MARIETTA, Ga. — Local IT manager Caleb Summers was taken aback earlier this week to receive a Facebook Event invitation from high school friend of Paul Willis, guitarist for the punk band The Spit Cups, for an upcoming performance in Baltimore.
“Man, Paul and I used to be super close as teens, but we fell out of touch. It was so considerate of him to invite me to his band’s show,” Summers said soon after declining the invite. “Unfortunately, Baltimore is just a few hundred miles too far away for me to make it, but it was so nice of him to invite me anyway. I kinda feel bad that we haven’t spoken in like ten years. Maybe this is his way of reaching out and trying to reconnect. I actually looked into booking a flight, I’ve never been to Baltimore before, that would be a good excuse to go. Oh well.”
Willis, however, didn’t see the invite as anything more than a blanket gesture.
“I just mass invited every single one of my Facebook friends,” Willis explained, looking through an old yearbook to try and remember who Summers was. “Oh, right, he’s the guy that got suspended from high school because he took a shit in a vending machine. Oh man, I really hope he actually doesn’t come. Before I moved to Baltimore like 8 years he kept messaging me that we should totally have a beer sometime at ‘B-dubs,’ which I guess is Buffalo Wild Wings. I’m really not surprised that he took this as a personal invitation to come see the show.”
Social Media expert Marianne Hamilton explains that some people misunderstand the meaning behind Facebook events.
“Almost 90% of all event invites to like a particular page or attend a show are random, blanket gestures meant for anyone desperate enough to actually look at them,” Hamilton, who asks that you like her own page Hamilton Social Practices, explained. “Some people misunderstand this and see it as an invitation sent to them personally, with actual thought and meaning behind it. This can lead to some incredibly award encounters and mixed messages.”
As of press time, Summer was drafting an apologetic message declining Willis’ invite and hopes they can meet up again one day if he’s ever in town.