How The Digital Revolution Ruins the Social Fabric of Society

The vast majority of people do not respond to Evites. Every evite I visit, more than 1/2 and usually upwards of 2/3 do not bother to respond. Every week, I play basketball with a group of people and the organizer never knows how many people are going to show up because no one responds. Also every week, I play soccer and the team captain needs to send email reminders to rsvp, followed by phone calls, text messages, and other ways to chase people down just to figure out if we have enough people to play on Sunday.

Email response time is uncertain and erratic. Often, people respond right away. Sometimes it takes days. It's not quite as rude to not return emails as not return phone calls...but it is still clearly rude. Granted, a lot of email communication is inane and superfluous. I stopped gmail chatting because it was such a waste of time and a distraction when bored friends would send messages:

Wurd up?
hi!
poke

Particularly if I was...you know...working. It's rude to them because they're like, jesus, man, just respond it takes two seconds and you have no idea what's going on at the other end. Is the person super busy? Are they twittling their thumbs and acting cool? Is an intern sitting at their computer pretending to be them?

Anyhow, back to my point. Email is so goddamn easy. Evites are so easy. And perhaps it is exactly because they are so easy, people don't feel compelled to respond. Or they don't know their response and then later forget. Or are just lazy and stupid and inconsiderate.

But how does this effect the social fabric of society?

Most of what holds society together is not government or police or laws or NGOs, or community organizing or Senate committees. It is the small things - families, friends, work places, teams, schools, etc. People gather and peaceably interact with each other because of common habits of politeness, decency, shared interests, and so forth. We do this in all sorts of local institutions - restaurants, movie theaters, parties, sports leagues, book clubs, happy hours, lunches, christmas parties, etc.

These small things are under assault by the digital revolution and the fickleness of communication in the digital age. The organizer of my local soccer team does a great deal of work - they register and communicate with the league, they wash jersey's every week, they send out emails to remind of game times and keep track of whether enough players will show up, they collect money to cover costs. What do the players contribute? They don't respond to emails until the last minute, don't pay league dues until midway through the season, don't show up to games because they're hungover, or decide to watch NFL Sunday Night Football instead of showing up to the game.

This drives the organizers crazy. And sometimes the organizers are out of town or too busy and they need to recruit someone to step in their shoes. Part of me feels responsible to help out, the other part of me is sane. I never agree to help. Why should I? Do I want to spend part of my week chasing down people to respond to emails? No thanks.

I'm one of those borderline host/organizer people. I do it more than the average, but not much more. I used to organize basketball in the past. I used to have a lot of parties from college until I hit 29 or so.

But nowadays, I barely bother. I like to host and think it's a real skill to bring together the right group of people on a team or a party. It's also key to pick the right kind of food and drinks and music to make a party fun. Nothing disgusts me more than tossing out trader joes hummus and boxed wine and cheap drinks with crappy mixers at a party. I hate those kind of parties. And this isn't being snooty and about spending more money, like I need Ketel or microbrews or food from Dan Tana. I just like to know a little care went in. Serve all PBR and hot dogs for all I care. But at least put out sauerkraut and chopped onions and mustard. You know? Get some details right. Make a choice - get cheap vodka - but good bloody mary mix and limes and make bloody mary's the only drink of choice. Or make only stirred margaritas.

But I won't throw a party today unless I feel compelled to. I'm not spending money, going through effort to make food, pick the right drinks, craft a good guest list only to get 1/2 (if I'm lucky) of the people to just respond Y/N/M. Fuck that shit.

Maybe a couple years ago, I would organize a softball team, but I won't do it now. No way am I chasing around people trying to get them to join, covering the league costs hoping to get paid back, and then sending out emails every week no one responds to.

I'm glad there are still some good people out there who do these things. And I try my best to be responsive and return emails and respond to invites. These inventions, in theory, should make this type of thing easier. But I'm a borderline/on-the-margin participater in these type of projects and frankly, too tired to do it. I imagine there are a lot of others out there in the same position and society is much worse off because of it.

**Side note - Facebook plays a role here. Are people more and more organizing parties, social events, etc on facebook? I wouldn't know. Is the lack of email response due to a competition on facebook? I doubt it. In fact, facebook might be making parties/sports teams/etc less "necessary." Since everyone feels constantly connected to everyone else via facebook, why would one even need to socialize or join a team or go to party to catch up? This of course, is the end of society as we know it, so I hope we're not headed there.