The Facebook Status Update/Open Invite

I’m going to address something that I see quite a bit of on social media, but never hear anyone talk about.

There’s a decent number of  women in my life that I find interesting and want to get to know better, but with whom I don’t have the kind of relationship where we make plans to hang out, and if I were to suddenly try, it might seem like I was asking them out on a date whether I was or not.

At least a couple times a month, one of these women will post something on Facebook like this:

“I’m going for a hike today, who wants to come with me?”

Or:

“I’ll be a Black Thorn Pub in about an hour if someone wants to join me for a drink.”

Or:

“I’m binge-watching Arrested Development on Netflix at my place tonight. Private message me for the address if you want to swing by.”

Every time this happens, I get excited. I instinctively reach for the keyboard to respond. Here’s a chance to get some social time with this woman I’m interested in. Awesome.

Then the voice in my head kicks in. It says that this is a public post visible to everyone of her Facebook friends, of which she has about a thousand. She wasn’t thinking about me when she made that post. She probably doesn’t even remember friending me on Facebook and forgot I can see her feed. If I respond to this message or show up where she announced she will be, it will look really desperate and she will regret having posted this status update. In fact, the next time she thinks about making a similar post, she’ll remember that time David Wraith showed up and how awkward it was and then decide against it [like the time a guy I really didn’t want to hang out with, showed up at the bar where I was because he saw I’d checked in there on Foursquare, and for months afterward, I only checked-in places as I was leaving to avoid that happening again].

Then the voice in my head tells me that out of her thousand Facebook friends, there’s probably only about thirty people she really wants to hang out with, and out of that thirty she’s hoping only about half a dozen with respond, and I am not one of those people. Then the voice in my head asks why didn’t she just send a private group message to those thirty people or adjust the privacy settings on her post so only they would see it. Then I’m pissed at her for being lazy and playing with my emotions, and then she and I are in a fight that only I am aware of, and then I’m thinking about unfriending or unfollowing her to prevent her from ruining my day like this in the future.

I can’t be the only person who goes through this, right?