Communication, or "Rob writes way out of his depth on technology and relationships"

I didn’t intend for this blog to be a love & relationships type of blog.  We all know that the internet is full of people blogging, live tweeting, instagraming, vine-ing, and every other verb (except “enjoy”) –ing their love life and probably doing so much better than I could aspire to.  I did intend for it to be a place where I could jot down my thoughts, with more consideration, and hopefully, a little less angst than my Myspace blog of about a decade ago.

Speaking of about a decade ago, my 10 year college reunion in this weekend.  Not the official one; that was this summer.  This is something a group of friends and I arranged “by invitation only”, so to speak.  Thankfully, someone took the role of cat-herder and figured out the optimum weekend that worked for the most people, and handled most of the other planning and scheduling, which made it easy on the rest of us, especially the “out of towners” who’d be flying to Texas from other parts of the country.

Yesterday, four days out, 1/3rd of them cancelled. 
Now, I’m not one to judge admit to judging others, but naturally, like your boss when you call in sick to work, I considered their reasons and whether or not I felt like they were justifiable.  This isn’t about me thinking that people should have put this before family commitments on Thanksgiving weekend, which was the weekend people preferred because of work schedules. 
It’s about the timing; since this is something we’d started planning about 4 months ago, and that most people committed to 2-3 weeks ago.
As I read the “with regrets” messages in our Facebook group chat, I thought, “This is like planning a date a week in advance and then cancelling 15 min before!”

And then my date for that evening cancelled about 15 minutes before. Via text message.
Immediately after reading the aforementioned Facebook messages, I saw a text message from the girl I was supposed to meet later for a second date. We had rescheduled from the previous night, after bumping the time back twice, due to some circumstances out of her control.
She was replying to my 3:30 pm inquiry as to what, specifically, “after work” meant, and whether or not 9, which we discussed the previous evening, was in fact going to be the time. 
She said she felt this scheduling seemed “forced” and that she would like to “pass on hanging out again”.  She sent this at about 8:30, and I read it at 8:45.  
I’m not particularly upset that she didn’t want to go out again.  I’m a single 33-year-old man, so I’m aware that sometimes, people are “just not that into you”. Rejection can no longer dent my ego, which is secured behind an impenetrable fortress of self-esteem my mother built, under a thin veil of narcissism of my own production.

The problem is the lack of notice, and indifference towards other people’s time.  The other problem is, that this probably happens with 1 out of every 4 dates.  The bright side is that sometimes the excuses are funny.  For instance, on two separate occasions with different women, they had to cancel the afternoon of because their hike was going longer than expected.  I declined to reschedule with either of them, which both were shocked about.  
This phenomenon occurs slightly less frequently with my friends.  My friends, whom I love, and who are probably the only people reading this. Also, for the record, I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about my, uh. . . other friends.

I wouldn’t use my last year’s worth of experiences alone to infer a cultural shift, if I hadn’t seen countless books, articles, podcasts, and other reports about the same thing.  Once of which is an article I read this morning on the prevalence of men in the UK in their 20’s with no close male friends.  Perhaps they are all too busy rescheduling Tinder dates to hang out with their bros anymore.

Although decades of technological advancement have provided us with the most pervasive and sophisticated communication network that mankind has ever known, the quality of communication is the lowest quality it's ever been, and thus, we require more of it to be satisfied.  Think about the last time you had plans with someone and didn't text them within a couple hours of the time you were to meet to ask "Still on for __?"
A decade ago, not everyone had a phone in their pocket to make this possible, so there was mutual trust that was required.  You might talk to someone a day or two before and not hear from them or see them until the time/place you were to meet.
A century ago, you might be setting up a ride from the train station a three weeks in advance via a letter, requiring an even greater level of trust and reliance on that person. 

 It bothers me that I remember the home phone number of my best friend in first grade, but not my sister's cell number.  Then again, technology makes some tasks like this obsolete. That's part of progress. My question is whether or not it also has to make things that used to be core values, obsolete.