Perhaps this is the cynic in me talking but I suspect, too, that the motivating factor for sharing birthday greetings in the group chat is less a desire to make your loved one feel special on their special day and more a compulsion to show off. There is a performative function to dropping a “Happy Birthday!” text in a space where it can be seen by people other than the intended recipient. The fact that it unleashes, almost invariably, a flood of messages from other members of the group is confirmation for the original texter that they are somehow superior. That they have won the friendship race. (I’m not extrapolating here; check out these posts where proponents of such heinous behaviour confess to relishing this very feeling.) It’s the group chat equivalent of the juvenile mentality that was common in the early days of YouTube, when people — probably men, let’s be honest — would scramble to be the first to comment on a clip, posting simply and quite pointlessly, “first”.
