And then you'll still get a % of no-replies that show up at the event unannounced.
Most people these days simply have no manners.
Someone may be on Facebook just to keep a contact list, not to use it. Someone may not have turned up because their mother was in hospital. Maybe they were about to RSVP but then their kid fell over, then it was dinner time etc. Maybe some people just to prefer not to pre-plan everything in advance.
You could be an ass and say "sorry, no RSVP, no entry", but most people will try to show a modicum of etiquette more than the guests and accommodate the fools somehow.
But if you're being asked for a reply by a certain date and you miss it, you should reasonably expect not to be allowed to the event. And, if you do show up anyways, you might get in and you might end up being accommodated by the hosts/organizers regardless. But that wouldn't make you any less of an ass.
These are exceptional conditions, not norms. Many people have taken to simply not RSVPing or RSVPing in the positive and not showing up as their norm. It's not an exceptional thing. Someone with a particularly hectic life is consistently unreliable, fine. Someone who's usually reliable but is unreliable a few times, give them the benefit of the doubt. People who aren't leading hectic lives (or are actively hiding that fact, it's usually hard to do so) that are consistently unreliable, they're just rude.
I wouldn't put too much thought into this.
Just be empathetic to the sender. If I would send an invite, I'd love a quick response. But would be forgiving if it's delayed.
It saves you so much time and hassle down the line.
I'm not perfect about it, but it's good advice.
My most productive days are when all 5min tasks are ignored until the last possible moment when their importance grows so much that they must be done. 90% of them turn out to not need doing at all.
As a result many say I'm among the most prolific people they know, and I am nobody's idea of "who to call in emergency". ymmv
I mean, we don't do this with our OS schedulers? Why would we use a dogmatic "shortest task first" approach for everything else?
Because that's what the GTD mantra says? "If it takes less than 5 minutes, just do it immediately"
I'm pointing out why in my experience that mantra doesn't work. And I've never read the actual book, so it's very likely I'm taking the mantra too literally and that's why it doesn't work.
Even if you do treat that as a mantra, another part of GTD is prioritization. If you aren't getting your real obligations done because of all these 5-minute tasks, then you're not prioritizing properly.
http://gettingthingsdone.com/fivesteps/
That's a good distillation of the concept. The idea of doing the quick stuff immediately is to prevent a massive backlog later that drains you even more. Even things like checking your email can be done less frequently to prevent unnecessary context switches. Check your email 2-5 times a day instead of leaving it open all the time. When you open it and see a bunch of short tasks, do them or schedule them (with a preference to doing to prevent that accidental backlog), then resume your work. If it's taken you 30 minutes (or some arbitrary, personal limit), switch back to your main tasks and get back to the email again later.
1) Not providing a committed answer until the last minute; and 2) Reneging on a previous commitment, particularly at the last moment.
Responding promptly is important if only to say, "I cannot commit at the moment but I will let you know for definite by [date]", where date is sufficiently in advance of the event in question.
But, taken as collection, they are inaccurate in what they leave out: The very idea of women having the same agency as men does not make an appearance. Sure, they can reject your "invitation to dance", but without such an invitation, they are, apparently, relegated to "wallflower"-status, soon to be relegated to "old and ugly".
"Going home with you" also doesn't make her a _____ anymore than it makes you a _____ to go home with her. From experience and observation, "going home with" someone tends to make people _happy_, and occasionally _a couple_.
It's also a textbook example how sexism hurts men as well as women: assuming that a relationship's success depends on her attraction to him as much as his attraction to her, these etiquette fail by using an inefficient search algorithm. He will sort the women according to attractiveness to him and "go home" with the first that is willing to sneak out the back with him. That leaves part of the search space unexplored. Specifically, there could be another woman he is only marginally less attracted to, but that is completely infatuated with him. Unfortunately, she actually believed these rules and failed to get his attention :(
Edit: removed Feynman reference
If you replace "man" and "woman" in the text with "person with high social capital" and "person with low social capital", the present day relevance reveals itself. If you have high social capital, you have a duty to an every effort to raise those around you who have low social capital, to not draw attention to yourself, and most certainly to be very careful that you're not making anyone feel uncomfortable (infinitely more so if you're the host).
Yes, victorian society automatically assigned high capital to men and low capital to women, but they assigned significant duties to the holders of this capital. It's this ethos of duty going with privilege that resonates a lot (with me, at least).
As for "going home", there are some pretty straight forward reasons for that: reliable birth control, pre or post conception, was not a thing, and the cost of unwanted pregnancy was disproportionally (to the point of being entirely one sided) on the woman (and, by extension, her family). So, a strong social imperative to avoid this situation existed - but, notably, there is as much a duty on part of the man to not even ask, as there is for the woman to reject it. This constraint has almost entirely gone away, but we still have rather analogous discussions around consent (and rather hyperbolically IMO, but touching on the same notes, rape culture).
But I felt it's important to point out how they are actually-not-so-subtly producing the tiered society you mention, if only for the fact that this thread is already filling with comments of how uncanny it is that they are still so relevant.
And, yes, that is true in so far as you won't attract much negative attention if you behave as prescribed. But note that the reasons these may have been useful in the past have long since disappeared, so I'm expecting you all to follow that no-gossip rule even if I happen to "go home with" her , or him, or them.
It's an environment where primogeniture and inheritance are extremely important, where women can have no income independent of a man (and may have their ability to own property independently curtailed as well). Marriage in that context requires virginity. Sleeping around is potentially life-ruining for a woman. (Not quite so much for a man, although still indecorous; more sexism)
Nobody in that context is going to be exploring the search space though any means other than polite conversation. Men might be sleeping around, but only with women of lower social status who can be paid off or can't refuse (or have their refusal taken seriously: "rape culture").
Women could only acquire agency in this context because the risk of pregnancy was mitigated, so the lifetime costs and medical risks (4% maternal fatality rate!) of a child would not fall on them. In that environment, unmarried wombs were treated like barrels of gunpowder: keep away from naked flames.
> Surprising how relevant most of that still is.
...and how some of these rules, even if they were established in reaction to possible real-world consequences, can be perpetuated long after better methods have been invented to protect against harm.
This BBC documentary ("The Secret Rules of Modern Living Algorithms") had a bit about this: https://youtu.be/T1os88EvPc4?t=19m11s