RSVPing in the 21st Century

I'm gonna flip the switch and talk about something unrelated to my baby and talk about something that really grinds my gears about this here (my) generation of peoples.

Now I've been thinking about this for a long time and it comes to a head each time there is a party to throw and invitations to send. Remember back when you were little and your mom wanted to throw you a birthday party (or for some of you, like my mom, who did this for their children) and so she bought some invitations and sent them out. She wrote RSVP on there so that she would know how many kids were coming and how much pizza to buy or how many gift baggies to make up. And the beauty of this was that people actually called to say they were or were not coming. The whole point of the RSVP! That model worked for so long, for obvious reasons.. people were more decent back then I guess.

This brings me to now. Or really, 5 years ago when people really started using Facebook to send invitations etc and the whole RSVP world collapsed in on itself (for my generation). Here's the thing about using FB to track your event.. you don't really know how often people check their facebook. It's not like a text message,which you know the person received, even if they don't have the decency to respond promptly or sometimes at all. It's not like mailing an invite because obviously they have a mailbox and they check their mail. See this is where I failed for the first time. I tried to throw my husband a surprise 25th birthday party and thought, "ok, FB is perfect for this" .. it turned out that maybe 6 people out of -i don't know- 25 actually said they were coming, some said maybe, some said no. Maybe??!! Really? Are you waiting until the day of to see what the plans are for that day before deciding to come. Maybe should be removed from that scenario. It's yes or no, plan in advance and then stick to it. I've also sent numerous actual mailed invitations only to hear nothing back and then I have to go forth and contact those people to find out if they're coming or not, when most of the time it's no, they aren't coming. They were probably scared to call (or text, again, really?) with the word no, even though it's just a word and it's necessary a lot more then people admit these days.

I try to be as honest as possible with these events on FB now since I am so utterly peeved with my own experiences. Same with mailed invitations, I try to RSVP the day I get the invitation to get it out of the way after I've checked my calendar. Call me crazy, but it's just considerate.

Just as a sidebar, I am not hating on the use of FB as a means to send an invitation. It honestly is the easiest way to get it done, track who's coming and who's not (when people are honest), give information to them that can be easily found if forgotten, etc. I'm hating on people here, okay? People in general in a digital world who can't take 5 seconds to RSVP.