I miss receiving invitations. Paper invitations. Invitations for everything. Birthday parties, pool parties, other parties. Those flimsy cards were a precious commodity in elementary and middle school. They’re now a relic of a time when people had to sit down and write by hand, and had to commit time, dedication, and care. Even if the penmanship was poor, it offered an authenticity that has recently given way to something more sterile. The culprit is, of course, Facebook.

I recently had to invite as many friends as I could to a play I’m performing in. The process of going through a list of friends to pick those I wanted to invite was frustrating to say the least. The prospect of simply “inviting all” became more appealing with every subsequent group of people I scrolled through. The worst part about knowing the “invite all” feature exists, and not receiving an invitation to a massive event, makes one feel even more left out of these social events. There’s something about receiving an invite of any sort that makes the invitee feel appreciated by the inviter. If someone took the time to click on your name alone, then there’s a wonderful sense of elation, especially if the event is small. But Facebook has simply made the process of staging an event a bore.

Using mass texting and mass Facebook invites as ways to contact people has negated the ever important aspect of having to invite a person while physically in their presence. These days, when I get invited to events, I feel less important and special than I used to. Although this may seem selfish and self-obsessed, I appreciate being invited to events in person. Even if I don’t attend, simply having someone take the time to invite to your face carries an element of real friendship. Seeing an invite, and then seeing that 400 other people have been invited to the same event immediately negates some of the connection you feel towards a person, and thus removes some of the excitement of attending. Lazy invitations make for lazy attendees, many of whom put “maybe attending” in an effort to placate those who made the event and sent out the invitations. What happened to RSVPing that you were coming, and then actually coming? Some try to escape this by texting their friends plans and event details, but these are immediately noticeable as mass texts: “Hey, come to our place Friday at 10” reeks of impersonality, and the least you can do is put “Hey guys…etc.” We know you’re inviting at least five of us with this same message, so lay off with the half-assed attempts at making them seem personal.

It’s easy to criticize Facebook, but by doing so we are really criticizing ourselves, as we have accepted this situation as the norm.

Yet the very nature of writing your friends’ names on that small line that read NAME, and penciling in your address and phone number, one card at a time, made your parties and events seem special, important, and even downright holy. Those cards took effort. Next time there’s a party, go to the dollar store, pick up a stack of those flimsy little cards, and send them to the people who most deserve a proper invite. Let’s bring the cards back: I, for one, miss them.