Dante’s Circles of Hell and the Facebook Birthday Notification

The other day, someone I’ve known for many years (in the real world, not just virtually) wrote one of those gushing Facebook posts about being overwhelmed with the “birthday love” she’d received from Facebook well-wishers.

My reaction was two-fold. I felt heartened that she’d had such a positive experience and I felt just a teeny tiny smidgen of remorse because for some reason I “didn’t get the memo” (i.e., the Facebook notification or her impending birthday) and consequently had not been among her scores of thoughtful congratulators.

To ease my vague sense of guilt, I contemplated the corrective action that I sometimes take in these instances — the offering of a belated birthday wish in the form of a comment beneath the gushing post. The tricky thing there is that by joining in after the fact you draw attention to how you were negligent in the first place. So it’s a tough call.

Clearly, tardy people who shout “Happy Birthday!” to someone who is thanking others for their on-time well wishes may be vilified for not only opportunistically jumping onto the bandwagon, but also — and worse still — for doing so on the morning after, when the bandwagon is sadly littered with plastic party effects on its return to the rental agency from whence it came. So yes, it’s a tough call.

In the end, in this instance I did nothing, fed up with how Facebook’s birthday notifications often result in these low-level ethical quandaries, these “tough calls” that barely register in the cognitive mind but nag nonetheless. I’m on Facebook a lot. Another similar quandary will arise, say, next week or tomorrow, I’m sure.

Is all of this familiar? Even when you do see a notification in advance of a Facebook friend’s birthday, your decision-making is fraught with conundrums steeped in ethical implications. Questions that run through your mind may include:

How well do I know this person? Would it assist me in any way to curry favour with this person? Am I sexually attracted to this person? What are the chances that I might interact in the near future with this person? Has this person wished ME a happy birthday in recent years or been otherwise nice to me? Will many of our mutual friends wish this person a happy birthday causing my lack of doing so to be conspicuously absent? Is this the type of person to take careful note of absent wishes and later seek to even the score? What if very few people send birthday wishes to this person and he or she becomes depressed or worse? Just how important are virtual birthday wishes, anyway? Even if they require but a few seconds, would I be wasting my time on one of the most frivolous aspects of social media? Will my chosen actions on this matter be magnified or mitigated in the midst of a pandemic?

So yes, there are myriad factors to consider, but for me the most potentially stinging ethical dilemma of all is the above-mentioned question of how thoroughly one should condemn oneself when one has blown it and not sent a birthday wish that one probably really should have.

To help us sort through the subtleties, I suggest a brief revisit to that great literary roadmap for human ethics, Dante’s Circles of Hell.

While the sage Italian poet famously identified nine useful circles grouped into Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso categories, only three hellacious designations seem required to assess the consequences of modern-day Facebook birthday wish negligence.

Circle One: The Tickle of the Flames – You genuinely missed or did not receive the notification and are thus “innocent” of any wrongdoing, but because there’s no way to prove that your soul is pure, you are nevertheless damned, slightly.

Circle Two: Melted Flesh – You noticed the birthday notification and intended to fire off a warm sentiment but you procrastinated and/or forgot and ultimately missed the boat that would have granted safe passage across the river Styx. Although probably genuine, your good intentions have only paved a direct path to you-know-where. Sending a woefully belated wish will earn only an occasional day pass to Purgatorio, maybe.

Circle Three: Agony for all Eternity – You saw the notification and had ample opportunity to act but decided that it wasn’t worth your time. Ouch. Repentance is impossible, for you are the Devil incarnate. Your primal sin has been laid bare and you will forever cook in the cold flames at Underworld Ground Zero.

Sure, yes, invoking Dante to illuminate Facebook ethics may seem extreme, but none of us should gnash our teeth too hard. In the end, social media makes scallywags of us all.

For instance, a few years back as a mischievous social experiment I conjured up a fake gushing thank you post in the aftermath of a fake birthday. Sure enough, several of my “friends” took the bait and began to post belated wishes, just like the damnable and despicable bandwagon jumpers that they were.

Postscriptum: Given how when detailing his 9^th circle, the circle of treachery, Dante defined Inferno as fraudulent acts between individuals who share special bonds of love and trust, perhaps the Facebook account sign-up page should feature the caution that Dante imagined at the gates of Hell: Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”