This is just an observation. YMMV, of course. But I've noticed this with increasing frequency in recent years...
It's not necessarily a "new" thing. Lying certainly isn't new. But I imagine there must have been a time when, hypothetically, you could make plans with someone, or discuss something, and they would damn well hold to it/keep their word...
Like, in my observation, this happens all the damn time: people flake, people change their mind at the last minute, people ghost (and I do it, too), people, worst of all, change plans, or change their mind, and don't even tell you...
I'm not talking just with women, either. My male "friends" do this. My family does this. Constantly. Randoms I meet, and plan to meet up with later, do this too. And sure, I'm a common factor, but I see this happening more generally, to all manner of people I know, too.
I really, really wish that we "as a society" hadn't normalised this... "Flaky", noncommittal, "my needs come first, always" bullshit...
I really, really do.
If there's a culture where keeping your word and actually committing is still the default, I look forward to one day finding it. Because I am yet to really... Ever experience that. And I've travelled fairly widely and met a lot of people.
And here I thought this avoidance of common decency was strictly a California thing.
I believe the anonymity of online communication . . . what we're doing here, now, lends itself to the sort of anti-social rudeness you refer to.
But then I can make a distinction between typed conversations and conversations in real life and the social customs involved, so I always assumed others can, but maybe it's also a generational problem.
My experiences of this may actually be fairly uniquely awful, unfortunately…
One of the worst things that I’ve had happen three times with different groups I was “friendly” with (for want of a more descriptive term) was where I proposed an idea for an activity or place we could go, we all agreed we should go together, only for them to go silent on it, and me to find out, some weeks later, that they had gone without me, and hadn’t even bothered to tell me (small groups, here, so I guess it was exclusion of sorts, but not purely being “left out”, if that makes sense)…
That particular “back stab” was cold enough to be friendship-ending, to be quite honest… Especially when they then get shitty when you call them out on it, lol…
Totally not cool. Even I, at the time, could see that…
I made that distinction too (or I try to), but yeah, I notice more and more that other people either do not or cannot…
And yeah, different continent, same problem.
Commit to something in person; weasel out of it later via text. That seems to be “the new norm”, in my experience…
And then you ask for an explanation as to why, and they just get all shitty…
I really hate that.