Quote from John Freeman on August 9, 2023, 1:07 pm

Hello,

I am working on organizing my bday and a majority of people where not available (long week-end, people had planned something).

Still it frames me as low status as basically everyone has better things to do than come to my birthday.

Anyway, I noticed that a friend does social climbing by saying he's not available. I noticed he did it several times. So that frames him as high status. It's subtle but it's in the feel. The fact also that he's not doing any counter-proposition.

Problem

One creates a WA group and asks a whole group their availability out of the blue (no pre-discussion IRL or on WA about the topic) then the risk of rejection is high as one does not know people's agendas. Even more when people start to pile up and refuse: as soon as one person refused it empowers others to refuse. And when you have 6 people who refuse: how do one looks like? Like someone who's not worth spending time with. Even if they planned something already: it means one was not invited to the events the others are doing. So it frames the person inviting the others even more as an outgroup.

Goal

To ensure that when one asks publically if people will come one will get many positive responses.

Social Strategy

One way to mitigate this is to ask privately on WA or in real life before creating the group. This way when the group is created it is only composed of available people. If one wants to power move one can even ask after having created the group: "are you guys up for this?" and of course they will all say "yes" as they did say yes privately. So it frames one as in-demand and sought after.