Since my comment exceeds the maximum comment length by a rather large number of characters, I decided to make this its own post!
I suggest you take my postings less seriously or at least not assuming I am taking the events described in them particularly seriously, as the only evidence for seriousness is a deliberately ranty posting, written in that manner primarily to draw attention not because I ponder the infinitely the wrongs done to me. Because, for one, the situation described in at least one of those stories is not even about me.
That being said, you are full of proverbial shit on this one for several reasons:
- you assume the problem is described only of someone who has been invited with no (or little) prior contact. But in fact the situations described in the previous post (and in un-posted incidents) the invited had themselves asked for the invitations. For instance
I like you. Here's my number. Call me next week and let's do something.
When someone has explicitly requested such contact, it is flaky to not respond. While such facts were not stated explicitly in some of the stories related, of necessity in even a long ranty post some facts must be excised for brevity. And, as noted in one of the stories, an event had even been planned and agreed to event and at the appointed time flaked with no explanation and did not return communications afterward. - Even were the facts noted in above not true, very few people live in the
I make no commitments and there is no social compact that forces the making of commitments
world that you and a couple of people I know attempt to inhabit. In the world where the sky is blue (excepting more than occasional clouds), there are certain rules we live by that grease the ball bearings of society and make it run smoother. Such things as merging onto I-5 in a zipper-like manner, and the simple R.S.V.P. system for planning events. While I can certainly live without getting a response to an invitation, it would certainly make things easier, clearer, and cause less grinding in the gears were people to bother to respond.For instance, often, I see events I would like to attend. I purchase two tickets and call a friend to see if see if they would like to join me. Or I will call a woman. Now, purchasing the tickets without a firm prior commitment is a risk I take. Hell, in the world-view you espouse taken to its extreme one would be better off telling someone to purchase their own damn tickets and perhaps meeting me there if we both felt like it at the time, but I won't argue against a straw man (I merely point out how kooky the argument really is). In any case, I risk losing the money I spend, and I have no problem with that. Still, I have found it to be a good general way to see events I would like to see. Now, when calling people to invite them I have gotten the non-response more than once. And I have run into two different problems. First, that I go on and invite someone else only to have the original askee get dramatic later because I did not wait til the minute prior to make sure they didn't want to go. And I have waited at times and not asked someone else when I could have enjoyed another person's company for the event.
Now, these are both side effects of the particular method I have chosen. And in general, I will just wait a reasonable amount of time for a response, and then ask someone else. It generally works out well. but it works out well because I don't invite the flakes who can't be bothered to respond. Because it wastes my time and my chances with people who do.
- It's fucking common courtesy to respond to people who aren't creepy retards.
Now, you also assume I call and demand answers. I do not. I don't give ultimatums. However, some hassling after the fact is necessary to get people's Pavlovian responses working correctly. It's a shame that the hassling you have received hasn't corrected your social flaking, because you might be missing out on some excellent times. In any case, I believe hassling people a bit after the fact is good in a number of ways. Most importantly it makes it clear why I don't have the time of day for them when they finally think they've pulled their heads out of their asses. Cause in my experience people don't change, at least not quickly. They'll start pulling the shit again, and I am not about to waste the time building up a relationship that is likely to get torn down by flaking. Perhaps I am missing out on some good times between those bouts of flakiness. Instead, I am building up alternate good times based on solid relationships with people on whom I can rely.
Also, this entry had nothing to do with the aforementioned post other than a short temporal distance between the two and a general proclivity toward rantiness and an attitude of fuck the fucking fuckers
that I am nurturing today. In fact, part of the inspiration for this entry is a neighbor in the building (unfortunately unknown even to me) who insists on placing trash in the recycling bin rather than walk 5 parking spaces distant to where our trash bins are located. I wish I knew who the person was, so I could tell them: Of course, your problems in determining what is trash and what is recycling are greatly exaggerated over those of us common folks and as such you should be excused from having to follow the generally accepted rules. You are in a unique situation with which the rest of the 6 billion people in the world have no experience.
Yes, I do believe someone pissed in my grape nuts this morning.