Look, I’m as big a fan of Partiful as anybody, but Partiful needs a way to opt out of getting invites from mutual acquaintances. It’s getting out of hand.
First launched in 2020 at the height of the COVID pandemic lockdowns, when we were all broadly flat at home, bored off our socially isolated asses, we couldn’t do much with Partiful at first.
But as the world opened up and we were all desperate for human contact, it quickly became the go-to app for birthdays, Halloween parties, brunches, open mics, art shows, and just about any event where you need to know who’s definitely coming beforehand.
The app is well designed in many ways, from its ability to drop photos into a shared photo album to the notifications that are just frequent enough to remind you that an event is about to happen or that you still need to RSVP, without being an annoying nag.
partiful’s mutuals problem
These days, however, I get more event invites from people I don’t know than people I do. Mutuals are people who aren’t necessarily your friends, or even people you know, but people with whom you’ve attended a Partiful event before.
Like any zombie movie proves, though, we all have a lot of connections, and these connections can easily spiral out of control.
Now there are invitations to events demanding ticket money—they’re hardly ever free events—appearing on my Partiful calendar (even when you don’t RSVP “coming”) and sending automated text invitations. It’s beginning to feel spammy.
You can individually opt out of invites from people one at a time, or block them entirely, but that’s a reactionary step. It wouldn’t stop new mutuals from throwing you into new events, and it’s incredibly time-consuming.
Partiful could stand to have an option to restrict mutuals from carpet-bombing everybody in their network’s network, as they often do, before the app strays too far from what made it popular: a way for your social groups to plan the events you actually want to go to.
The post Partiful’s Mutuals Invitation System Is Out of Control appeared first on VICE.
