Happy template anniversary!

Last month I celebrated an anniversary. Nothing romantic, mind. In fact, I didn't even know it was an anniversary until LinkedIn told me so. I was celebrating two years as Trustee of the wonderful Child's i Foundation. Now don't get me wrong. I think the charity I'm a Trustee of is great, and I also think being a trustee is a very important thing to do, so I don't particularly mind sharing that news, even if the notion of having a two year trusteeship anniversary is a little odd. No, what got me was that the first I knew about my special day was the dozen or so practically identical messages I received from connections congratulating me on it. After the first few came in, I took a screengrab - though I've anonymised the senders to protect the guilty parties! What happens is that LinkedIn notifies my connections of the anniversary, and then provides a template to send me a message. Now I'm no Sherlock Holmes, but I reckon the template reads "Congrats on the anniversary! Hope you're doing well." So, about a dozen people pressed the button, and thought no more of it. Would they have wondered whether I might have received other identical messages? Is getting this far actually more thoughtless than doing nothing, in effect? Because to me it has all the sincerity of the automated apology I sometimes hear on station tannoys. I don't want to be apologised to by a computer, and I don't want to be congratulated by template. And I don't want to sound cold, but I ac