So thanks to everyone who took the trouble to comment on the previous post which tells the sort of sad tale of my Hal Needs New Friends Night (long story short – one person showed up).


Since that night I’ve been communicating with the people who said they were coming or maybe coming and didn’t show, and otherwise talking to people about the event and asking them what they think happened. From all this discussion as well as from the comments posted to the blog, I’ve settled on three main interlocking reasons for why (leaving out for now the possibility of my general lameness) no one showed up.


First, people say they’ll come or say maybe they’ll come but they don’t feel any actual obligation to attend – “definitely attending” on Facebook seems to mean “maybe” and “maybe attending” seems to mean probably not though I like the idea of attending, just not the actual process of having to go through the tiresome ordeal of showing up somewhere. Writes one of the “Maybes”: “Hi Hal, It’s funny because I often say ‘maybe’ I’ll come to things when I can’t come. I’d have liked to come to meet you but I live in BC. Saying I’m not coming always seems so final…So I usually say Maybe.” Another person who said they were definitely coming wrote me to say they were going to come but they live an hour’s drive away add “gas…you know.” Now obviously if you can’t afford the gas, I understand that, but it’s not as if the price of gasoline changed so dramatically in the week between that person said she was coming and the day of the actual event. So I’ll chalk it up to the “probably not but there’s a slight chance I’ll be around maybe” unique to the world of Facebook.



The second thing I realized: people are busy. They barely have time for their old friends, let alone time to make new ones. They’ve got jobs, hobbies, things to do, places to go. Life gets in the way. One “maybe” told me that instead of coming out she played Wig and smoked a joint at her boyfriend’s friend’s place. She made it sound way more exciting than anything I could have ever come up with: “We smoked some killer weed…then the games began. I virtually bowled, boxed my man (and won) played a Lego version of Indiana Jones, walked a tightrope. It was pretty nifty.” A fellow had a job interview the next morning. Another “maybe” was going to come but decided against it because she had to work in the morning. Another maybe ended up having ultimate Frisbee night and a confirmed attendee bailed out to go, of all things, to the George Michael concert. (Can’t compete with that…I guess.) A “maybe” spent his evening returning tiles he bought for his basement that his wife nixed as too expensive: “So, I had to haul back 25 boxes of heavy tiles, bring down to the basement, one box at a time, and carry back the other boxes of tiles which were already in the basement, load them up in the car, drive to Home Depot and get my money back.” We’re so busy working and scheduling and renovating (both our virtual and cyber properties) we barely have time to breath, let alone make new friends. I think it’s fair to argue that many people are stressed and tired and constantly on the go – our society does not reward leisure and does not encourage us to make time to meet new people in our community.



Finally, and this is certainly related to the other two phenomenon, there’s the question of social anxiety and awkwardness. Just as my one friend Paula almost didn’t come because she felt weird walking into a bar alone to meet a stranger, several people reported that they intended to come but in the end just couldn’t muster up the courage. Writes a “maybe”: “I wanted to go, and had plans to attend with my friend. When she bailed, I didn’t have enough confidence to go on my own. Sad but true. I can and do travel alone, go to movies and restaurants alone, attend literary and gallery events, and do a myriad of other things alone. But going to a bar alone to meet a stranger who obviously already has a terribly fascinating cabal of friends I just didn’t feel I had the social stamina for.” Extrapolate from this kind of comment and you could make the argument that people are, in fact, more likely to attend an “event” they are invited to via Facebook then accept an invitation to a personal encounter. An event is anonymous. You don’t commit, you don’t extend yourself, don’t feel like there’s someone on the other end judging you. An event, like a night at home watching tv or surfing other people’s pages, is far less of a trial than a non-event involving actually having to meet and engage with other people in real life. The more disengaged we are, the more comfortable we feel. This is, surely, one of the consequences of Peep culture. Or you could flip it around and put it this way: The more we learn to “engage” with each other through mediated environments, the less comfortable we are just meeting up. “Meeting you would make you ‘real’,” noted a perceptive comment posted on this blog. “They would have an emotional connection which brings in all that emotional baggage like guilt (for not following Twitter, skipping your blog a few times, etc.).” In other words, it’s far less complicated to peep from a distance. In other words, all this social media might actually create distance and a reluctant to meet than a desire to meet.


In the end, people were generally mortified for me. Several expressed true repentance, at least two people sent me their phone numbers and told me I should call them if I still wanted to hang out, and many people promised (albeit vaguely) to buy me a beer when and if our paths crossed in the future. Everyone felt if not sorry for me, then sorry for how the night turned out and for their role in being one of those people just a little too busy, too distant, too unsure, to attend. People are kind and caring (from a distance). It’s just that life, the way our lives are structured and organized, gets in the way.