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The domestic disturbance surrounded an online invitation that went out for a long-weekend barbecue I was helping to plan. I couldn't help but notice that the invitation didn't have a fancy title on it.

Good parties, you see, go out under names like "Party Plenty on Floor Twenty." This one just said "Victoria Day BBQ." Worse, there was no fun picture to go along with it. How could a party be fun if someone hadn't attached a picture that somehow conveyed the essence of Victoria Day with a degree of suitably detached, avant-garde irony? Facebook, which had been used to send out the invitations, had illustrated it with a blue question mark instead.

"Facebook invites with question marks," I said, choosing my words, "look cheap."

"Find me a photo, I'll put it up," said the other party to the party planning.

"It's not my party," I said.

There was a pause.

"You're embarrassed," she said, sounding like she was onto something.

And sure enough, things would have got much worse in a hurry had I not, in a timely fashion, realized how stupid it all was. Still, I had emerged with a truth: Online invitations, and the neuroses they breed, aren't making the world a better place.

The extent to which online invitations have an impact on you probably depends on where you sit among our country's generational divides. If you've been sucked into the swirling vortex of Facebook, which is growing voraciously in Canada and assimilating an older and older demographic every time I look, you've probably encountered its invitation system. If you're not on Facebook, it's a good bet that at least one of your friends has taken to doing their party planning through a Web service such as Evite.com. And if you haven't got one of those, then just wait. One is on the way.

On the surface, the idea seems innocuous, even practical: Instead of e-mailing people to invite them to an event and crossing your fingers that they'll show up, why not harness the power of the Web to automate the RSVP process?

Using services such as Evite, party hosts type in a list of invitees. Each invitee receives a fancy e-mail invitation that teases the event, and entreats them to click a link to find out the full details. Clicking the link takes invitees to a Web page, where they can RSVP, decline, or list themselves as undecided. Moreover, invitees in any camp can leave messages explaining their decisions.

Conceptually, it's a win-win: Party planners get a head count, and invitees can peruse the invite list to see who among their friends and enemies will be attending.

But progress has once again proved to be a double-edged sword. (As with nuclear fission, so too with e-vites.) Here's one problem with Evite's electronic invitations: They snitch on you. As soon as an invitee clicks on their e-mail, Evite quietly logs that their invitation has been read, and it makes this known to the event planner.

This is an instance in which transparency benefits nobody. After all, proper socialization requires that the truth be given a little wiggle room. But if the computer, with digital certainty, is telling the party planner that you've read their invitation, you're pinned. You can't, for instance, pretend that you hadn't seen the invitation while you see if other friends turn up a better offer for the evening.

If you don't wind up attending, you can't claim to have been inundated with e-mail that day and forgot to open it. You can't say you never got the message in the first place, and, after the fact, plaintively ask if your host is sure they sent the invite to the right address. These little graces keep society running smoothly. It's harder to lie through your teeth when the computer is taking notes.

I also have to wonder if public RSVP lists full of commentary from the invitees is such a step forward. (Facebook, which doesn't snitch on invitation readers, does make these public.) Far be it for me to complain about a feature that facilitates avoiding specific people, but it also has the effect of turning every party invitation into a who's who. What might have just been a social event becomes a society event: an exercise in conspicuous listing.

And when the people who have been conspicuously listed start leaving messages on the invitation, the whole thing is ratcheted up to a new level of performance. Those who leave messages about why they can't be there are, in essence, being asked to explain themselves to the whole room; they can be counted on to imply that their other plans are much more important. Those who leave messages about why they're undecided trip over themselves to hedge their bets without giving offence. Those who accept feel duty bound to say something witty or over-enthused. The invitation becomes an event unto itself.

Small wonder, then, that a snazzy online invitation, decked out with fun pictures and a witty caption, is increasingly de rigueur. When you're about to ask people to eyeball each other's names on the list, then publicly confirm, deny, or awkwardly wriggle out of your event, you darn well better want to look your best. If that means spending an afternoon forging a picture of Queen Victoria drinking a beer and grilling a burger, then so be it.

webseven@globeandmail.com