Any newcomer to the Bay Area is likely to be met with a chorus of people happily informing them that everybody else who lives here is a flake. I’m not convinced that it’s a problem exclusive to us — short of living several lives simultaneously in different cities, I’m not even sure how you’d test that theory.
I think no matter where you are, there’s a horseshoe effect when it comes to flakiness. Siblings and childhood friends know they have a long leash, and feel free to reschedule at the last minute because it’s unlikely you’re going to cut them off over it. New friends are just starting to incorporate you into their lives. Even if they like you, you can’t be very high on their list of priorities yet.
To minimize flaking in your social circle, then, you really need a robust cross-section of relationships that are neither very old nor very recent. But who has time for that? We can’t all just sit around and wait for an old-growth forest with multigenerational tree networks to spring up around us. Especially if you just moved to the Bay, you need friends now, which means you’re going to have to adapt to your surroundings: You’re going to have to get a little flakier, and fast.
Start small, and before you know it, you too can be the kind of person who will text, “I miss you! Let’s get together sometime soon” fitfully, with no meaningful follow up, over a six-month period. (No one knows, incidentally, what “let’s get together soon” means. It can cover anything from “I want to make concrete plans with you, imminently” to “I wish you no real harm,” and a great swath of territory in between.)
Aren’t there other solutions, you might ask? To be sure, some people will suggest you mitigate flakiness in others by dialing up your own decisiveness. They would have you issue exploding offers that make spending time together sound like an exclusive collaboration with a limited window: “I’m going to be at the farmer’s market this Saturday at 11am. Be there or don’t,” that sort of thing.
You could waste half your life trying to parse “Let’s get together”s and gaming your social invitations for maximum engagement. But I think a better policy is to embrace flakiness yourself. It always feels good to fit in! Besides, there are few pleasures more keenly felt than anticipation, and the secret joy of the flake is that they are always experiencing it. A flake truly believes, even as they are in the middle of canceling plans, that they are going to make up for it soon. Imagine your own brain, ceaselessly bathed in the delight of anticipation, without ever having to do anything. What is the key to achieving a personally gratifying degree of flakiness? A distinct combination of delusional optimism, avoidance (not only of conflict but of anything definite), congenital tardiness, and mental vagueness to the point of obstructionism.
The delusional optimism must extend to the act of canceling plans itself. Let us look at a hypothetical text conversation between a non-flaking friend (hereafter referred to as THE CHUMP) and THE FLAKE.
CHUMP: Just got a great parking space! See you soon
CHUMP [sensing something may be wrong, but unwilling to ask outright; also hoping at this point to make the FLAKE feel guilty by overemphasizing how naively excited they are to continue what both parties must know now is charade]: Grabbed us a table near the back!
FLAKE: Oh wow, I’ve actually been sleeping…I think I’m still catching up from last night, but if I get up soon I’ll definitely be there
Sure, you could leave on time... but what if you just slept more instead? Photo by Kate Stone Matheson / Unsplash
Merely sleeping through plans is insufficient for becoming a flake. Anybody can oversleep, underestimate traffic, or accidentally double-book a Thursday evening. The key is to routinely overpromise and underdeliver, always waiting until the last possible second to cancel. Ideally you will refuse to admit that you are in fact cancelling even as you acknowledge you’re not going to make it.
To return to our sample dialogue: The intensifier “actually” makes it clear that the FLAKE finds it remarkable, even astonishing, that they have slept through your plans, even though it’s the sort of thing they do pretty often. “I think” positions the FLAKE as a dispassionate external observer of their own animal behavior, where they are both the gorilla and Jane Goodall at the same time. “If I get up…I’ll definitely be there” is both a guarantee and a conditional statement. Who’s to say if I get up later — I’m as curious as you are to find out what happens!
The real trick is that you have to mean it. You must really believe that there is at least a 50% chance that you will spring out of bed in the next five minutes and teleport 40 minutes across town, without having to negotiate through space and time, powered by sheer force of will.
Others may try to counter your newfound flakiness with their own stratagem. Don’t let them. Let us say, for example, you have just said “We should get together soon!” You meant it, but not in a concrete sense; rather in the same way you think it would be nice to see a shooting star from your back deck some summer evening.
To which your friend, who is secretly trying to trick you into behaving better, as though you were their toddler, counters: “That’s a great idea. I’ve been meaning to try the [ITEM] at [LOCATION]. Want to meet there at 7pm on Thursday?”
To which you should say, “Love it!” Crucially, you have not just agreed to meet them anywhere. You have only said that you think the idea is a good one. Later, when they plaintively ask what happened, you will have a conscience as spotless as an Uncrustables sandwich. You have committed to precisely nothing, while nevertheless giving the distinct impression of unanimity, because flakiness loves every idea. Flakiness has no notes to offer. Flakiness is really looking forward to it. Flakiness has no voice for criticism. There is only full-throated endorsement, followed by a crash.
