Fine, Don't Show Up

Although I've been on Facebook for almost 2 years now, I'm still adjusting to various elements of Facebook etiquette. Being who I am, I have no real qualms about deleting a "friend" or 20 at a time, and I often use my status updates to tell people what losers they are. Consider it a public service announcement.

The one thing that continues to get my goat (I'm trying to bring that one back) is events on Facebook. I love the idea that a site that so many people use can be an invite list management tool, but it seems that not everyone got the memo on "How Not To Be Rude, Even If We Are Online". At least back in the days of evite, which was used pretty widely in the US but never took off in Australia, you had total control over the guest list to the extent that I could move people from the "Not Replied" column to "Attending", since I knew they were rude lazy shits that would claim to be too busy to click once on a page they were already looking at.

Alas, in these new days, one simply has to adapt to the following code:

Attending = Possibly, if nothing better comes up
Maybe Attending = I hope you consider this my attempt to come to your event, even though I put zero actual effort into it
Not Attending (with a comment on the wall) = I actually would like to come, but whatever, I'm not
Not Attending (without a comment on the wall) = Oh, are we still friends on this thing? Need to remember to do something about that


And more often that not, the people who actually do show up never bothered replying because they couldn't be bothered.

The reason this bothers me is not because of actual numbers who may or may not attend my events, it's because it makes me look unpopular. Case in point - a day and a half ago I sent a somewhat last minute invite for drinks this evening after work because Miss Chong is in town for a few days and I thought it would be good to introduce her to a few people and have a night out. The numbers?

Attending: 9 (sadly, that includes myself)
Maybe Attending: 17
Not Attending: 4
Not Yet Replied: 70 (including the guest of honor herself, plus at least 8 people who have told me in person or via email that they are coming, but apparently couldn't grasp the concept of an RSVP)


Which makes me think that I might have to go back to email-only invites to events until Facebook lets me play God the way evite did. I am a small, petty man. Awesome.