Make both hands pointer fingers, incline your head down slightly, then alternate raising and lowering your pointer fingers. First do it on the left side of your body, then your right, and repeat. You can also do middle.
It looks like you’re doing a little dance, very understated, but basking in their deserved primary focus of celebrating you.
What it *really* looks like is like you found something to do/a way to participate during the song, which is very fantastic and people will think you’re awesome. Based on if you have a friendly/ accommodating/dramatic personality, or not, is how big to make the motions, and what to do with your face.
Also, you can do this with a completely bored face. That should cut down on it occurring again, because it looks like you’re politely performing interest in the face of something 100% uninteresting.
This works better than conducting the singing, which feels wrong for several reasons, and which deters no one from future recurrence.
You don’t have to make a “good” response to Happy Birthday singing. It’s not a quiz. What I do when this happens to me is make eye contact and say thank you once to the whole group or the person responsible while the song was happening. At that point my responsibility is ended until the song does; then I need to redirect the group to cake/ice cream/beer/whatever they brought out while they were singing. If there was nothing, I would wait until the singing ended, then say That was awesome, guys! Thanks! And move on to another topic or activity.
Look, the purpose of a group Birthday Song is bonding. They perform thoughtfulness and happiness to celebrate a moment of specialness for me; I perform appreciation for that and happiness to know them. Just a social ritual to encourage bonding and shared experiences. Good stuff!
slowly start touching yourself while making eye contact with each person there. some will stop singing some will sing faster but your true friends will laugh and cheer you on and they are the only ones that really matter.
It looks like you’re doing a little dance, very understated, but basking in their deserved primary focus of celebrating you.
What it *really* looks like is like you found something to do/a way to participate during the song, which is very fantastic and people will think you’re awesome. Based on if you have a friendly/ accommodating/dramatic personality, or not, is how big to make the motions, and what to do with your face.
Also, you can do this with a completely bored face. That should cut down on it occurring again, because it looks like you’re politely performing interest in the face of something 100% uninteresting.
This works better than conducting the singing, which feels wrong for several reasons, and which deters no one from future recurrence.
Look, the purpose of a group Birthday Song is bonding. They perform thoughtfulness and happiness to celebrate a moment of specialness for me; I perform appreciation for that and happiness to know them. Just a social ritual to encourage bonding and shared experiences. Good stuff!