In a chilling story out of your Instagram DMs, an acquaintance just replied to a story indicating it is your birthday with “Happy bday”.
The text is said to include neither punctuation nor emojis.
It’s a spine-tingling faux pas, but is this really as dangerous as it sounds?
“Yes,” you say. “To message someone something so soulless, borderline cruel, using this birthday greetings doublespeak is nothing short of deranged.”
“When I first saw the message appear, I assumed when I opened it, I would discover another text indicating they hope I have a great day, or at least some celebration-themed emojis,” you say. “But no. They simply said ‘Happy bday’. Sorry, I’m actually shaking right now.”
So what could such a bone-chilling and sinister message possibly mean?
“I’m not an expert, thank God,” you say. “But I’m led to believe that this person either poses a direct threat to me, or is in harm’s way themselves.”
“Presumably, this bleak and violent message is a warning shot, indicating that the sender will soon kill me, or at least jack my swag,” you add. “However, it’s also quite possible they are being held at gunpoint, and were trying to indicate imminent danger in a thinly veiled code.”
The kindergarten lesson “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” was clearly never learned by this suspected sociopath.
“It’s like, if you fucking hate me, that’s fine,” you say. “But why not just wait until the day after my birthday and then tell me that? It’s just hard for me to put myself in the headspace of someone who would do this, because my mental illness is relatively under control.”
At press time, you heart reacted the message, even though that was really scary.
“I don’t want to poke the bear,” you say. “But I also can’t afford to lose even more of their favor. I did what I had to to stay safe.”
Terrifying!
