It’s no secret that most millennials have a complete aversion to decision-making. In trying to find a middle ground between monogamous and single you get “friends with benefits”, “Netflix and chill”, and “talking” as opposed to dating. Trying to create a grey area between communicating and not communicating produced Snapchat, “ghosting”, and read receipts. Now in the arena of social gatherings, the final frontier of communication breakdown, we have finally seen the death of the RSVP. Enter “Interested”. By using this new Facebook feature guests invited to a Facebook event are now allowed to respond that they are “interested” in an event in addition to the traditional “going” and “can’t go.” By selecting this option, users can stay up to date with posts in the event without actually having to make a decision as to whether they are “going” or not. Some may just see this as a more efficient update to the already shady “maybe” option, but by changing “maybe” to “interested” Facebook has somehow found a way to make the non-response RSVP option even more ambiguous.
As an indecisive millennial myself my first thought was “hooray! Now I can delay my decision-making process until I gather as much information as possible while hinting to my friends and romantic prospects the events I’m “interested” in!” I then realized what that reaction really meant. I was too afraid of rejection or regret to commit to going to an event that I actually wanted to attend. What if my friends didn’t go? What if that night I really just want to watch supernatural in my room? What if by making a choice I end up losing out on something better? This is the problem with embracing these modern middle-grounds instead of the classic “yes” or “no”. We are trading a concrete answer for ignorance in an attempt to shield ourselves from suffering a negative outcome. For some reason we prefer the responses we receive to be shrouded in just enough vagueness that we can still hold onto a torturous sliver of hope that things will work out in our favor.
In responding to these events or messages or romantic advances we also prefer the protection of ambiguity ourselves. Instead of communicating a clear decision like whether we are “going” or “not going” we use the safest option, “interested," to give ourselves plausible deniability in case our feelings are not reciprocated or something better comes along. This turns every social gathering and interaction into a game of high stakes poker where everyone retains their poker face and hides their bluff but no one is truly happy. Why do we do this to ourselves? Is the idea of wasting a night or getting turned down really so unthinkable that we have to communicate solely in digital nuances? Before embracing the further ambivalence this shiny new “interested” button provides, dare to actually make a choice. Take a chance on your own instincts and enjoy the exhilaration of making a clear-cut decision. Chances are it’s in your interest.
