[mis]Communication

If you’ve been following me on Facebook or Goodreads, you know that I have been entrenched with reading Middlemarch by George Eliot over the last week or so. I have happily found what I hope to be an intriguing thesis for my pending paper with this class in Victorian literature, and that thesis is going to center around problems in communication in this novel and in Victorian society as a whole. Then I got to thinking…

Today we [granted, we being loosely referred to as most of us] live in a world where we’re surrounded by every convenience. We have been empowered by technology that allows us to communicate around the world with the idle pressing of a few buttons, yet it seems as though these conveniences have come to be a convenient excuse to either communicate poorly or not to communicate at all. Over the last few years I have noticed a few trends swelling. Of course we all know that language is an organic thing that is constantly evolving and gaining complexity, so let me try to decode some of this for you. The following chart may serve as a translation for when you invite someone to do something:

Or, alternatively, when you invite someone to do something, they’ll just flat out ignore you. Given countless scenarios over the last year, I’m often left in positions like this:

I invite someone to do something and they accept, knowing full well after having translated their response into modern flakeEnglsh means that this is only really a “maybe,” but I don’t want to make alternative plans with someone else in case the “maybe” under the surface blossoms into a legitimate “yes”; on the other hand, I’m locked in to committing my invitation to a “maybe” and often find myself holding the bag because the person has indeed decided to flake. More generally, I suppose that texting and Facebook has made it very easy to flake out. Only a few years ago, people weren’t available during every second of the day. If you made plans with someone, that person might be out of the house (ergo unavailable for mobile communication) an hour or two in advance, so if you didn’t cancel in time, you’d just be standing them up…and we wouldn’t want to do that, now would we? That’s rude. It’s much better to text at 1:45 when you’ve planned meet at 2:00 and write “sry something came up. raincheck?”

Now call me old fashioned, but in my day, when one said “Yes” to something, they made it their business to do it. It was also common courtesy to thank someone for inviting them to do something with them regardless of offering one’s acceptance or one’s regrets. This is not [apparently it is] rocket science. This is along the lines of “please” and “thank you.” Am I right? Honestly: In this aforementioned world of empowered communication, how difficult is it to take two seconds to text, five seconds to email, or–call me crazy–one minute to call someone and say, “Thanks so much for inviting me to […]; I’d like to, but I can’t. Maybe next time?” In my world, when a friend invites me to do something and I am unable to do it, I always thank them for thinking about me and make it a point to try to invite them out some time in the near future to return the favor.

Am I crazy for thinking that this is dead simple? Is this not common courtesy?

Surprisingly, there is very little information available on the Interwebs about why people have become so flakey. I wasn’t able to find any real social or psychological research on this topic, but a lot of people are complaining about it. Add me to the list. I wish to surround myself with those who are moved by the Dalai Lama’s sentiments: put your busy life into perspective and ask yourself if you’re happy with your social life as it exists now! After all, the only real validation we have for our existence in this world is our relationship and our ability to communicate with each other. Relationships are at the heart of the human condition. Don’t fail at the human condition.