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Ask Slashdot: Are We Living In the Golden Age of Bailing? (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report that makes a case of us living in an era where bailing has become just too common: It's clear we're living in a golden age of bailing. All across America people are deciding on Monday that it would be really fantastic to go grab a drink with X on Thursday. But then when Thursday actually rolls around they realize it would actually be more fantastic to go home, flop on the bed and watch Carpool Karaoke videos. So they send the bailing text or email: "So sorry! I'm gonna have to flake on drinks tonight. Overwhelmed. My grandmother just got bubonic plague..." Bailing is one of the defining acts of the current moment because it stands at the nexus of so many larger trends: the ambiguity of modern social relationships, the fraying of commitments (paywalled), what my friend Hayley Darden calls the ethic of flexibility ushered in by smartphone apps -- not to mention the decline of civilization, the collapse of morality and the ruination of all we hold dear. [...] Technology makes it all so easy. You just pull out your phone and bailing on a rendezvous is as easy as canceling an Uber driver. There are different categories of bailing. There is canceling on friends. This seems to follow a bail curve pattern. People feel free to bail on close friends, because they will understand, and on distant friends, because they don't matter so much, but they are less inclined to bail on medium-tier or fragile friends. Then there is professional bailing. This tends to have a hierarchical structure. A high-status person will frequently bail on a lower-status colleague, but if an intern bails on a senior executive, it is a sign of serious disrespect. What do you folks think?
What do I think?
I think Slashdot is posting articles from David Brooks, one of the world's worst columnists, on Brooks being annoyed nobody wants to hang out with him any more.
That's what I think.
What next? Tom Friedman on how we'll find out if the next iPhone is a success in the next six months, and what his cabbie thinks about that?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
This is not news for nerds, stuff that matters.
I think this post is terrible, I don't come here to read this type of worthless crap.
Bail on me once, shame on me. Bail on me twice, I won't acknowledge your existence anymore. Its simple fucking respect, if you make an arrangement, follow through. We're people, not stupid social media endpoints.
This attitude towards planning pretty much requires you to over-commit your resources, otherwise you'll frequently end up bored with nothing to do... Because "spur of the moment" planning fails horribly when the "spurs" of your life don't line up with the "spurs" of everyone else in your social group.
People have always made tentative plans and when more important things in life come up, plans get changed.
Not everything is new just because you are doing it on/over/under/next to a computer.
Speaking as an old person, that's was generally not true. In the past failing to show was a big deal.
If plans to meet/have dinner/ see a show were made, it could not be blown off due to "more important things" unless it were an emergency.
In the past, it was only a tentative plan if it was stated to be a maybe, and on the day of the meet, it was no longer tentative. That's because changing plans was difficult for the other people because they could not easily contact other people as is possible today.
If a person said they were going to meet you somewhere, it was pretty much guaranteed they would show barring something serious happening. There's two reasons for that. One is that before cell phone/texting, it was very difficult to contact your friends if they weren't at home or work. So if you stood him/her/them up, they would be sitting for a long time waiting for you, and likely worried that something bad did happen.
For that reason, if you did not show and had not an actual emergency (i.e. something involving loss of blood), this was considered a moral failing. Everyone would soon know about it, and if it happened too many times you were likely to get ostracized. If you had a business relationship, they would seriously question whether you could be trusted at anything.
The rise of bailing is not all that bad
What is different now is that thanks to cell phones, you can easily contact the other people at any time to let them know you won't be there and they can go on without you. Or, an even bigger deal, they easily make other plans thanks to their being able to quickly contact other people.
And thanks to texting, you can do it without even having the embarrassment of lying to their face. Modern phones bring a great deal of flexibility to our lives.
If people prefer to spend their time watching crappy TV, rather than spending time with you, that just says that you're not very interesting.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have better things to do than hang around here
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons