No Invite?: How Us Hyper-Social Urbanites Cheapened the RSVP

Taking a periodic social hiatus is a necessary break from the scene, especially for people who are self-aware and are easily turned off by redundancy — Me. Taking a break also saves me a considerable amount of money and gives me an abundance of time to tend to any tasks I’ve been putting off. Years of positioning myself as being in-the-know, however, doesn’t end when I go on social hiatus. I still keep my ear to the streets and hear word of what’s happening and to come. What I notice this time is how few personal invites to events and activities I receive — Facebook excluded.
My event attendance routine goes something like this:
1) See an event mention online (social media, local news and events pages)
2) Determine if the event is worth attending
3) Decide how long to stay
4) Speak to people I know and engage in conversation with someone I don’t
5) May or may not take a picture/tweet about it as proof of my attendance
6) Lather, rinse, repeat
This all became second nature and my social life has been on auto-pilot ever since. This is no way to live.
The last time I had fun was a day party at Lenox Sapphire in Harlem — This was June 11th. The last time I had fun prior to this was a cabaret at Jack’s Racino in Cleveland — May 20th (a personal invite). Before this, Rock Creek Social Club’s Sunday Funday party at Big Chief in DC’s Ivy City neighborhood — April 30th. I was doing extensive travel for work during this period but managed to still fit in leisure activities on the weekends when I was off work. Being away from my usual environments helped in making any events I attended when I had the chance more worthwhile. Yet I still knew it was time take a break from going out — So I did. If you think I’m upset about not being invited to a bunch of events, y’all haven’t been reading my posts or you don’t know me at all. The abundance of personal invites not in my email or text inboxes makes me question where my network is with entertaining not for profit and how largely social DC presently is compared to years past.
Looking at my entire social network in the DC area, the majority of people I know are event producers or maintain rather social lifestyles — Be it for personal or professional reasons. There’s no need for an event host to make an effort to send a personal invite to anyone because word will spread if online presence is strong enough. If a host does send someone a personal invite to a public event, it’s usually understood the attendee’s presence is more a necessity than a desire — I’m guilty of this. The goal of an event producer/promoter is to get as many of the right people in the building and nothing I just described is new in practice. What’s appears new about it is the overwhelming social standard for people in urban centers and those adjacent to be in rooms with strangers, faces only familiar because social mobility for most doesn’t include casting a wide net. What’s even more unusual is how some of the most personal experiences in life are now for everybody who sees us to enjoy — Birthdays are major events (save for the smaller celebrations we hold with our closest friends and family), baby showers are now big budget shindigs and have spawned gender reveal parties, every federal holiday gets a weekend in the club and even your enemies can show up to your Graduation Stuntacular.

I think we’ve lost sight of what it means to share moments, along with who our friends and family are. Even more so, celebrity no longer holds much weight because we all have access down to it on pseudo level. Therefore, an event is no longer only an event, but a conduit to fame for the average person. This is why I don’t get a lot of personal invites and you probably don’t either. Click on a link to RSVP and you’re in. Submit your name to a guest list via email, you MIGHT gain access. The overvaluing of the guest list is causing too many to place their self worth, for 2–4 hours in a day, in whether or not the doorman gets to their names before the line is cut off or their names being on the list period. This is lame and I’ve been on the positive and negative sides of both of these occurrences — Sometimes I was left annoyed not being able to get in and other times I still managed to get inside the event. These days, however, it doesn’t even matter which side of the rope I’m on. I’ve attended a wide variety of parties and events to where my enjoyment comes mostly from my interest in event production and seeing what the technical and operational sides of a production can do.
I’m going to make a prediction because my foresight is much better these days — low-profile events known only by a select few are the way to go. You’ll have the best time, see more people locked into the moment and not on their phone, and know the host truly took their time in making sure the right people were present and accounted for — those they know in real life and by name. We will witness a change in the tide of social engagement and people may get back to the actual engagement part. The lames will stay home or amongst themselves, while the actual dope people will have more social options with like minds. It seems like I’m reaching and hating, I know. But this hyper-social wheel a lot of us are stuck inside ain’t healthy. But I digress…
Closing this out, I just remembered I recently received a personal invite to a surprise party. I would’ve been down but the party is for a person with who I no longer have ties. I appreciate the thought taken by the host in planning the event and inviting me. The tide may already be shifting.
