It's A Moveable Feast Of Rsvp Ping-pong
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday May 6, 2006
EMAIL has given us many gifts. Never before have cheap penis enlargements been so readily available to so many. Never before has it been so effortless to send long-winded and rambling accounts of holiday experiences to a dozen uninterested friends. Never before has it been such a breeze to forward lame jokes about men leaving the toilet seat up to family members.
If only all the gifts of this technology were so welcome. Sadly, email has spawned a monster. A fractious, changeable creature who makes organising a night out or a dinner party a painful ordeal: the rescheduler. The rescheduler does not understand that RSVPing is supposed to be a black-and-white matter of yes or no. So when you send an email to a bunch of friends proposing, say, dinner at a Thai restaurant next Tuesday, the rescheduler hits the "reply all" button almost immediately. The message goes something like this: "Hi, guys. Any chance of changing to the second Thursday in June?? And, no offence, but I really don't feel like Thai. Is there any chance we can have a different nationality of food. I don't know what. Any ideas???" And thus the hounds of hell are released. Half a day of emailing ensues, as the group searches vainly for a date, time, suburb and cuisine that does not clash with David's yoga class or Mario's family dinner or Julia's aversion to spicy foods. I will bet you London to a brick, as Kim Beazley would say, that the rescheduler who causes the biggest upheaval during the organising process will be the one who fails to turn up on the night. Or will call as everyone is sitting down to dinner with some inane and complicated request. "I'm sooo sorry but I'm going to be stuck at work for at least another 40 minutes," he or she will fluster over the phone. "Can you go ahead and order me an entree with some kind of seafood in it, but something that isn't too creamy? If I'm not there by 9pm, you can eat it and I'll pay you back next time I see you." Where the mobile has entrenched tardiness as a way of life, email has entrenched petulance and indecision. Even organising a piss-up in a brewery would be a nightmare in the era of email. Some dunderhead is sure to pipe up at the last moment and ruin everything with an email such as this: "Agghh. I thought you meant next Saturday, not this one. I've booked to go to a play that night so is there any chance we can change it to next Thursday?? Also, I'm kind of over breweries and beer cafes, is anyone up for a wine bar instead??? There was a review of a good one in Good Living in February. Does anyone still have a copy of it?? I think the name of the bar began with S." This has to stop. Just because technology allows you to reschedule endlessly, doesn't mean it is right. At the same time as we whinge we are so terribly busy at work, many of us manage to find countless hours during the working week to conduct laboured email discussions about precisely when to hold book club nights or whether it would be better to have a barbecue at a park or at the beach. It destroys spontaneity. It is a complete waste of time and energy. It has become entirely possible to spend more time organising an event than being there. It is also entirely possible to find that most of the time you spend communicating with your friends is wasted debating whether Bar Reggio accepts group bookings and whether it would make more sense to meet for lunch on the steps of the MLC Centre or near the big chess set in Hyde Park. It is all too much. When socialising is such a hassle, I'm tempted to transform myself into a less glamorous incarnation of Marlene Dietrich. I have to fight hard against the urge to sit at home alone in superannuated tracksuit pants, watching bad television and eating microwave meals in protest. From now on, I put a hex on all reschedulers. We need to start declaring a time and location and accepting that whoever can come will come. If you can't make it, get over it. There will always be another time. From today, I will run my social life like a sale catalogue. No rainchecks. No lay-by. No exchanges.
© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald