It is an amazing feeling."
The hedonistic benefits of canceling plans have in recent years gained a more philosophical underpinning.
As the new mantra goes: You don’t owe anyone anything.
Many Americans, particularly young people, have taken this idea to heart.
But as another adage tells us, everything is good in moderation.
As it turns out, that applies to backing out of the plans we make with other people.
“We were like, ‘Well, why do they feel that way?’
Because, in a way, you’re kind of rejecting another person,” Chopik said.
“You know, you’re telling another person you don’t want to hang out with them.”
“Without fulfilling this fundamental need, we struggle in different ways,” Cowden said.
A society where people feel able to adjust plans for legitimate reasons is a step forward.
All these little decisions to cancel add up to a lot morealone time.
Chopik tells me there are two big forces undergirding some of our newfound flakiness.
One is the proliferation of what he calls busy culture, a nasty offspring ofhustle culture.
Modern conveniences make life easier, but constant connectivity pushes us to work more, not less.
After all, one byproduct of the pandemic was a pronounced increase in anxiety disorders and social anxiety.
Indeed,research suggestswe underestimate how positive we feel when someone reaches out to us.
But the opposite is true.
We like talking to each other we just don’t think people want to hear from us.
“And I think that desensitized a lot of people.”
For one thing, there’s a counterintuitive hierarchy of cancellations.
And the idea that canceling plans is a form of self-care may be backfiring.
Chopik said the people we’re closest to are actually included in our sense of self.
The time we spend with friends is precious, and it feels costly to lose out on that.
Look no further than the dominance of restaurant reservation fees or no-show charges.
Nationally, it said, 12% of restaurants charged a fee that month.
Our newer isolationist tendencies or the rarity of social gatherings might also be giving people a shorter fuse.
Anecdotally, service workers have said thatcustomers generally treat them worse than they used to.
“They would get upset, angry.
While flakiness can be frustrating, the rising tide of cancellations is not inevitable.
As individuals, we might also need to lean into something that modern luxuries aim to alleviate: discomfort.
On the other side may be a friend or a party full of new friends.
