Rant

I give up. This is about the futility of using Evite. If you happen to read this and are offended because you think I'm talking about you, well, I just might be. But I'm also tired and grumpy and will be over this and moving on to my next gripe shortly, so don't let it improve your opinion of me.

I've kind of avoided using evite anymore than I need to, along with twitter, facebook, and other social narcissitic and invasive web applications. (The exception is how I recently broke down and started blogging, so stone me.) But it is sometimes harder to not give in and could potentially be useful if everyone used it properly. Like say for a Keg Party for St. Patrick's Day where a person needs enough people to show up to finish the keg.

Tons of people don't ever respond, so those are easy to classify as "No". Even the "Maybes" I usually ignore, they rarely actually make it. But for the people who say "Yes", an accurate head count is very useful for buying food, etc. However, this never works like it is supposed to. I send the invite to both husbands and wives, girlfriends and boyfriends, etc. Inevitably the one person responds and says "Yes (+2 guests)" or the like. Several days later the second also will respond the same way or ask a question or make a comment in their post, thereby double counting. Other people just can't seem to count. Evite lets you go in and edit the responses, changing people like Mark Melendez from a "Yes" with a comment saying how he can't make it with the baby coming, to a "No" which I'm sure he meant. But this is painfully slow and quickly frustrating. When I try sending to just one party to avoid duplicate responses, what you get is usually no response. You can't win. I can't win. Let's just pour a pint.

There are those that like to e-mail me and say they can or can't come, etc. So they never show up on the list at all. Of course, I can't necessarily blame the people who refuse to use Evite. But I think I'll blame the people who use it incorrectly.

Rant finished.