The reason these electronic social engineering systems are used is to minimize the creativity, thought, and individual attention that the sender has to put out, per person, while organizing a big event. The electronic invitation systems form, in essence, an operating system for controlling a group of people. The idea, as in most automation, is that the controlling person has more important things to do with his time than to personally interact with the low-level elements, which in this case are the guests.

Clearly it is more flattering to be the recipient of individual thought and effort than to be the recipient of a mechanized mass mailing. But there is another aspect to electronic social engineering systems that is perhaps even more relevant. Electronic invitation systems request personal response from the invitee, often to visit a sign-in webpage. Here you have a computer program assigning work to a human. Um, I think it's supposed to be the other way around.

Each person has his pompous moments and his needy moments. We can never know which one of these personalities is their real identity and which is some transient anomaly. I usually give people the benefit of the doubt and ignore them when they are in their pompous phase, sending electronic invitations and such. When they are having their nervous breakdown or midlife crisis or whatever, we can talk, one on one, over a cup of coffee.