just greeting them since you see other people doing it. 

Want an example? Just go to Facebook.

We all know that it's impossible for us to remember each and everyone's birthday in our friend list. There's no shame on having to rely to Facebook's birthday notifications to see who's celebrating their special day.

In fact, 80% of the birthday greetings you receive on your Facebook wall came from "friends" who either saw your birthday notification or saw other people posting greetings on your wall. I made an experiment to prove this.

I talked some of my friends into pranking one of our gullible friend (let's call her Stacy) by posting birthday greetings on her wall. Take note, it's not really Stacy's birthday, obviously.

In less than a minute, people who knew nothing about the prank started posting greetings on her wall as well.

Overwhelmed with the influx of well wishers, Stacy had to remind people that it's not her birthday. Still, the greetings continued pouring in.

Moral of story: Your so-called "friends" have no idea when your birthday is.

As you process this heartbreaking information, don't you think it would be a whole lot better if these so-called "friends" would take an effort to type "Happy Birthday" than "HBD”? Hell, they may never remember your birthday but at least they exerted an effort to spend about 2 seconds of their life typing those letters. 

That means they thought about you for 2 seconds. Compare that to the stupid effortless way of typing HBD which takes about less than a second to type. You’re in their mind for less than a second.

Remember, it's the thought that counts, and the longer you're in their thoughts, the better.