Privacy Digest

The Medium: The Guest-Host Industrial Complex - Via NYT > Magazine:

Online party invitations have become big business. But at what cost to hospitality?

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Evite’s party invitations have been invading the world’s e-mail in-boxes since 1998. In spite of their vapid design, and the way the R.S.V.P. feature fuels status anxiety, about 192 million Evites go out each year. IAC/InterActiveCorp, Diller’s media conglomerate, acquired Evite for a song in 2001. Since then, the company has steamrolled the competition with its juggernaut averageness and threats to sue for copyright infringement. Last year, Time magazine included Evite among the five worst sites on the Web, and the techworld gossip site Valleywag ranked Evite its most-hated company.

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Evites produce both the silent shame of credit-card debt and the public pressure of performance. Evites sit in an in-box, signaling an undone errand. You’ve got to add your name to the list of responders, where it might entice other ambivalent invitees; that’s all too hard to contemplate. With Evites, if you miss the reply date, everyone knows: the ad-streaked Evite R.S.V.P. page lists the responses — attending, not attending and maybe — given by the complete guest list. Hosts can check in to see not only who’s coming to the party, but also who has even viewed the invitation.

Ignoring the invitation entirely — the pitiful inertia I often opt for — must strike hosts as extremely rude. What about looking without replying? Or replying with the odd “maybe” option? Hosts probably think you’re waiting to watch the confirmed list fill up with superstars before you commit. Or hoping for a better party. Evite forces even the best-hearted hosts and guests into predator-prey, salesman-mark roles. Hosts are trying to corral guests and get them to sign a contract before witnesses. Guests are assumed to be slippery and calculating, standing back until it’s clear how cool the party will be — and what other offers might come for the same night. This gamesmanship is meant as a prelude to hospitality?

(Read Original Article - Via NYT > Magazine.)