When It Rains, It Flakes

Believe it or not, I consider myself a good person. Don’t get me wrong, I can be a judgmental jerk (especially in my youth), but for the most part, I’m good at putting up with most things that irk my peers (like Bad Bunny, bad news, and bad politics…)

So that’s why I’m shocked by how much I hate flaking. Especially since when I was young, I canceled and bailed a lot. But there’s a difference. I’ll explain with definitions:

1. Canceling. Canceling is not flaking. It may upset others and earn one a reputation as a person who cancels, but it’s not flaking because you give the person you are breaking plans with proper notice when you do it. When I got my first girlfriend, I canceled like crazy. However, now I’m a middle-aged parent, so I only do it based on my fatigue, my kids’ fatigue, or to keep our myriad illnesses away from the public.

2. Ghosting. Ghosting is an egregious crime, like murder, that makes flaking look like jay-walking. Ghosting is when a person has a relationship with someone, then disappears from their life completely, without an excuse, reason, or accountability. I’ve never been ghosted (nor have I ghosted anyone), but I’ve also never murdered, so this is nothing to brag about. But it did happen to a close friend, by a boyfriend of more than a year, and just watching what that person went through scarred me.

3. Bailing. Bailing is like that friend of yours who is half-Jewish (or half-Muslim, or half-anything. Please don’t get pedantic with me this early in our essay.) Bailing is dipping one’s toes in the cesspool of flaking, but it’s not a full-on flake, because when you bail, you do give notice—it’s just that even with that, you’re letting the other person or persons down, and you both know it. So even if you have a “good reason,” it’s still annoying and inconvenient. But there’s a threshold for this term: Telling your friend you can no longer go with them on a trip this weekend because you broke your femur and can’t walk is not bailing. Bailing is when you get a new girlfriend and cancel that trip. But seriously, what kind of monster would do that?

Now I can analyze flaking. While I hate this modern phenomenon, I do respect the etymology of the term, as it describes a uniquely terrible action. Flaking creates the same awful effect as bailing, yet also shows the same level of discourtesy as ghosting, but as it’s not permanent, and doesn’t involve proper notice, it deserves its own word.

It is currently 2026 in the year of our lord (who, by the way, seems to be a total flake. I mean, for real, where is this holy leader who’s supposed to instill order among mortals? Gulp. Maybe it’s worse. Perhaps the lord hath ghosted us! That would explain a lot...)

The first time someone flaked on me was 2004, but I didn’t have a word for it then. I just remember that this girl I was into told me she’d meet me at a party, then never showed, without telling me she wasn’t coming. Sadly, the next time I saw her, as I still liked her, I didn’t bring it up so I never found out what happened. But since I’m not paying you to lie on your couch and talk about my trauma, I’ll get back to my analysis.

Flaking is a social contagion! I have good-hearted friends who were reliable for decades, who now think it’s fine to make plans then text at the last second to cancel, and that’s rude, as it prevents me from pivoting in time to make other plans. Flaking is vulgar because the person fails to give proper notice and/or a proper apology that shows contrition and remorse, and no one wants to be treated that way.

I believe flaking is enormously popular today thanks to texting and online culture, both of which are separate issues we must discuss. Let’s tackle texting first.

I don’t know a single adult who doesn’t have a cellphone. I know a few who don’t regularly carry one, and others who leave them off or put them away for vast portions of their day, but everyone I know has one (even the ones living in poverty). This is because they’re pretty much required at this point. You need one for most ticketed events, and most emergency forms require one. Heck, even OpenTable needs one!

What interests me about the nexus of flaking and cellphones is that even with texting ubiquity, there’s still no excuse for flaking. Well, unless your reason is: 1. cowardice 2. passive aggressive anger or 3. passive aggressive cowardly anger. I mean, every adult I know has access to a lighter, but none of them use that as an excuse to commit arson.

Having the ability to do something dishonorable is not an excuse to do it. So the fact that we all can text is not a good reason for our society to give text-flakes a pass. Before texting, people didn’t flake because it was social suicide. If you told someone you’d meet them for a meal, a movie, or even just coffee, it was a sacred covenant you’d only break if you had to. And even then, you’d go through major inconveniences like calling a restaurant and asking a waiter to find your friend and tell them you sucked at life—because it showed the person you cared, yet still had to cancel or bail.

Part of this was owed to landlines and payphones, but I think most of it was due to a social stigma against “being inconsiderate of others’ time,” and I find this ironic in an era that most herald as an era of extra leisure time, thanks to modern technology.

The only thing I can say in defense of text-flakes is that anyone who has my number and texts me to cancel, is also someone I know well enough to scold, so if someone does it to me, I don’t have to resent them in secrecy. I can tell them if it was rude.

My main issue with flaking comes from online culture, specifically a social app called MeetUp, a modern convenience that once saved me from the pits of despair. If it weren’t for this app, I’d be friendless and bored out of my mind on weekends. But thanks to MeetUp, after a brutal divorce that tore me from my son, I found two groups (writing and hiking), each of which led to amazing friendships I cherish to this day.

About a year after I joined my writing group, the guy who ran it became so popular he had to split the group in two, and I volunteered to run one. At first, it was easy. All I had to do was show up and explain the rules, run a timer, and facilitate a discussion.

Soon thereafter, both groups became even more popular, but neither of us had time to run a third group, so we instituted a wait list. This is when I started experiencing what I can only call “an avalanche of flakes.” But what was truly eye-opening (and infuriating) was that since I ran the group, week after week, I was forced to see just how negatively flakes affected all the accountable men and women vying for spots that these flakes were holding, only to no-show when the big day came around.

Since I’m sure that some of the eyeballs reading this are connected to minds that are saying, “He’s talking about you,” let me be sure to say a few things about your crime. First of all, no, I don’t think you are doing this on purpose, nor do I think that you don’t feel guilty when you do it. I also know that many of you have great reasons for de-committing the same day or within a few hours of an event. But that doesn’t mean your actions aren’t doing what I’m claiming. Ultimately, valiant excuse or not, when you flake at the last minute, very often someone is at home, wishing they could go.

This is why I’m not railing on people who flake. I’m trying to help my peers see that in addition to systemic bigotry, greed, and corruption, we should also be fighting systemic flaking, and other accountability and courtesy issues that plague modern life.

I once read a book about complaining, and my only complaint is I don’t think enough people read it. It makes a great point I still follow, but rarely see online. It says if you complain, you must offer a solution, and you must also be willing to help deliver that.

So I do have a solution for systemic flaking, and it’s simple, yet also so abstract I’m worried readers won’t take me seriously. I believe most modern social ailments have arisen because we no longer spend enough time looking each other in the eyes.

When we meet someone, instead of shaking hands and announcing our names and other superficial information, we should stare into each other’s eyes for the amount of time it takes to feel awkward, want to stop, then feel good. I bet 99% of people who do dishonorable things wouldn’t do them to people they did this with (The other 1% are hopelessly incorrigible scoundrels; your totally made up statistical mileage may vary).

Online culture has created a lack of interconnectedness that, while ironic, given how it comes from “an invention designed to connect us all,” is nevertheless the driving force behind the decline of most of our previously sacred social mores.

Before the Internet (and phones), you had to meet people in person to make plans, and in that process, you had to look them in the eyes, which helped you respect them, and their time, in a way that online anonymity doesn’t warrant or demand. And, if you met someone and didn’t like what you saw in their eyes, you knew not to make plans!

Since it’s impossible to go online and “look someone in the eyes,” we should institute social credit ratings on apps. But I want to make this very clear: I’m not advocating a national (or local) system. I would never trust my government (or any other) to do that fairly (Go China, go!). I’m suggesting it for non-essential, elective services. Even incorrigible scoundrels deserve health care, education, and other human rights.

I’m not saying you can’t flake, I’m just advocating systems that rewards dedication. And If you think this sounds cruel, take issue with your real enemy: accountability.

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This Week on Coffin Talk: Patrick Granfield is a writer, policy professional, and editor who served at high levels of the Obama Administration, as a speechwriter to Rahm Emanuel, and as a journalist in the Middle East. He has written for The Atlantic and Washington Post, among others, and he’s a MikeyOpp subscriber. LISTEN HERE.