RSVPeeved

Many people today, myself included, are very sloppy about the RSVP process. The computing and telecommunications revolution has made it so easy for people to over-commit, be non-committal, and in the end, to flake. Our smart phones and electronic calendars could just as easily facilitate good manners, but instead they seem to foster indecision and last minute bale outs.

Today's hosts are probably aware that many of the people they invite to events are going to be flaky. We may no longer expect prompt or decisive replies to our invitations. Still, slipshod RSVPing pisses people off. Hosts still need to know how many people will show up. Food, drinks, and restaurant seats will not disappear or appear like icons on a computer screen. There is no tesseract app that can instantaneously bring people together to accommodate last minute changes.

It appears that flakyness breeds flakyness. People may not know if they can attend event x, because they are waiting to hear about a possible event y, which is contingent on event z. They don't want to disappoint their friends, so they say yes to everything or no to everything, maybe, or worse, nothing. Saying nothing to a friend's invitation is worse in my book because I as a host don't know what that means. Does that mean my friend didn't receive the invitation? Does it mean they're still thinking about it? Does it mean they forgot? Does it mean they don't give a shit? Not responding at all to something like a Meetup.com announcement is fine.

In the world of Meetup.com, some organizers don't allow people to RSVP maybe and they will ban members who RSVP yes then fail to show up. At first I thought these organizers needed to pull the cactus out of their butts, but after organizing an event myself, I understood how annoying and rude these indecisive attendees really are. It's thoughtless to reserve a space for yourself, then not show up. At the very least, that spoils someone else's chance to attend the event. The rudeness of the meetup no-show seems self-evident to me now, but I have learned that few truths are actually self-evident.

I didn't really understand how annoying my chronic lateness was until about 6 years ago. Really. I was going through some therapy and systematically examining my social skills as I never had before. I understood why I had to be punctual at work, or on time for a train or a movie, but the value of punctuality didn't sink in as far as friendships were concerned. I asked friends what it meant to them when people were late. While it sounds so obvious to me now, at the time I was surprised to learn that they found lateness insulting. I knew my lateness was a pain in the ass, but I never meant it as an insult. My rudeness was not self-evident. I was a blockhead. Once I realized that, I felt wretched for being late or missing events. Knowing that lateness was hurtful didn't stop me from being late because my time management skills still needed work, but that's another story.

Anyway, when dealing with strangers who have diverse and unknown expectations, I believe that some people need explicit RSVP courtesy instructions. So I spell them out when I'm organizing for meetup.com. Because of my personal history and because sometimes even the most considerate and well-organized people will have to flake under certain circumstances, I will not ban no-shows from my meetup events. Yet I sympathize with those who do ban.