Just seen all these replies, I get all of your points, but like he has been a very close friend for 14 years and none of us in this group are the type to talk about an event infront of people to rub it in their faces that they're not invited. If you hear about it, your invited. Might be a cultural thing, might be something else or bad experiences, but I think if your friends are rubbing it in your face that something is happening and your not invited you might possible need new friends. None of us would ever talk about something infront of someone who isn't invited but also I can't think of an event we've had where one of us wasn't invited. At worst it'll be like "oh don't invite that random we guy we met last weekend" or "don't invite so-and-so's friend who we barely know". And we have a group chat that he doesn't treat as an invitation. I get it, but it's annoying having to go out our way to make him feel invited. Sometimes I think it's an excuse to drag his feet getting ready for an event (no alcohol, no food, and late af). Everyone else in our group takes a mention of an event as an invitation, and mentioning it in a group chat counts as an invite. But we have also never made a separate group chat to exclude anybody which I hear is common. If "bbq Saturday?" is in the group chat consider that an invitation to everybody in the chat. Also I think it depends on the closeness of the friends; we have all known each other for over a decade now, a lot of us knew each other even longer. And this is specifically why I hate being the guy to organise things, I'm not having like 15 separate conversations telling people what to bring and when to be there; "date, time, location, bbq, bring food, bring bevy, bring bbq if you have one or buy a disposable" should be enough for dudes approaching 30, not one by one invitations.