WE’RE IN THE PEAK
OF COMPETITIVE
“BUSYNESS”,
ACCEPTING
INVITATIONS,
MAKING PLANS AND
CANCELLING THEM
ALLTOOEASILY.BUT
THERE’S SOMETHING
GLORIOUSLY LIBERATING
ABOUT LIVING IN THE
GOLDEN AGE
OF BAILING, SAYS
EVA WISEMANIT WAS A NORMAL AFTERNOON
in June that suddenly cracked open
to reveal one of the most magical
gifts. An invitation to a distant
cousin’s wedding had been sent to
my mum, and the date arrived like
a clump of wet tissue landing on the
floor. It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen the
invitation, or written down the day, it was that I really
didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to eat the canapés, I didn’t
want to stand in heels, I didn’t want to consider the dress,
yawn discreetly into my hand. And it wasn’t personal,
Esther, if you’re reading this. It was impersonal – it was
universal. It was a feeling you and I and every other
person who has quite a lot of Netflix to catch up on feels
most weekends – it was the yearn to bail.
My mum, being an angel, phoned up the cousin’s
dad. Of course I wasn’t going to call – are you mad? It
was her fault, she said. She hadn’t passed on the
invitation, and so was very sorry to call so late, the day
before, but Eva wouldn’t be able to make it to the
wedding. There was a pause. Quite a long pause, as
she tells it, a pause that crawled down the line and sat
sweatily beside her with a look of disgusted fury. They’d
already organised the catering, he said. Mum asked if
he would like us to reimburse them. She called me as
soon as she hung up. When she told me that they had
agreed on a chequefor $50 “for the vegetarian option”,
I had to sit down for a minute. $50. It was so simple. Putting
a price on flakiness could be the answer to all our problems.
I’d purchased the right to forfeit my guilt. I allowed myself
a moment of quiet glee, imagining an extra option that should
be attached to every RSVP – yes, no and “with the best will in
the world, here’s $50”.
This is the age of flaking. Thanks to technology that allows
a fluid flexibility to social arrangements, the modern culture of
busyness and an increasing ambiguity to our friendships
(especially those born online), bailing on plans has come to
define our generation. A survey* of 2,000 people
estimated we each make 104 social arrangements a year but
cancel half of them. “No,
Thursday’s out,” a man says into
his phone, flicking through his
diary in the famous cartoon from
The New Yorker. “How about
never – is never good for you?”
Though Bob Mankoff drew the
cartoon back in 1993, today it
pops up regularly on Instagram, still an illustration for our time.
“Now the phrase is firmly entrenched in the culture, so much
so that it can be referred to as though it were an anonymous
aphorism,” says Mankoff.
For most of us, the bailing process starts with good
intentions. We genuinely want to meet up with the friend with
whom it’s been too long, we mean it when we say yes. And it
feels good to say yes. That familiar elation, a plan in place.
But then, inevitably, “something” happens, whether it’s the
realisation that, as a people pleaser you have accepted
a thousand invitations and must take to WhatsApp to quickly
cull the birthday drinks and the horror movie. Or, in these
zero-hour times where it’s difficult to plan your next visit to the
gym, let alone know where you’ll be in a month’s time, work
arrives – a deadline, a job – and it takes priority. Or, as the
day approaches and a cloud of social anxiety settles, you
find yourself lying awake at night planning exit routes – make
small talk in a noisy room? You’d rather lie. Then there’s the
last taboo: laziness. Sure, you could have a shower, do your
hair, spend two hours catching up on the current state of your
ex-colleague’s kitchen and wake up with a hangover the
size of Italy. Or, alternatively, you could... not?
Co-founders of fashion and motherhood site This Is
Mothership, Gemma Rose Breger and Samantha Silver,
posted an image on their Instagram account that read, “Are
we still on for dinner tonight?” Then, “Do you mind if instead
we cancel and reschedule several times until we lose touch
completely?” They say, “We over-promise constantly with
wild abandon and extreme enthusiasm, usually the day
before our mass exhaustion settles in, but when it comes to
seeing the plan through, one out of three times we find
some kind of excuse to bail.” And when they’re bailed on?>87
ZEITGEIST