Week of June 17-23; invitation poll

[mrissa]

I got no communications regarding any submitted fiction this week. People tell you that you need to learn to deal with rejection, but silence is worse.

Someone on my friendslist recently ran into a bunch of different attitudes about party invitations, many of which surprised me. So I thought I'd ask around. I'm curious as to how many people have which preferences, so please don't avoid answering just because you don't live in the greater Twin Cities metro or would not expect to attend any events at my house or whatever. The sort of party in question is a biggish casual party, not, say, a dinner party where the host will need to know how many steaks/lobsters/bottles of wine/vegan cheese substitutes to buy and what time people will show up down to a ten-minute interval lest the souffle fall.

I also didn't include Evite stuff on this because I don't intend to use Evite, so it doesn't matter to me whether everybody loves or hates it. I don't mind getting Evites myself. I just don't issue them.

[Poll #1008857]

Comments

[dancingwriter.livejournal.com]

This baffled me:

I hate it when people use "RSVP" as a verb. You don't have to tack "s'il vous plait" on the end of every conjugation of respond!

Because repondez (pardon my inability to put the accent over the first e) is, well, a verb--which is why it can be conjugated.... So what is the usage that people are objecting to?

I'm the first person to fill out your poll!

[zalena.livejournal.com]

LJ has made a lot of social events really difficult. There are two primary social groups I interact with in this forum. One made of people who are mostly scattered geographically but tend to converge on my area several times a year.

The other consists of people who mostly live in the area.

The first group has a way of announcing they'll be in town, but then not actually contacting people when they're in town. This is exacerbated by some people posting they've seen said person(s) while others have not had the luxury of doing so. Sometimes feelings are hurt. (This week someone posted they went to dinner w/out-of-town guest. I was left wondering why I wasn't invited.)

The other group is a little more amorphous, which means not everybody is a friend of everybody else. As I'm on the fringe of this group, I'll frequently discover there was an event to which I was expected, but never actually invited.

And I've always though evite was a little tacky, because not only can you see the guest list, but I've always felt there was a tipping point where people who otherwise might've come to one's party cancel because so many other people aren't coming. But I'll play along, like a good citizen.

BTW - if I tell you I'm coming to a party, I feel honor bound to do so. I've never understood people who say they'll be there and then don't show up. However, I'm more frequently on the confusing end of a casual invitation in which no follow through occurs. Someone will say, "Hey, come to my party! I'll be in touch," and then never gives the time, date, location, whatever. That really makes me feel like a pariah, like maybe they said it to be nice, but didn't actually want me to come. Lately, I've learned the omission is usually unintentional. Thoughtless rather than malicious.

[akitrom.livejournal.com]

For a while in graduate school, I was developing an attitude of "I really don't like parties." As it turns out, a more refined attitude is "I really don't like parties with moderate-to-loud music, where the only two things to do are talk and drink."

Becuse I don't drink, and talking loudly to "pleasantly buzzed" people is wearisome after a while. Particularly when they all start flirting and hitting on one another, and nobody's hitting on me.

So, I prefer parties where people do something, like play music, tell stories, sing, play board games, sew, catch up on SG1 episodes, whatever; and where drinking doesn't factor in all that heavily.

Which, as it turns out, describes most of the parties to which I'm invited these days.

Oh, and while I think that paying attention to good grammar, spelling, and punctuation are nice ways to indicate respect and good upbringing, I have to spend my indignantion with care, and I'm afraid that using RSVP as a verb isn't high on my list of outrages.

I should throw a party sometimes soon, perhaps after the Renaissance Festival. It will likely have music, board games, and decorative food. You and yours are invited.

[brooksmoses]

My main problem with LJ invitations is that it's not usually a reliable communication method. I do try to keep up with my friendslist, but I get very antsy if that starts feeling like an expectation. And so, if my friends only post their invitations on LJ, I worry that I will miss things.

Thus, I do really appreciate it when people who post invitations also post copious quantities of reminders, and start talking about the event well in advance.

For some parties, missing the invitation is not a big deal; it's sort of like not knowing that the local museum is having an Escher exhibit until the week after it closed. I'm disappointed, but I don't feel left out or feel that the host let me down by not specifically making sure I knew about it. On the other hand, for other parties, if I don't hear about it until too late, I do feel left out -- and the fact that the invite was posted to LJ doesn't change that. When the party is hosted by someone that I consider a friend and want to spend time with, and whose parties I generally always go to, it tends to fall into the latter category. So, because of that, I'm a lot happier with the idea of email invites than LJ invites.

On the other hand, there are a category of things that are invitations but are not parties -- the "I'm doing this, is anyone interested in doing it with me?" sort of thing. Those seem very impersonal to me -- the poster hasn't really thought that much about who might be interested, and isn't making a lot of effort to include anyone in particular -- but that's in the nature of the event, and thus an LJ invite for that seems quite fine.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

I have mixed feelings about parties, events, and invitations. I make specific, one-on-one/one-to-few invitations at times ("Can we get together for dinner/to hang?" "Do you want to go to this show with me?"), and more general ones (the general invitation to people on my friends list to look for me at the piano bars where I hang out, and to introduce themselves); Soren and I used to do general "we will be at this bar, writing from 3:00 to 4:30; if you want to meet us here and write, and then socialize after 4:31, that's cool" invitations (and may revive them). One aspect of the last two is that they work well for people whose schedules are prone to changing at the last minute, for people who are unreliable -- or for people with whom we know we don't want to pin our enjoyment of a specific event on their presence.*

In terms of receiving invitations, I prefer things in writing, because I don't like overbooking myself, which is far too easy these days (and with lessened stamina because of my health, I have to be careful how many events I attend). Email, or physical mail, are fine. I HATE E-Vite, however. *hate hate hate*

* There are people whose presence I find pleasant, but who have now established a history of committing to spending time with me and then pulling no-shows or changing their mind an hour before the event, enough so that I will never invite them to anything like a one-on-one dinner, or a show. Instead, they get those "I'll be here at this time; if you want to show up, that's cool" invitations. That way, I will not be angry/disappointed if they don't show. I've ended friendships over that sort of treatment in the past; now I just don't let them get that close any more.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"Have you RSVPed to Andrea's wedding yet?" "Hold on just a sec, I'm RSVPing to Tom's party." Etc.

"S'il voux plaiting" is not really on.

Re: I'm the first person to fill out your poll!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm somewhat more likely to decide not to go to an event that's on Evite if it already has a bunch of people saying yes than if it has a bunch of people saying no, presuming that circumstances allow and presuming that I like the person inviting me in the first place and all that.

One of my mom's friends keeps telling the world never to ascribe to malice what sheer incompetence can explain, but I think never is a bit strong there.

spinning off your thoughts

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

I assume that when J.Random Friend is coming to town, that I'm somewhere on the list of "people in NYC/Brooklyn I'd like to hang with," but that logistics often don't work out. When J.Random is staying in the suburbs, or at the home of someone I'm not on particularly good terms with, say, I often think, "Next time, perhaps."

If K.Random Acquaintance comes to town (perhaps I know K.Random from LJ, or The Well), and announces it on that particular electronic forum, I am less concerned.

I also have a small reputation for knowing places where amorphous groups people can meet in Greenwich Village, which sometimes puts me in the interesting situation of being asked to set up a meeting for out-of-town friends which might include people I dislike, but I've concluded that I am capable of being civil to anyone for 45 minutes or so, as long as it's not a one-on-one situation, and as long as they're equally capable.

And yes, there are the occasional thoughtless half-invitations, and the odd ones that are complete brain farts. I managed not to notice that my sister wasn't on an email list I used for a birthday party a couple of years ago, and, if embarrassed memory serves, found it out when I called her to see when she'd get there.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

For some parties, missing the invitation is not a big deal; it's sort of like not knowing that the local museum is having an Escher exhibit until the week after it closed. I'm disappointed, but I don't feel left out or feel that the host let me down by not specifically making sure I knew about it. On the other hand, for other parties, if I don't hear about it until too late, I do feel left out -- and the fact that the invite was posted to LJ doesn't change that. When the party is hosted by someone that I consider a friend and want to spend time with, and whose parties I generally always go to, it tends to fall into the latter category. So, because of that, I'm a lot happier with the idea of email invites than LJ invites.

Excellent point about the two types of parties.

On the other hand, there are a category of things that are invitations but are not parties -- the "I'm doing this, is anyone interested in doing it with me?" sort of thing. Those seem very impersonal to me -- the poster hasn't really thought that much about who might be interested, and isn't making a lot of effort to include anyone in particular -- but that's in the nature of the event, and thus an LJ invite for that seems quite fine.

This sounds like my piano bar invitations, though in my head the issue is "I've described these outings often enough in my writing, so if it sounds like the sort of thing you'd be interested in, either let me know or show up randomly," as opposed to not thinking about who might be interested.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

I will often remember the specifics of an event mentioned to me in person...but will also be horribly paranoid that I didn't remember them correctly (even [especially] when I did), and so prefer a written reminder for my own peace of mind.

I don't mind LJ invites, but I do think they're very easy to miss, and so I prefer an other-method follow up. I'm also often (depending on how well I know the person involved) unsure whether I'm really--not welcome, exactly, but meant to consider myself invited, when they're not explicitly filtered to a specific group.

I am, obviously, happy with more than one or two other people around. But I do prefer small groups to large parties, and there's a size beyond which "small group" becomes less manageable. The dinner we had when I was in the Twin Cities was the perfect size for me.

(I would have been delighted to have the sickies as well, because I would have much rather seen them than not, but I suspect the conversation would have split at that point and become one conversation at each end of the table rather than being (mostly) one among the group. Which is of course also fine, but then I feel like I don't get to talk to people at the other end, or that I'm pulled between the two, if I'm in the middle.)

Re: I'm the first person to fill out your poll!

[brooksmoses]

FWIW, a classmate of mine mentioned that the reason he started using Evite was that he tend to do the sort of things where he's invited 60 or 80 people, and he was putting a lot of effort into trying to keep track of who had said yes or no when he was getting replies by email and conversations in person and telephone and various other media. So he was using it because it was lots easier for him, not so much for whether or not it was useful for the invitees.

Interestingly, one of the monthy events I go to gets announced by a set of emails to the mailing list, and the later emails mention who's already said they'll be there. So one gets that dynamic with things other than Evite sometimes.

[dancingwriter.livejournal.com]

Ah, I didn't think of that. Yeah, I can see the objection.

Although (thinking like a copy editor and grabbing the dictionary) Web11 does recognize that kind of verbal usage and dates it to 1953. For whatever that's worth....

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, there are a category of things that are invitations but are not parties -- the "I'm doing this, is anyone interested in doing it with me?" sort of thing. Those seem very impersonal to me -- the poster hasn't really thought that much about who might be interested, and isn't making a lot of effort to include anyone in particular -- but that's in the nature of the event, and thus an LJ invite for that seems quite fine.

Interesting. I tend to toss those up when I'm thinking about doing something, but not 100% sure that I'm going to bother. So I'll commit if anyone else is keen, but don't feel right about poking people and saying, "Hey! Do this with me!"

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am squicked by this response. I am not deleting it because I consider it an example of what not to do if one wishes to avoid squicking me: this. This right here is what not to do.

Re: I'm the first person to fill out your poll!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

When I have done filtered invitation posts before, I have most often screened the responses because I wasn't sure whether people would be bugged by responding to the entire invited group, even though I am not so bothered. From responses so far, it looks like I worried needlessly.

(How many times I've had to utter that last clause, we don't want to think about.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ah. The person in question has chosen to remove it himself. Well, that's just as well; my mom will not have to call me squicked upon reading it herself if she gets to the comments section of this post. (Ma: I banned the person in question, so no worries.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That's funny, because I considered the dinner group a "medium-sized group," and I perceived the conversation as fragmenting fairly consistently into 2-3 conversations. I didn't mind, because I wanted to talk to everyone present, so it wasn't one of those, "Oh, lordy lou, now I'm stuck talking to this loser for the rest of the evening instead of my real friends," and also because I was smack in the middle of the table and could talk to both haddayr and matastas (at the ends of the table) without difficulty. But I could have done with somewhat more conversation with everyone present. That's the party condition as far as I understand it, though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have done the "I will be at this location writing; stop by if you like" thing when I was traveling, and it worked pretty well. The last time I did it, the number of people stopping by was pretty small but the quality was high, and I had picked a cafe I liked and brought good reading material and my paper journal, so I would have been fine if no one had come, and getting to actually talk to the people instead of just waving down the table at them was good.

Here, I don't go out to write nearly as often as I get the urge to so do, and so I haven't announced it to anyone because I've wanted to hoard the writing time. But I should maybe think of doing that at the Tea Source once in awhile, because other people I like like the Tea Source, and I like the Tea Source, and I like being able to go out and get some writing done. Maybe if I billed it as a Writing Date. Hmmm.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I worry that people will miss things I post them on lj, too. I worry about this because it happens: I am friends with lydy, so it's a virtual certainty that I will post things to lj that she will not see. With lydy in specific, I mention it to her when I see her in person, or sometimes I will copy and paste the text of a post into an e-mail, clearly marked as such, if I want her to have that information but don't know if I'll remember next time I see her. But the question is, who's out there being lydyish in this regard but not having full lydy nature? I don't know.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hey, thanks. (Though I'm amused that "soon" maps to "after Fest" in your world.)

We usually have alcohol at our parties, but our friends are not generally in I Just Discovered Alcohol College Party Mode. It's better that way, I feel. The clean-up time afterwards is remarkably less.

Since I tend to expand on polls

[redbird]

I'm fine with emailed invitations, but the way my software and filters are set up, something that's sent to a bunch of people, with all our addresses as bcc entries, can land in my junk mail filters. Paper mail is fine too. Telephone works, but if you haven't actually talked to me, don't assume I got the message: cattitude occasionally forgets to pass things along, and julian_tiger has been known to step on the "delete all messages" button on the answering machine.

If it's in person, I may say "that sounds good, but please send me a reminder" so I'll have details, and I'm also likely to say something like "that sounds good, let me get back to you" so I can figure out whether the absence of something else written down for the same evening actually means I have time then.

Connected to what Brooks wrote: while I don't think "does zie really want me there?" if it's an LJ invitation, I may not see an invitation posted to LJ; there are times I do very minimal checking of my friends list, and I may not go back later and catch up. (The most minimal filter has three people in it; the next smallest, eight. Personal email will get checked, though mailing lists may not.) If it's "hi, is anyone interested in X this evening?" that's not an issue--if I have that little time, I'm either already committed or going to go home and hide under the covers--but if it's something a month out, I might well have time again by the time it rolls around.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Hee. Interesting.

(I would have been happy to talk with everyone more, for sure. It's just that I didn't feel as shorted as I usually do.)

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

I saw the comment and said, "Um. That's weird." I was hoping there were extenuating circumstances of which I wasn't aware. Sorry that I was wrong.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, me too.

I didn't know I was going to have to draw a "no RPS" line on this journal, much less a "especially no RPS featuring yours truly" line on this journal, but the world is full of surprises.

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

Can I ask what RPS means?

I had a lot of answers that were of the form "I like X Y Z but, you know, really I don't care." That made me feel like a very pleasant person. (And I picked "I would like to avoid one or two people if I can" but really I meant "if the person who pretends she can't see me while I have a nice chat with her dinner conversations will be there I need a little armoring up first so I can ignore properly." Because hello, there is a reason I am no longer in college with undergrads.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

RPS = Real-Person Slash

[rosefox]

Goodness! How very squicky indeed.

[cadithial.livejournal.com]

You missed the ticky-box and Rum options :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You and C. will just have to bring the tickyboxes to my birthday party, then!

[laurel]

I don't mind LJ invitations and even kindof like them, but definitely prefer it if I'm also invited via email or snail mail or something like that given how flaky LJ can be and how sometimes I fall way behind on reading LJ.

Sometimes LJ mentions are a blessing as an additional reminder, but I prefer to hear about a party or whatever via another means as well.

[akitrom.livejournal.com]

I play music out at MRF for a dance troupe. My weekend free time shuts down from early August to early October.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, but to me "soon" would be "at least a couple of weeks before Fest starts, possibly sooner than that."

On the other hand, I have a 6-8 month gap until my next appointment with my vertigo specialist, and he labeled that "soon," so clearly mileage varies.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Got it.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I am only commenting to say, "uff da, the thank you notes!"

Other than that punch line, I have nothing to say as I haven't really thought about it. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That punch line is always appropriate. Always. Although I tend to say it, "uff da, all those thank you notes!" because it gives the opportunity for the distinction between eth and thorn in a thick Minnesota accent.

Open LJ invites

[suzanne.livejournal.com]

Open LJ invites tend to confuse me--especially if I don't know the person very well yet. I tend to think that they'd be shocked and horrified if I appeared. But, I'm strange that way.

suzanne

Re: Open LJ invites

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't go so far as to expect shock and horror, but I do sometimes have the automatic, "They don't mean me," reaction.

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

You missed the serious RSVP bugaboo that I hold. "Please RSVP". Ewwww!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

They're begging you! Begging!

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

They're having a party! They're begging me for a response! They play hockey!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

See, you should go and party with these nice hockey players! What could go wrong?