Nat Locke: a birthday party, some margaritas and the Instagram post exposing the minefield of social media

I unwittingly committed a social faux pas last weekend and it’s something that would never have happened 20 years ago. You see, I was invited to a birthday party. One of those big number birthday parties. And it was just a great night. The birthday boy was someone I have known since my university days, and even though I don’t see him or several of our other friends all that often, when we do get together, it’s like we’ve never been apart. I hope you have friends of that calibre too. They’re great. The next day was when it all started to unravel. Still basking in a margarita infused afterglow, I popped up a little post of appreciation on Instagram. Because that’s what you do these days, am I right? Except that within a few hours I was caught in a maelstrom of messages and phone calls because other friends had been asked not to post anything for fear of someone who hadn’t been invited seeing them and getting offended. I had been blissfully unaware of these requests, but after a flurry of back and forth messages, I pulled the post. (I feel slightly bad about this because a follower had asked me where I got my dress from and I’m worried she might never have seen the answer. These sorts of things haunt me.) Anyway. We never had to worry about these things back when, after an event, we had to wait a week to get our photos back from the chemist, and then there was mostly a thumb obscuring part of the picture and hardly anyone was in focus. Back then, the best photos might make it into a photo album that no one looked at until they were looking for incriminating pictures to display at a reunion. There was essentially hardly any record of what we got up to. As a result we have to rely on our hazy memories which are not that reliable, but maybe it’s better that way. Today, unless you’ve been explicitly asked to delete them, you have a forensic record of everything you’ve ever done. Every outfit, every hairstyle, every experiment with contouring, every questionable romantic interest. It’s all there for everyone to see. Forever. Which is awful enough but also, if you happen to throw a party and don’t invite someone who thinks they maybe should be invited, even though you probably had sound reasons for not inviting them (I’m assuming), then you’re completely on tenterhooks for the foreseeable future, worried sick that one errant tag will expose the truth. At the dawn of social media, you could be safe in the knowledge that if somebody didn’t follow you, they wouldn’t see your posts, but thanks to the vagaries of the algorithm, they’re likely to be served your party pics just because they know someone else in them. What an awful world. Now, I know what you’re thinking. All of this could have been avoided if they had just invited the person in question in the first place. But the reality is that you can’t invite everyone. At some point, you have to draw a line in the sand and say “that’s enough” because there are restrictions of space, because you’re paying for catering and because there are some people who simply cannot handle an open margarita bar. If you do manage to discover that you haven’t been invited to a shindig though, try not to take it personally. Whatever the actual reason, you can always just tell yourself you weren’t invited due to a numbers restriction. Denial is a perfectly acceptable reaction under the circumstances. It’s not as much fun as an open margarita bar, but it’ll get you through. Unless it’s your very best friend in the world who hasn’t invited you, there’s probably no reason to get upset about it. And if you are the sort of person to get upset about it, then that might be your first clue as to why you weren’t invited. I don’t know. I always get invited. That’s a joke obviously. I’m sure, somewhere, sometime, there’s been a party that left me off the invitation list, but I can’t remember getting upset because I saw a social post about how great a party it was. I was probably grateful for a night at home on the couch, to be honest.