Ask HN: Where are all the parties? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Where are all the parties?

10 years ago, there were a lot of parties in my life, and now there are none. Where have they gone? Have you seen the same, and have you managed to revive your party life?

I remember parties at friends places, for housewarmings, birthdays, holidays, sports games, barbecuing, karaoke, whatever. I remember parties at work, for people joining the team, for people leaving, for projects kicking off or finishing.

Now my kids are older and it seems that only they get to party. I try my best, invited some people for parties, but we never seem to get invites in return.

Hypotheses I have so far:

- I'm just getting old (closing in on 50) and people my age don't party anymore

- COVID happened and we still haven't restarted partying the way we used to

- I'm just unlucky with my set of friends and need to renew my friendships

Very interested in both macro trends (eg is partying overall just down) as well as things that you've done at individual level to restart party life.

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I'm 42 and last year moved back to my home country. We wanted to throw a housewarming party but getting enough people in one place on a specific day at a specific time seemed like an impossible challenge. Everybody had busy schedules for their precious August weekends anyway.

We ended up doing a full-weekend party where people could drop by whenever they can. The first guests came on Friday around 6 pm and the last ones left on Sunday at 11 pm. In the end people were spread out evenly. Some came with kids in the day, others alone in the evening. This way there was really time to sit down and talk with old friends whom I hadn't seen in years or even decades.

For food, we ended up having ingredients in the fridge for a few quick foods like Vietnamese rice paper rolls, and we'd make it together with new guests if they were hungry. It worked out fine.

Of course dedicating the entire weekend to a party is a big commitment, but I think it actually reduced the level of stress compared to trying to do a traditional "dense" party on Saturday night.

As an introvert, that sounds like a total nightmare. One visit with friends, or so-called "party", leaves me drained for days.

If I had a whole weekend of drop-ins I would isolate myself a week after.

As an extrovert, that sounds like a total nightmare. Complete isolation for a week would drive me nuts.

Well it's complete isolation with your preferred partner. Introverts can avoid draining their battery if they spend time with close people they trust, and can be themselves around.

I compare it to masks. We wear many different masks and they weigh different depending on the company. The masks come off with your close family and friends and it's wonderful. It's actually recharging in some way.

We introverts will make great residents of Mars. People always talk about how impossible it’ll be for humans to live there in relative isolation. Those people are obviously normals, and they always assume the others like us don’t count. I’d do just fine with myself or a small number of close partners for the rest of my life. Further, a lot of folks on the spectrum wouldn’t do _just_ fine, they would do better.. A planet for the neurodiverse seems like a great thing.

I think the relative isolation is one of the smallest challenges related to colonizing Mars.

Yes, I didn’t rank it in the challenges, just that it’s always brought up.

Non-introverts are not "normals". They're just louder and pushier and invade your personal space more than others.

I really don't like it when they invade my personal space

I think the opposite might be true. As an introvert how would you like living in a cramped 4-6 bedroom apartment with other engineers and constantly working together to troubleshoot, build up & repair the station facilities, doing time-delay media interviews, reporting results to multiple science orgs, etc?

I love this idea. I often find getting a big group together for a BBQ or something is great for mixing social groups, cross-pollinating friends, and seeing people I don't often see - the downside is I don't tend to get much 1 on 1 time to really talk with friends, and often people can't make a specific time (especially as we get older). I also have a fair amount of friends who are introverted or have social anxiety and don't feel comfortable in larger groups, and this feels like it would benefit that too.

This sounds really exhausting. But now that I think about it my parent's house serves the same purpose. When I visit I let family and friends know I'm in town and to stop in when they can. House is the same place they remember from high school. I don't consider it a party, just old friends chatting, drinking, and eating. I'd be lucky if more than 2-3 showed up around the same time.

Great idea

This is why Christmas is becoming more and more important in my life. Apart from milestone birthdays, it's the only time when it's possible to get everyone together.

Everyone saying this sounds exhausting which it do3s, but it also sounds like a ton of fun. Having youre house just be an open hang for a weekend sounds sweet

I've noticed exactly the same thing. Everybody is busy with their schedules.

In retrospect the COVID years were much better for my social life than the last six months. During COVID, people were really looking forward to interact with people, and would jump into activities as long as it was online, or if you did a quick test before meeting.

But now people went back to their busy schedules of solo activities outside the house and they're tired, and there's no time for concerts together, no time for going to a soccer game, no time for playing board games or going for a hike.

Unless you're willing to compromise and do something you're not really into (I'm not good with FPS games, Allan, sorry), people are gonna do their own things and "mandatory socialization" seems enough for them.

I've done weekend-long drop-in/drop-out parties many times before. Every single one, while exhausting, has been incredibly memorable and will be remembered for the rest of my life.

You don't have to be around for the whole thing either, you can easily take some time to read or otherwise relax if you have enough friends coming over - nothing weird about friends hanging out in your house without you present.

I used to give out house keys to most of my friends and encourage them to come by whenever - if I'm not around, if I'm busy, or just plain exhausted, I won't hang out, but it's still a safe and fun place for people to gather. This often led to spontaneous 'parties'. I remember once a friend was in the area and came over with ingredients for a dish she had been wanting to create. Enough people ended up randomly showing up, it led to one of the most memorable and wonderful dinner parties of my life!

That's honestly sounds wonderful. Cynics going to say you won't have any privacy etc etc but I really like the sound of it.

Now I just need money to get a house in HCOL area where most of my friends are...

This sounds like literal paradise.

I don’t know how to cultivate this kind of community. It’s not something I grew up with. I moved around a lot, and have recently realized that post-Covid I have nearly no friends.

While I don’t miss commuting, or open offices, I do deeply miss the sense of community that used to exist in the tier 1 tech cities.

It wasn't a whole weekend, but I had a whole day event like this for my birthday that worked out pretty well. Similar situation with people with kids coming during the day, others coming in the evening. A couple truly committed people met us for breakfast first thing in the morning and stayed throughout the entire day.

You know, this actually sounds like a blast. I'm historically very much a loner, but even I have limits and lately I've been hitting them. I'm gonna pitch this idea to my partner. Thanks for sharing it.

A weekend long party is a great idea, thanks.

You are right that making more than one person agree on a time gets increasingly difficult as age increases. I tend to be the one that travels to friend's homes, because I have a less crowded agenda than most of them.

I don't invite people over anymore because their fussiness scales negatively - where if you want to mix 5 people who each have a rule about what they cannot abide, the common denominator is rarely special enough to leave the house for. Between the discretionary lifestyle demands of vegetarians, vegans, non-glutens, non-porks, non-drinkers, anti-smokers, non-problematics, non-outdoorsies, hover-parents, maskers, and the increasingly insane milenial need to make all their experiences on-brand and instagrammable, the closed path through those obstacles is a Hard problem.

It recently occurred to me how important my fraternal org is in my life after taking some time away from it. Showing up to see 30 or so guys who aren't family, and who were happy enough to see me, say hello, have a pint, dinner and small talk is maybe a once a year experience for most guys over 40, but for me it's about 10x/year, just with that group. There's a natural filter, where you don't have to re-negotiate all these anxieties every time you try to get people together.

One reason parties disappeared is because we have encouraged widespread neuroticism and anxiety about maintaining purity in different and various forms, and that intolerance has effectively eroded the social fabric. Surely we can hav e new kinds parties, ones that are lame, and that nobody enjoys, but we can have the satisfaction that at least those other people aren't here...

This idea is something if felt but have been unable to articulate.

For example, one of my very close friends is an ultra progressive guy. He’s vegan and talks a lot about personal responsibility to combat climate change. He was condemning people partying at my house for using disposable vapes since the packaging and plastic is wasteful…never mind the 6 pack of beer bottles he brought!

Another close friend is borderline carnivore, and likes to joke about controversial topics.

Having both of those guys around inevitably leads to arguments (mostly friendly) but that shit makes the other guests uncomfortable!

People need to stop caring so much about how others live and speak. Your personal philosophy isn’t special and shouldn’t prevent you from socializing with others!

At least in the US, extreme political polarization has also made it so ~40% of people won't even hang out or party with another ~40% of people, and vice versa. I've got friends on both sides, and I'd never be able to host a successful party that included them all. People can't leave that shit at home anymore.

I don’t understand why should people “leave that shit at home”? I’m not defending the parent example of a friend being progressive and criticizing others while engaging in similar wasteful behavior, but if you really believe in something, doesn’t it hurt to see the opposite? I suppose most people’s views in the US are superficial and team based in which case then I agree.

> doesn't it hurt to see the opposite

This is the point. Leave that shit at home so the "other" folks don't have to see your shit. And if they agree to this social construct then you will not have to see their shit either.

Right, but I guess the presumption is you’re the arbiter of what shit is worth leaving at home versus not. I assume if a known pedophile came to a party, others might say something and you’d be okay with that.

Not trying to raise a big point but I just don’t think it’s easy for everyone else to leave things they care about at home as some others. The more passionate, the harder it is.

I would agree to "leave that shit at home" insofar as it means "leave that shit at home until it is mature enough to be taken out in public".

If you can discuss your opinions without giving or taking offense, then fine. I certainly haven't reached that level of maturity, so it is an ideal for me.

> ... but if you really believe in something...

Let's be clear whether this means you feel a need to persuade the person you're sharing your opinion with. If so, have you given serious thought about how to persuade? What is more important here to you: sharing your opinion or bringing others to adopt it?

I think it's the whole etiquette of "Don't discuss religion or politics in polite company." If you really passionately believe in some political figure or religious thing, that's great. Other people don't, and I'm hosting a party for everyone to have fun, not just for believers. So, for the sake of getting along, leave it behind. Surely even passionate people can avoid talking about these topics for the mere 2 or so hours they spend trying to have fun!

I nearly had to throw someone out of a pool party being hosted for a bunch of 10 year old kids. The kids were all having a blast, but Mister Politics just couldn't stop talking about and inserting his political views. In this particular case I was in agreement with him, but it doesn't matter. This shit doesn't belong at an event that's supposed to be fun.

I agree with you in spirit but I’ve found as I’ve gotten older, I actually have more fun doing things with people whose life views I agree with. It’s hard to bury feelings if someone else is against immigrants (my parents are one), are against techies (that’s me!), anti-abortion, and many other current things I care about.

I’m not the type to raise a stink but I usually won’t have as much fun there either. I guess it’s more that my desire to avoid unpleasantries and making a ruckus than leaving my feelings at home.

Why are you against techies? What's so wrong with us? :'(

Nothing wrong with us, we rock :). I guess I’ve heard comments about our wealth inequality, gentrification, and mobility that not all careers have but there’s no easy solve.

> never mind the 6 pack of beer bottles he brought!

Glass is infinitely recyclable, whereas "disposable vapes" could be referring to just the cartridge (hopefully) but also could mean the full-fledged single-use vapes with a lithium battery inside. If its the latter, they really should switch to the former. If its the former then I think your friend was being a bit excessive griping about that but a 6 pack of infinitely recyclable glass is hardly a comparison to the perma-trash generated by plastic vape carts.

edit: just want to add, those lithium batteries aren't "disposable" because of any innate attribute of the battery, they're only "disposable" because they are sold that way. The batteries could have been reused if the company manufacturing the vape just designed it as such: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsJMj7FtroY

Most recycling winds up in a landfill. It’s expensive and costs energy. Sometimes we just pay china to put waste into a landfill and call it recycling.

There’s also the bottle caps, the packaging, and carbon cost of shipping a MUCH heavier product. There’s gotta be carbon output for growing barley and producing the actual beer too!

All so my environmentalist buddy can get drunk.

He shouldn’t feel guilty. The point is he’s doing the same thing as the vapers: emitting waste for a fleeting psychoactive effect.

The problem of climate change is so far above everyone’s pay grade. People shouldn’t be chastising others for their carbon footprint. It’s silly and impacts nothing.

I love my homie but Christ he’s gotta stop playing climate change moral arbiter

> Most recycling winds up in a landfill. It’s expensive and costs energy. Sometimes we just pay china to put waste into a landfill and call it recycling.

Source for this being applicable to glass? The news sources I've seen say that it's mostly an issue with plastics.

Also, glass isn't terribly polluting. It's inert and it will eventually degrade into sand. It'll take a long time but it's not like microplastics that stay in the body.

And we've been recycling glass before recycling was a big thing of course.

Politics is the art of meddling the state’s stewardship into people’s everyday life. Otherwise, it’s just heads of state talking together and no-one dares or feel empowered about managing the directions. But if you decide everyone should paint their bikeshed yellow? if you make everyone yell at each other for a mask? if you make one group believe their future depends on their siblings not consuming resources? This is politics.

I saved this to copy/paste whenever I hear about a party I'm not invited to (my fussiness scales negatively)

> my fussiness scales negatively

Gonna print this on my business cards

A friend recently introduced me to this quote, and even though it generalises a little[1], I think it ring true:

> Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.

I think we're entering that last cycle again, where people are inventing trivial hardships for themselves, because media teaches them that only a life with some type of adversity is worth living.

In other words, everyone is desperate to be a protagonist in what is an extremely comfortable world, so they invent villains. Then they post about their great protagonism on social media. In part, I think, this is due to the neurosis created by the fakeness of social media.

Also, since all achievements on social media are pixel-thin, it is also turning people into equally shallow reprobates.

The recent trend of unironically calling people "NPCs" and "bots" just reinforces these beliefs, IMO.

[1]: I also find it a bit funny we have to put these types of disclaimers everywhere, since everyone goes out of their way to be offended over trivialities

If we are at the "Weak men create hard times", then we are soon at the "hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men". Atleast we have that to look forward to. Seems we bring it on ourselves

That quote always bothered me because I don't think it's accurate on either a personal or societal level. It's not a good model for viewing the world. It's one of those things that rings true but when you actually think about it it's hard to find it actually mapping to reality or having any predictive power

Right, I've never heard somebody quote it and declare that we're currently in the hard times. Its only purpose is to let other people know that you consider them unwise and soon they'll be sorry.

That's the social media mindset I was talking about!

What?? I actually think it maps pretty well to the reality. I have seen it at a personal level in my social circle and at a broad level of civilizations.

I was going to post the same complaint as the parent comment; for example:

"Hard times create strong men" - maybe, but starvation doesn't make you strong. Being dead from disease doesn't make you strong. Rising to adversity might make some people stronger, but it will harm others who survive but are damaged. It could be that the already-strong people rise to adversity and the weak get crushed by it, Darwinianly? Or that the weak endure through hard times as much as anyone because hard times are generally about health food or money and even 'weak' beggers can get enough of those to survive. Today's homeless are generally enduring lack of food, poor health, low money, and nobody considers them being made 'strong' by it, they're harmed by it.

"strong men create good times" - warriors are strong, barbarian raiders were strong, unpleasant bosses who abuse their workforce and reign by terror are strong, those are horrible times. Is there a connection between strong people and good times? What about average people who are neither weak nor strong, working in concert? What about people who are generally considered weak, but are thinking long term planting the trees that will shade tomorrow, community building, etc?

"good times create weak men" - do they? Do they necessarily? Why is this framing "good" as "bad"? Wouldn't going to the gym regularly and getting stronger be "good times" for someone? Wouldn't working the family farm hard, being physically strong and providing for your family, be good times and not making you weak? Is it luxury which makes people weak - previous point, do strong people create luxury specifically?

"weak men create hard times" - do they? Plenty of strong people (dictators, for example) have created hard times for millions. Plenty of weak people have had no impact on the times at all. Isn't the history of progress littered with people who were "a weak and sickly child" who spent their lives hiding indoors, thinking about math, died young, and changed the world - were they making hard times?

It's connected to the 'one generation makes family wealth by working hard, next generation preserves it but can't build it, next generation spends it'. In that, the hard times are where you have no money and have to work. The good times are where you have money and no work. The next hard times are where you lose the money and have to work again. But then, getting back into work and earning money is a homeless unemployed person's good times, life on the up.

At the 'level of civilizations' it's far too vague to say the fall of Rome was caused by "weak men" or that the rise of Rome was caused by "hard times".

In this context, I think strong means competent.

I interpreted is as a strong character (or mind); one that's not easily shaken (mentally) and stable.

I would certainly include competence as contributing to a strong character

Like Godel and Turing, right?

And then you look again at the GP, and see that the only reasonable interpretation of "strong" that phrase can have has no relation at all with competence.

Or worse, because bad times create broken people. And while broken people can stand adversity, they are much less able to create something non-broken.

Bad doesn't have to mean PTSD-inducing "walking dead" scenarios…

Also, whether hardships makes or breaks you depends largely on your outlook and coping skills (this comes from someone who's had CPTSD and had to stop suicidal idealisation and learn coping skills in my late 20s).

All skills diminish, if unused. Having too easy times means there's less need to "cope"

It's very likely most millennials have poor coping skills due to the predominantly emotionally neglectful parenting styles the previous generation

> Bad doesn't have to mean PTSD-inducing "walking dead" scenarios…

When people say that phrase today, "bad" literally means WWII.

> Bad doesn't have to mean PTSD-inducing "walking dead" scenarios…

I think that in apocalyptically bad times good people (the "weak") get taken advantage of by ruthless assholes (the "strong") who do better when they act like selfish monsters, but those kinds of people just prolong the bad times. The "strong" just fight amongst themselves while oppressing everyone else. "Might makes right" doesn't result in favorable outcomes, just tyranny. Bad times can tempt or force people into becoming monsters, but you can't have good times with monsters running things.

Good times allow (and insist) that folks behave like a civilized people who look out for each other and that not only helps promote future good times and advancement but also creates an environment where genuinely vulnerable people who couldn't survive the bad times can thrive and contribute. When people are fighting for survival they don't have time to invent new cool things and learn about how the universe works.

I guess after a while the good times allow some of us to get annoyed by all the good people who keep telling everyone we have to be nice to others and there's time to look around at all the vulnerable people who couldn't survive without our support and wonder if we'd just be better off without them, but I can't imagine that working out better in the long term.

Perhaps things play out somewhat the same in less than apocalyptically bad times too.

And extremely weak people can be sublimely competent. weird but true. You really just cannot rank people on a linear ordering.

Next please analyze the saying "Anything that doesn't kill you makes you stronger" ;)

Thank you, this is what I was wanting to comment but was too lazy to type it out. This is what I meant, not that it's strictly false but just that it requires so many clarifications/exceptions/etc. it's not a useful model anymore

> The recent trend of unironically calling people "NPCs" and "bots" just reinforces these beliefs, IMO.

I missed that one, though now that I read it I realize there's a lot of bot calling going-on on an FPS server I regularly visit.

By the way, is this site done with calling regular people "normies" ?

I think calling people bots in FPS games was always a thing. It's when people have poor pathing, or make seemingly nonsensical decisions. I meant more in real life

I think we're entering that last cycle again, where people are inventing trivial hardships for themselves, because media teaches them that only a life with some type of adversity is worth living.

I don't think that's even remotely what the quote means. You seem to be taking it as "weak men make up hardships" as opposed to "weakness leads to a broken down system and future suffering for society".

For example, one might say that weakness in facing climate change will lead to hardship in the future. Another example would be that weakness in facing fascism allows it to rise and wreak havoc on society. Coincidentally, that quote is super popular among fascist-leaning types.

I meant both of those things. Have you looked at society recently? The former is currently acting as a catalyst for the latter.

And speaking of fascism and intolerance for others in general: it's unfortunately getting worse. I largely blame social media and the busybodies that waste away on them... Says I, as I moonlight as a keyboard warrior on a forum; the irony doesn't escape me

You may wish to read some books by people who have lived under fascist regimes. It is a bit more intense than being criticized by busy bodies.

We aren't talking about regimes, though… Why move the discussion?

If it isn’t trying to take over the government and replace a decadent democracy with the Old True Values it isn’t really fascism.

Right, I've maybe misspoken then. Sorry about that. I think I meant traits that I commonly associated with fascism (bigotry, opression, discrimination, etc).

In any case, I don't know what to call it, but the resemblance to witch trials, heresy (and maybe fascism? I'm unsure now) is just uncanny.

Not sure any large human society has been free of the ills of bigotry, oppression and discrimination, tho, century by century, we keep shifting things for the slightly better.

For anyone who doesn't know the context: This quote is literal fascist rhetoric to promote machismo and contempt for the weak.

It might resonate the first time you hear it (most good propaganda does), but if you contemplate it for more than 10 seconds and you'll realize it's obviously untrue.

Why does it have to be interpreted as fascist rhetoric? What propaganda does it embed? Why does everything have to revolve around hatred?

Also, you don't have to be macho or physically strong to be strong. That just seems like your own bias leaking into the discussion.

That it might promote contempt for weakness might be true, though, and it didn't cross my mind. I don't like that it does that. At the same time I don't think weakness should be glorified either. Ideally, weak people should be helped to develop their own strong self.

I'm not sure about fascism, but there's a lot of historical context to the quote.

Bret Devereaux has a series of posts where he delves into the history of the idea behind the meme - https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...

It's a thoroughly interesting debunking, and in part IIIb, he talks about how the trope was used to promote racial purity and superiority.

Thank you for posting that! I've not read it yet. It seems like an interesting read (I love esoteric trivia like this!). I started it but realised it's much longer than I am prepared for this late at night. So, I'll try to read it over the coming days.

I don't know if it improves later, but they seem to only consider physical prowess as a form of strength. I generally interpreted this as strength of mind.

Also, I've taken the phrase less literally than they did. Man to me implied "human" (ie the same as man kind) because these quotes are usually designed to be succinct and memorable. They seem to think it's exclusive to human males.

But I've not read it in full yet, so we'll see when I finish it

You're interacting on an open forum with people from all over the world, who couldn't care less what ideas are considered permitted or not permitted according to your local party line.

Excellent post and spot on.

As someone who has health problems that forcibly put me in at least a few of those "discretionary lifestyle demands," it's a little condescending for you to just dismiss it later as "neuroticism and anxiety about maintaining purity." The worst is probably COVID-related -- immunocompromised people have been complaining for these past couple of years about how the world just stopped taking COVID seriously and they still have a point. Society is still effectively shut down for them and very few people seem to care.

A generation of immunocompromised guys with AIDS built the entire electronic music and rave scene in the 80s and 90s, the fashion business, and most of the culture you consume today. It's not condescending if your issues are in fact discretionary.

I travel with someone who will die within an hour of exposure to peanuts, regularly spend time with people in their 80's and 90s who have been on deaths door for years, ride motorcycles with guys in their 70s and if they have a random spill, they're guaranteed dead. I see women in their 70's thrown from the backs of horses, often twice in the same ride. I drink with guys between chemo appointments, smoke cigars with guys who have colostomy bags, and saw a friend perform a spectacular monologue when he knew it was the last time in his life that he would give it.

These vulnerabilities are not lifestyle choices, and yet they manage. The difference between "I will actually die," and "I could die" is a matter of perception, and the world doesn't stop for any of us. Actual lifestyle choices which are a selective constraint as a substitute for achievement are uniquely prevalent today, and I think, socially suffocating.

>A generation of immunocompromised guys with AIDS built the entire electronic music and rave scene in the 80s and 90s, the fashion business, and most of the culture you consume today.

Zoomer here, could you elaborate on this?

Before good treatment was widely available something like pneumonia could kill you if you had AIDS which was tearing through the gay communities in major cities at the time. These men basically built rave culture, ran most of the fashion houses, ran magazines(think GQ), and built a lot of popular culture in the 80s/90s. There was a culture of celebrating life in the face of gruesome and painful death. Magazines an zines from the community of the period often listed dead editors in memoriam while sardonically listing current editors as the future deceased.

These guys were smart, delightful company, and a lot of fun. Some were my friends. Some remain in my pantheon of artists. I still sorely miss Keith Haring. They also flagrantly violated guidelines that would have kept them alive, like keeping it in your pants or at least not fucking every guy in the bathhouse bareback. This was the rule, not the exception. I watched this happen in terror when it was called GRIDS, then when it was called AIDS. These guys, I am sorry to say, almost always brought on their own gruesome and painful deaths.

That's really interesting. My only connection is hearing second hand about the city in the 80s from my in-laws and listening to Andrew Sullivan talk about the magazine scene.

"Different people have different risk tolerances and people with lower risk tolerances disgust me."

Okay, gotcha.

Didn't read like he said it was disgusting. Sounded like it was just too difficult to deal with in a party. I just feel like they're in the way, not disgusting.

> One reason parties disappeared is because we have encouraged widespread neuroticism and anxiety about maintaining purity in different and various forms, and that intolerance has effectively eroded the social fabric.

Sounds like they're pretty disgusted by those type of people. Especially characterizing that type of behavior as "neuroticism and anxiety" instead of, ya know, trying not to die.

Maybe don't try to make what OP said worse than it was. It's fine if you don't agree, but don't extrapolate their argument into something they didn't say and then dislike them based on that.

Honestly, I mostly agree with OP, though I think I have chosen to mostly accomoate to the extent possible, just because I still want to throw parties. I mix a shirly temples and buy non-alcoholic rum and beer, get some vegan food if I'm serving food, etc. But it is, indeed, a pain, if maybe not a major one. I think the real issue here is just that people are glued to their screens and their pills. A lot of people don't want to party because they're already on a cocktail of pills (you know the ones) and that isn't compatible with a couple drinks for them.Mainly, though, people are atticted to games, doomscrolling, and TV, kind of in that order, and would prefer to sit getting quietly depressed rather than go out and spend time talking with people.

It sounds like you're ignoring one of the commenting guidelines, which is "assume good faith." You're reading things into the comment that aren't there, and replying to that rather than what was actually said.

This attitude has become so much more prevalent as well — hot take culture, focused on “dunking” and thereby looking better/smarter/whatever than the “competition”. Totally exhausting and another reason, perhaps, gathering with semi-strangers is less fun.

I'm really not sure what point you're trying to make here. Every example you gave is someone "managing" at their own expense. When an immunocompromised person gets sick from a rave, no one else suffers directly from that. Of course you can "manage" that way up until the moment you die. You can't get upset when society changes and some of those people decide the expense of "managing" isn't worth it any more.

I mean, come on. Just think about this. We've heard so much of this over the last few years like "some people died from the flu before, so you should accept you likely may die from COVID." Would you really say that to the face of an immunocompromised person?

I think you and the poster above are talking past each other. He doesn't seem upset, and as someone who agrees with him I can say I'm not either.

Having said that, of course I can get upset when society changes! It would be very silly to think otherwise. I bet we would be very hard pressed to find a single human being who doesn't get upset when society changes (in ways they don't like). My being upset doesn't obligate anyone to do anything about it of course, but I'm free to observe changes I see happening and offer my opinion on them. The reason I'm not upset is that I have plenty of people in my life who are not difficult to get together and spend time with, and it sounds like the poster above you does too.

The question in the OP was about what happened to parties, and are there any trends causing them to be happening less. "Motohagiography" identified a trend that he believes is responsible. As best I can tell, you aren't even arguing that he's wrong. You're arguing that the trend he identified is a net good. That's a perfectly valid opinion to have, but I think his point is both clear and correct.

Cheers for challenging it and making me think about it. The example I would use is a vegetarian bailing in an invite to a barbecue because the main meal wasn't to their choice. The point is the gathering and someone doing something special, and instead of being an ingrate about the invitation, one should go and eat before, or have the salad. As a lifestyle choice, it's anti-social purity.

My general point is that preferences aren't identities, and when they are accepted as such, they erode the social fabric and prevent the growth and social opportunity that benefits everyone. It adds a punitive downside to giving parties when suddenly we have to worry about a guest having a crisis because their idea of self gets offended.

To the immunocompromised people I know, if you can't make it out because you are sick, fine, happens to the best of us, catch up another time. If you can't make it because your condition has become an identity that is irreconcilable with other identities, that must be very hard, but it's your responsibility to be interesting and enjoyable to be around, even if there are unique barriers to that, and especially if you want accomodation.

If your diet were vegan because you are immunocompromised, or even religious, own it and take responsibility for your needs instead of making them a condition on your company, and then be worthwhile. Of course we manage things at our own expense, it's what ownership means. You can't blame your disease for your being lame or use your identity as social leverage and expect anyone to find that appealing and interesting for very long.

My point is, the world owes us nothing and thinking it does is part of what has made giving parties less appealing. The (mostly) men who ran massive party scenes during the AIDS epidemic did so in spite of a more terminal and persistent illness than anything we are dealing with today, and so there have been better parties in worse conditions than the medical one your comment refers to, and it was because their general attitude was better than the one I think has been promoted over the last decade.

Very elegantly said

(Your former comment)

I travel with someone who will die within an hour of exposure to peanuts...

A person who is vegetarian or vegan or pork-free or gluten-free or alcohol-free is as easy - or easier - to accommodate as someone with a peanut allergy. Don't you think?

Yes, but why?

> Society is still effectively shut down for them and very few people seem to care.

1) I feel bad for you if you're genuinely sick and at risk, but I'm sure you know that there's a perception out there that many people are trying to milk Covid concerns merely to continue working from home or reaping other benefits that they value: and meantime they go out to restaurants and live life more or less normally. We all saw many of our political leaders who were fear-mongering Covid the worst do that.

2) You have to feel bad for anybody who is scared and feeling isolated, but what else do you want humanity to do? Short of just incinerating the planet, there's no method known to science to eliminate Covid in the wild. We shut down a lot of human activity for years (at massive expense, that we're going to be paying for many years) and even sacrificed part of our children's future to help the most vulnerable. Other than putting humanity in a total economic death spiral (that will be many times worse than Covid) I'm not sure what else can be done to give immunocompromised people a better situation.

3) I don't know how I'd live if I was genuinely immunocompromised, but the really sick people I know such as cancer patients going through chemo who are in/out of hospitals constantly are genuinely trying to go out and live their lives as normally as they can and trying not to be a slave to their illness.

4) Has anything qualitatively changed for immunocompromised people with Covid? Pre-Covid, there was influenza and other diseases that posed some measure of risk to people. Covid seems worse than them and can kill of course, but obviously isn't anywhere near something like Ebola in terms of risk. You're facing maybe a tiny bit more life risk than you would have in say 2018.

>many people are trying to milk Covid concerns merely to continue working from home or reaping other benefits that they value

How is this "milking" anything? The last few years have proved that lots of white collar jobs don't need to be done from an office building.

>Other than putting humanity in a total economic death spiral (that will be many times worse than Covid) I'm not sure what else can be done to give immunocompromised people a better situation.

This is a false dichotomy. The science is clear on this one. Continue wearing masks in public places, physical distancing, practicing basic hygiene, and continue requiring vaccinations. Yes, all of those things are proven to reduce transmission of COVID as well as other airborne viruses like the flu. Society doesn't need to shut down or enter a "death spiral" to do any of them. Leaders just caved to political pressure and stopped enforcing them.

>are genuinely trying to go out and live their lives as normally as they can and trying not to be a slave to their illness.

Yes, and they probably still have to wear masks and avoid certain places that are likely to carry an increased risk of infection. "Not being a slave to the illness" doesn't mean you go out and take stupid risks.

>Has anything qualitatively changed for immunocompromised people with Covid?

Yes, COVID is significantly more contagious than influenza, and causes more severe illness than influenza.

> How is this "milking" anything? The last few years have proved that lots of white collar jobs don't need to be done from an office building.

I strongly agree with you that a lot of white collar jobs don't necessarily need to be done from an office building. I'm referring to people who playact at being terrified of Covid as a justification for working from home while in their personal lives they go out and live life normally. The fear that some people exhibit is an act for personal gain: based on their actions they don't believe it.

> This is a false dichotomy. The science is clear on this one. Continue wearing masks in public places, physical distancing, practicing basic hygiene, and continue requiring vaccinations. Yes, all of those things are proven to reduce transmission of COVID as well as other airborne viruses like the flu. Society doesn't need to shut down or enter a "death spiral" to do any of them. Leaders just caved to political pressure and stopped enforcing them.

I've written responses to this kind of argument on HN many times. In a nutshell my position is the following:

1) I honestly don't think too many people are having major science disagreements: they're having risk-management disagreements. Your risk-tolerance and values are different than others, and you're disagreeing about what's worth doing, you're not actually disagreeing all that much about data. Pretend it's 60 degrees F out: a Canadian might say that it's a scorcher and an Australian might say it's freezing. Same exact science (60 degrees to both), just a different way of looking at things. Neither is scientifically wrong.

2) For what it's worth, suggesting a human action is never the outcome of any science experiment. The science is NOT clear on wearing masks or doing any of those other things because that is not the domain of science. All science can do is provide objective data (to the limits of human ability to measure) and humans decide what to do in light of that data outside of the domain of science.

> Yes, and they probably still have to wear masks and avoid certain places that are likely to carry an increased risk of infection. "Not being a slave to the illness" doesn't mean you go out and take stupid risks.

I honestly don't know the statistics on how immunocompromised people actually live, but anecdotally I've seen that it depends on the person. I knew somebody that died of his illness that wanted to live his life completely normally for as long as he possibly could and was willing to risk being knocked out by Covid.

> Yes, COVID is significantly more contagious than influenza, and causes more severe illness than influenza.

The phrase I used was "qualitatively" changed.

As far as your use of the word "significantly", what does that word actually mean here? I'm curious what the actual stats are. How many immunocompromised people were around in say 2018? What percentage of them died due to a random respiratory illness then? Compare that to Covid time-period as best as possible. How much does that death rate actually change? Does it go from 5% risk of random death to 6%? or from 7% to 88%? I am not sure, but I suspect that the actual difference wouldn't be jaw-dropping to anybody here, but I'd like to learn those stats from you so I can appreciate your situation better.

If you go to a nightclub and present your list of illnesses to the bouncer demanding to accommodate it, will they let you in?

No offense, but you are the extreme minority. Given the average social circle, there might not even be a single person that fits that mold. What's stopping everyone else from getting together? It's not because they're worried about bringing covid home to to their wife because her sister in-law is compromised.

I don't need a reminder I'm in the extreme minority, my whole life is a reminder of that every single day.

My point is in response to you saying that you find OP's sentiment condescending when it's clearly not even targeted at the few people that have these real issues.

No it clearly is targeted towards them too, judging from OP's other comments where they directly include people who have real issues.

I feel you on this one. On one hand, I'm happy that bio, everything-free, non-something etc became more mainstream, because we have a much larger selection and supply of such goods available. On the other hand, some people are ruining the reputation of those who have legitimate needs and restrictions.

Yea so the solution is to just not have parties.

I must be incredibly lucky because I am a millennial and this is not my experience with my social circles. We have a game night almost every week (5+ people), and usually a few parties a year (15+ people) with no drama or fuss. Is this not normal? Is it different depending on the area you grow up in?

It is normal. I still have the same group of (college years) friends since the early 2000s, and the same group of co-workers from 2016-2019.

The only reason we don't meet weekly anymore is because I moved to another country, for career growth.

I'm betting my reality is also very common for people who grew on small towns and had to move, or for people who live in large countries where you often move around for jobs (like the USA).

I'm flying to Paris to meet one of those friends this weekend, though. But I doubt a lot of people have the money to do this on a whim like we (tech workers) do.

> I'm betting my reality is very common for people who grew on small towns and had to move, or for people who live in large countries where you often move around for jobs (like the USA).

Yes, 100%. I met with my (high school) friends weekly when I lived at home. And I met with my brother's friends, who were entirely on the opposite end of the political spectrum from me. We partied together, swam together, went out together, no issues. We'd sometimes get drunk political discussions, but usually we just didn't go there because it really never came up or mattered. And, if it did, we'd usually do it jokingly and never really fight about it.

Now I'm half a world away and any time any of them are anywhere near where I'm at on traveling, I go visit. I've planned to fly to Scotland to visit some of them before Christmas but it fell through on their end. They're planning a Euro trip this autumn; I'll meet them wherever they're at.

Not a tech worker, but i'm lucky in that I can afford it thanks to cheap European flights.

I'm not sure controversial issues and neuroticism breaking up parties is new whatsoever. I have read too many things that sound exactly like what you've written from the 70s, 50s, 30s, 20s, 10s, 1880s, ..... Even in the 1500s aristocrats in France complained about throwing fewer "parties" because of the spicy topic of Catholic vs Protestant.

Generally, if parties are decreasing, I would argue it is more because there is so much new and very good entertainment that is just way lower effort. I don't know we need politics or ideology to explain it, these things aren't new.

And just to add to this, I actually think the political polarization of today is just not substantial compared to many other eras. Every generation since the early modern period thinks it’s politics are the most controversial. But the 1880-1950ish era sticks out to me as special. That was the era of real progressivism, communism, socialism, fascism, teetotalers, religious revival, super-powered unions, monopolistic capitalism, wars of political ideology, passivism, hardcore nationalism, etc. It had just so much more ideology dividing people than our world today. The generations that really lived it are dead and many people have forgotten now, but it just takes a bit of reading from that era to see how vehemently politically divided people were.

People had a rule back then that you didn't talk about sex, politics, or religion. Now sex and politics in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation and all the other flavors of identity politics are front and center in a lot of people's minds on a day to day basis.

I know, right? Parties were way better when we forced everyone to stay in the closet.

You know - the good old days!

I believe this is some kind of false cultural memory. Just because the topics are new doesn’t mean the underlying divide and ideological debate are different or less vehement.

Today its “what is gender”, yesteryear it was “should women vote”. Today its the LGBTQ agenda, yesteryear it was prostitution, porn, infidelity, marriage debates. Today it is political religions, yesteryear it was “Does God allow re-marriage?” “Do Catholics go to hell?”. Today we align along ideologies on twitter, yesteryear we aligned by joining the Elks or the Masons or the unions.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Also do you really think the table stakes for modern debates are anything close to what was going on at the turn of the century? Gender identity really compares to “should women vote”? Discussions around race today have the same stakes as “Are white people the biologically superior race?” Political discussions today compare to real considerations of Communism (NOT “them liberals is communists”, but real deal communism was on the table)

The only really new, big stakes discussion I see on the table today is climate change. Everything else has been more or less hashed out by generations now dead.

Even though I agree I'd ask, what it was we didn't learn from these examples that we are doing it yet again? We know how those all ended, and I think being able to throw good parties may be the way we keep it from going the same way.

"I'm sorry I ruined your Black Panther Party."

Forrest Gump

Nah. I think it was always like this:

> - I'm just getting old (closing in on 50) and people my age don't party anymore

I remember my parents' generation and their friends circle. My parents' friends circle was not only a friends circle, but it was a group of people who studied in the university altogether, in the same disciplines, and got appointed to the same city and actually same organizations after graduation. So not only they were just friends, but they were also work friends, colleagues, a lot of things.

I remember them regularly meeting in each other's houses and having fun, going to places together, taking vacations together and doing many other things up until ~40 years of age. Then such things suddenly became much more infrequent, then altogether stopping by their mid 40s.

I think you've rediscovered why the potluck was invented. Maintaining the purity of your bodily fluids by only drinking rain water mixed with pure grain alcohol?

Great, bring some over and talk to the paleo-pesco-vegan about how well it pairs with phish and wild-caught twigs and berries.

Rain water isn't even safe to drink anymore.

What is this fraternal order and how did you find it?

For me, I find parties at the niche conventions I go to the most fun. At these conventions are tons of like minded people who are into the same weird stuff and it's easy to do get togethers after days at speakers and exhibits and have great conversations. The problem with the modern world is people who live next to each other aren't really forced to be in the same culture. Especially in big cities, everyone plugs in and lives in their strange niche no one else cares about or worse polarized echo chambers.

I think that's a pretty good observation. The real trouble is finding a common interest when cultural boundaries are incredibly fluid. And there's plenty of competition for your attention span (including the attention span required for the prep/commitment involved with parties).

I've considered going to DEFCON or that one quirky convention at CMU to network in my niche.

> Between the discretionary lifestyle demands of vegetarians, vegans, non-glutens, non-porks, non-drinkers, anti-smokers, non-problematics, non-outdoorsies, hover-parents, maskers, and the increasingly insane milenial need to make all their experiences on-brand and instagrammabl

This is a weird way to project your insecurities.

> lifestyle demands of vegetarians, vegans, non-glutens, non-porks, non-drinkers, anti-smokers, non-problematics, non-outdoorsies, hover-parents, maskers...

> we have encouraged widespread neuroticism and anxiety...

Are they neurotic or are you projecting?

I have friends from many of those lifestyles, while myself, I am a "non-pork". But have never worried about what my friends with different lifestyles want at my party. We invite them all and most show up. Vegans may bring their own food. Halal eaters can stick with vegetarian options, if any.

And I never been offended by pork options at my friends' parties. Almost always there are side dishes.

Our parties are very diverse and our friends are very tolerant and curious about different people. We had friends who would get offended by alcohol or non-halal meat but they ended friendship.

You don't need to go crazy for other people's lifestyle. Good friends will stick around, intolerant will leave.

fuckin’ hell man

Interesting, this has not been my experience at all. I just throw parties, invite everyone, and whoever comes, comes, and whoever doesn't, doesn't. That's it, I don't even think about dietary concerns or other stuff like that. I'll keep some vegan or vegetarian stuff purely incidentally but if people have a strong concern, they bring their own food or simply don't come, same with any other type of concern too.

Last memorial day I tried to have a little BBQ... ended up eating and drinking by myself on/near the sidewalk in front of my apartment, while grilling and listening to a festive playlist with songs like Carry on my Wayward Son. I kept asking random people if they wanted a brat, but nobody did... until the guy towing my roommate's broken down car home arrived. The three of us shared one, the tow truck driver finished his as he was pulling away and that was that. It was nice; but a party it was not.

So drunk and frustrated me took to my rollerblades and grabbed a hockey stick to start passing around a puck to myself in front of the local sports bar's little outdoor eating area just a few doors down. The patrons were less than amused I suppose since they mostly looked appalled and irritated at the noise I was causing, but at least I felt like I "doing it right" as opposed to going out to eat like any other night and staring at instagram or reddit while ordering a $30 cheeseburger sitting next to a dumpster in what used to be the gross back lot of the bar. I think I probably unclipped the red velvet stanchion a couple of times just because I found it too comical to remain closed off.

Ultimately, I think it was a pretty weird day. I'm trying to be more at peace with the state of things now, but I can't help but mourn how it used to be.

The scene: https://www.instagram.com/p/CePpDq1rElU/?utm_source=ig_web_b...

Haha, reading this I knew you must be from Massachusetts. Sure enough checked your instagram and bam. I was raised in MA, awesome story buddy! I would have stopped to have a brat with you!

Hey, I know exactly where this is :) I lived around a ~30s walk from here until I moved to Boston proper a year ago. I lived in Somerville for ~6 years during school and after graduating, and I miss it sorely. Great little neighborhood. Would have happily stopped by and grabbed a brat if I were still there; funny how the woodwork is so full of interesting people, though we rarely stop to look.

Next time try handing out $100 bills instead of brats and folks will be happy to hang out with you. Works for me.

"Last memorial day I tried to have a little BBQ... ended up eating and drinking by myself on/near the sidewalk in front of my apartment, while grilling and listening to a festive playlist with songs like Carry on my Wayward Son. I kept asking random people if they wanted a brat, but nobody did..."

In the most polite way possible, I can see why you are not invited to parties very often...

In the most rude and profane way imaginable...

Go fuck a lonesome duck.

I haven't heard that one before. Nice!

I'll have to share it with my friends...at a party...

"Hey dude… is that Freedom Rock?! Well, turn it up." ;-)

I'm another ex-massachusettser and also love Somerville and would have shared a brat with you. Sounds like you made the best of it!

One thing I observed moving cities recently, and realized has been true for much of my life: there's a pretty small number of people who actually organize things. As the density of your social network naturally decreases, you may have lost a few eigenvector-central social network nodes.

Think back to those work parties: were they really spontaneous, or did "Janice in Accounting" always seem to step up? For me, there was one guy who always ran the happy hours; when he left, the happy hours' frequency dropped noticeably.

The aging, COVID, kids, busy-ness, general "Bowling Alone" etc factors all do make things harder too (reduce social density, increase difficulty of scheduling, etc.). But that's just friction; it can be overcome.

The best thing I did was become the shameless type of person who actively tries to create/join/combine social circles. It pretty quickly put me in touch with other people who do the same, and my social circle grew naturally after that.

Thai rings true IME. My (small) social circle died out with COVID/remote work/moving to the city and I’ve struggled to make connections because I’m not the type to initiate events. Realizing now that I’ve taken for granted these organizing people and will have to be comfortable becoming the “shameless type” and risk rejection if I want to make friends.

I went through this probably a year ago and I think it’s probably something everyone should go through. Like immersion therapy for rejection.

> Like immersion therapy for rejection.

Love this phrasing

Problem isn't just the fear of rejection. There are legitimate reasons why some people get rejected more than others, whether it's looks, social skills or just lack of shared interests.

If you are part of those people, the "return on investment" in terms of socialisation diminishes - it's not about fear per-se, it's about the rational decision of not sinking time into an endeavour with a high failure rate if you have other, better options.

This is a good point. There’s definitely a different baseline ROI for different people.

But still, I was surprised how much of “how to make people like me” was pretty explicitly learnable.

But your point does still stand. If you’re happy where you are - you have “other, better options” - def doesn’t make sense to invest in something where you’re not gonna get the return you want.

>there's a pretty small number of people who actually organize things

I've observed the same thing in video games with group activities. People sit in party finder waiting for somebody else to organize a group. They could make the group themselves, but they don't. They just sit there and wait until somebody else does it.

In real life I can understand this apprehension a lot more, but in games it's the difference of a few clicks and picking and choosing who gets to join. And yet a lot of people don't want to do it. It's quite curious.

I wonder if it's related to who is willing to organize things in real life as well. Maybe some people are just more driven to organize things?

With video games, if you want a group of N people, then creating a new group means you have to wait until N-1 other people join. If you join an existing group of N-1 people, then the group is ready to go as soon as you join. Of course, finding that group of N-1 people might take longer than just creating a group of N people yourself, but the human mind is easily lulled into sunk costs.

There's probably a discussion to be had here about the change from self-hosted servers and self-selecting your community, vs "party finder"/matchmaking becoming the prevalent way to play.

Previously you could go to "newbie" servers, learn the game or play without as much seriousness, or self-organize into clans/groups if you wanted something more serious. You needed to learn the customs and culture of every server and if you didn't like it, you could just go to another.

Now, everything is matchmade, there is no culture, and the "Ranked" vs "Quick Play" game modes means that you're just relying on the game to pair you with an enjoyable experience (that you can't just bail on without a penalty of some kind). Yes, this system is sometimes more preferable than going "LFG SM All" in LFG chat, but there is something that's been lost.

>"The best thing I did was become the shameless type of person who actively tries to create/join/combine social circles. It pretty quickly put me in touch with other people who do the same, and my social circle grew naturally after that."

Any advice? That's a hard thing to do!

For sure. Assuming you have a few friends to start:

(0) Reach out to everyone. Everyone. That old college acquaintance you just noticed is in your city? Get coffee/happy hour. You never know who's looking for more friends.

(1) Encourage people to invite/bring their friends when you organize something. Hit up one friend for happy hour/food. "You've mentioned [coworker] a few times before - would he/she want to join us?"

(2) Host (implied) large group gatherings. Easy to say "come over, and bring whoever!" I like sports, so I host for the super bowl, World cup, March Madness, etc. - but could be anything. Throw parties for other peoples' birthday/going away/coming-to-the-city. Advance level: some bars are often open to "hosting" an event - they'll just rope off an area if you promise X people will show up.

(3) Host recurring events. Board Game nights, poker nights, dinner parties, wine club, etc. Great way to deepen relationships.

(4) Start group chats. Much easier to maintain a relationship with 4 group chats than 20 individuals. If one can't get critical mass, post the plan in another.

(5) Be actively welcoming. Make a point to intro yourself to new people/social stragglers on the edge, and greet people by name when they show up in a new-ish space (e.g., my friend brings his new gf to a board game night; she doesn't know many people here; stand up and say "Hello Janice! Great to finally meet you. How has your week been?"). Forge connection, don't just co-exist in the same space.

I'm sure there's more...

> (3) Host recurring events

This has been a key one for me and my friend group. And this may also be instead of "host" recurring events its "go to" recurring events. We try and do trivia every week and as it becomes recurring it becomes part of everyone's schedule itself and not something to schedule and plan for which takes a lot of the pressure off. We kind of have a "core" group but everyone will occasionally bring coworkers, friends/family who are in town, etc. that help expand the social circle.

^^ this is great advice

These are great suggestions!

I had always been the organizer in my friend group organizing trips, meetups and would spend initiating conversations and discussion even in the group chats.

Due to certain life circumstances I had gradually stopped and the entire group actually fell apart except a few friends who lived in the same cities.

Your post actually gave me an impetus to reach out to a lot of the older groups and reconnect. Thank you.

Check out this book called The 2 Hour Cocktail Party. I used it as structure to host a small get together last week and it was a lot fun!

I think as other comments allude to scheduling can be really hard so its a good idea to start sending out invitations 2-3 weeks in advance. Also don't be afraid to invite old friends - I reconnected with some friends I haven't talked to in 7+ years and it was great

I agree, and it's even more difficult when a population is very transitory.

Basically, things don't maintain themselves. This is true of work parties and get-togethers and dinners, and also true of government, civic organizations, and other related groups.

We need more people stepping up and doing the hard work of organizing.

>there's a pretty small number of people who actually organize things

I think this is very true. Back in the day, I was 'the instigator'. I'd phone a couple of friends, and soon enough, Saturday night would be 'on'. If I didn't do it, it generally didn't happen. They wanted to go out, but never enough to actually organize it. 20 years on, I'm remembering my role and trying to make more things happen, particularly as I'm not on any Social Media, so have dropped off the passive radar of a number of my friends.

Remote work is hurting local networks for a lot of people. It's true that it's possible to build community outside of work but it takes intentional effort. We spend so many hours at work that it's a natural place for adults to build community and meet acquaintances.

Situation 1 - Years of working in an office with coworkers, attending events, meeting customers in the community. Eventually you end up with a handful of people who you just happened to chat with at some work thing then ran into each other again and now you are sort of friends.

Situation 2 - All of your interaction with coworkers and customers is remote. You get along with people but they aren't nearby so you can't grab coffee or dinner after work. You need to find interesting after-work activities, summon the energy, block out the time, spend the money, procrastinate taking action because you're overthinking it too much, etc.

I can't remember which podcast I heard about this on but I've listened to most of the audiobook for Nick Gray's "The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings"[0] and will be giving hosting a shot this spring. It still takes a lot of effort to find a crowd and host but hopefully having a framework for organizing and hosting will help.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61212264-the-2-hour-c...

Not sure why you're getting downvoted, this is clearly correct. I still have many friends that I formed from working in the same office. For most American adults, the group you spend most of your time with is your coworkers. If you don't have a group hobby or activity outside of work, you have no mechanism to cycle new people in to your life in a setting which easily allows relationship building. There's a reason people who are a part of a church consistently say they're less lonely than people who aren't, and it's not a sense of faith.

I picked up Jiu Jitsu a few years ago and found that to be extremely effective when it comes to meeting people wherever I go. It's usually a stead group of people with other people rotating in, and doing collaborative activities together makes for quick friends.

I love remote work, and I take full advantage of it as a digital nomad, but we should have good faith discussions about the tradeoffs and how to mitigate it.

> For most American adults, the group you spend most of your time with is your coworkers.

And that also guarantees that when you leave the company, you also leave your "friends".

I wholly reject intertwining work and professional relationships with friend relationships. I certainly won't be mean to my colleagues... but my closest colleague is 600mi away. And that's OK.

I do spend a bit of time with local groups for developing friendships with.. And they'll be there regardless where I work.

On one level I agree with you that mingling work relationships with friendships is often fraught with issues of things bleeding over in a negative way. But let's be real, to do so takes much more effort, and especially for people who have kids, they don't really have much time to socialize with other adults than at work. Or some people they're exhausted after a day of work so if they want to have fun, easier to just talk to someone at work.

> And that also guarantees that when you leave the company, you also leave your "friends".

I am friends with many people who I am no longer coworkers with, some of which I consider to be pretty deep relationships. You don't have to stop talking once you or they have left the office, much in the same way that you don't have to stop being friends after taking a different class on a college campus.

Seems like quite a bit of cynicism here. You can be friends with people you work with, and you can remain friends after you leave. You also don't have to be, do whatever you want. The thing you can't disagree with is that you spend most of your day interacting with them somehow, particularly if you're not working remote. That means you lose most of that social interaction when you work alone in a room.

None of this was a criticism on choosing to not be friends with people you work with.

> And that also guarantees that when you leave the company, you also leave your "friends".

Why the scare quotes, around "friends"? Coworkers can be true friends, couples can form too. And of course it can last for way after you leave the company.

What GP was saying is that in person meetings, as it is common in the office is how you get to know new people, who may or may not become true friends. Once connection is made, work becomes secondary, though it helps in the sense that it maintains physical proximity. There is nothing special about work in that regard, school, clubs, associations, church... have the same effect.

I also think the intermingling of friend vs work relationships is not as problematic as people make it, unless there is an obvious conflict of interest. I have people at work with which we don't talk about work when we meet outside. I also have friends I never worked with who happen to do the same job and we sometime talk about work. I know that some people want to set hard boundaries, and maybe they need that, but I have also seen plenty of healthy relationships between colleagues or ex-colleagues that extend well beyond work.

> I picked up Jiu Jitsu a few years ago and found that to be extremely effective when it comes to meeting people wherever I go. It's usually a stead group of people with other people rotating in, and doing collaborative activities together makes for quick friends.

And it's one of the nicest, most positive communities I've found.

They are being downvoted for what could be interpreted as an implied criticism of remote work, on HN.

It's not even about spending a lot of time together but about regularity. Async reduces the chances of people bumping onto each other dramatically. Some kind of rhythm needs to be found

Interesting. I found going remote (which happened 6 years pre-pandemic) forced me to develop better local networks. It took a while (and having kids helped) but I ended up with a bunch of truly local friends and neighbors through sports, kids, and other interest groups.

I bought that book recently, as I want to become more of an organizer.

I vaguely recall socializing with co-workers - like back in the '90s. I don't recall it having been a great experience. You don't choose you co-workers.

My good friends now fall into three groups: 1) old high school or college friends, 2) parents of daughter's friends friends, 3) gym-rat/marathon friends. The groups don't overlap. Still LOTS of parties - especially the fitness clan. The vast majority I don't go to, because I'd be out partying a couple times a week.

I'm pretty introverted so I guess I'm just lucky to have strong friends circles. But you are correct that it takes intentional effort.

Howdy, just saying Thank You for giving my book a shoutout! Tell me if you accept the challenge at the end of Chapter 1 and I'll personally help you out. I think you'll do great. This will be fun.

I think it's also a bit of the mercenary mindset mixed in there as well. I feel like people don't want to mix or try to make friends with their coworkers anymore. I get wanting to have boundaries between work and life, but I feel like most people interpret it as "Don't become friends with work people" instead of not talking only about work with work-friends.

Anecdotally, most of the people with this view I found to already have a good group of friends whether from college or from earlier work/social situations. It feels a bit rich to say that you shouldn't make friends with coworkers when your social circle is already full.

We had a party this summer, my wife turned 50 and we wanted to host a party in our house for all our friends. We thought it would be a blast but there were problems.

First problem, we don't really have that many friends. Back in the day, it felt natural to invite anyone you remotely knew but today, not so much. So, only those that we had some kind of deeper relationship got on the list, in total maybe 30 people or so, almost all couples.

Second problem, we have moved around so a fair number of those we wanted to invite do not live in the same city as us. This meant travelling for them but many were fine to do it, however it gave rise to two other problems.

Third problem. Back in the day when there were parties, people could drop by and so it didn't feel it had to be so ambitious, but now since people were travelling, we have to have a proper dinner party. Lots of cost, lots of arrangements, not something that I want to do very often.

Fourth problem. Back in the day, there wasn't a day tomorrow. At the age of 50. there's always a day tomorrow. We had bought alcohol as if we were 20 but with the economy of two DINKs (they've moved out). Maybe 20% was consumed because "there's a day tomorrow as well", and frankly quite a few were travelling so they did indeed have to be able to drive reasonably early.

It's just very different having parties at the age of 50 compared to 20, it can't be the same thing, at least not in our circle and I'm quite sad for it.

This was a really thoughtful response, thanks for sharing it.

As a 35 year old who's just had his first kids this makes me sad to read, it really feels like I'm past the age of good parties now.

Pre-covid we were having raucous times every weekend and now there's too much responsibility to imagine that again. And I'm probably getting towards the age where it'd be a bit sad to still do that anyway.

FWIW one place I've lived that seems to care little about age in the party scene is Madrid. Plenty of nights you're just as likely to be partying with 60 year olds as 25 year olds.

> ...care little about age in the party scene is Madrid. Plenty of nights you're just as likely to be partying with 60 year olds as 25 year olds.

Same in Ireland. Funnily enough the party scene there also includes many Spaniards of all ages, as well as an overrepresentation of Greeks and Italians.

Wherever I go in Europe, if I go to a party I know it's likely I'll meet someone from one of those four countries there.

Where in Ireland? And to be fair there's loads of Spanish and Brazilian students here (they tell me it's a good place to practice English, or was before the housing crisis), which does help keep the place lively

I don't go out a lot but in fairness I remember back in the day seeing plenty of post-60 people up late and out and about.

I meant Belfast specifically, and across Ulster more generally (Derry and Donegal would be hotspots), but I know there's good and multi-national craic in at least Cork and Galway as well. Might be less in the Pale but I don't really know; I just take my not knowing to mean it must not be there as strongly or otherwise I'd hear about it.

Re: the students, that's true but there are also plenty of students from other parts of the world (Britain, China, India, and France especially) and it's been my experience that they tend to focus more on their studies than having the craic, and that they return home immediately after their studies, whereas I see more and more of the aforementioned either settling down in Ireland or taking a romantic partner away with them if they do return home.

This is all anecdotal of course and I know this is HN where data is king, but sure it's good to spin a yarn for the sake of it sometimes as well.

I live in the Netherlands myself these days and I always find it striking when I go to bars or cafes that all of the tables are filled with people who all look like each other, same ages and social backgrounds etc., even gender, and that the people from one table rarely mix with another -- this is just about the polar opposite of what I grew up expecting a drinking establishment to look like.

If/when you're in Amsterdam and into punk rock dive bars, Cafe The Minds is mixed and diverse and inclusive, unlike the other boring uniform venues you describe. It's not the only exception that proves the rule, but some of the other wonderfully mixed venues like Korsakoff have closed long ago or during Covid, unfortunately. In the gay scene, de Trut is still going strong every Sunday night, and is totally welcoming and inclusive to different types, genders, ages, social status, etc!

Thanks for the tip, I'll be sure to check it out if I'm up that way!

Didn't mean to suggest that the Netherlands didn't have friendly or inclusive places, hope it didn't come across that way.

It's just that in Ireland I know I can go out alone and end up back at someone's house at the end of the night. In most "normal bars" here (doe normaal hoor!) out even just at a bus stop, say, when I try to talk to strangers they look at me like I'm interrupting them. Which is fair enough, just a cultural difference.

Wow, that's very different to my own experince. The midlands at least seem quite insular.

I remember sitting in a bar in Dublin and getting absolutely put to shame by a few little old ladies. I think they sank at least two beers for every one of mine. The bartender would just look over when their glasses got low, they'd give a tiny nod, and he'd start pouring more.

Galway and Cork at least.

Haven't been out in Galway for a while, but used to run into all ages and nationalities at various music events, licenced and unlicenced.

> FWIW one place I've lived that seems to care little about age in the party scene is Madrid.

Perhaps this applies to much of Spain - my aunt in her 70s still hits the town with her girlfriends on many a night on Spain's Costa del Sol.

I see this also in Spain. A recent party I was at had 15 people in the age range from 21 to 70+. Really great to see this.

I am currently reading '30 lessons for living' by Karl Pillemer and one chapter is about aging fearlessly and well. Most elderly realized in hindsight that they imagined being old as a terrible thing. They feared getting older by the age of 40 because they felt what you describe: life seems to get more serious and more boring. Friends don't want to party like they used to do. One of the advices of the chapter was the following: 4. Stay connected. Take seriously the threat of social isolation in middle age and beyond, and make conscious efforts beginning in middle age to stay connected through new learning opportunities and relationships.

I am currently trying to adapt that to my own situation. 31yo post 2 years of Corona isolation. I just signed up for volunteer work and a rowing club and life feels fun again :)

Yes, this is very true. My experience is that as you get older you make fewer new contacts. It's not illogical, at first there is school, then university, then kids. All of these are excellent at making new friends but once the kids get old enough you stop naturally meet people outside of work, at least you have to put in some work for it to happen. I realized the other week that if I would not have my wife, it would easily be weeks between having a somewhat deep discussion with anyone outside of work. It's a terrifying thought.

I just turned 50. About 30 people showed up for the party my wife threw for me, and those were exactly the people I wanted to be there. I'm guessing my definition of "party" may be different from yours, but in the last two months, the community we've embedded ourselves in (via our church) has gotten together for my birthday, the darkest night of the year, and New Year's eve. These aren't raucous affairs, but rather 20-30 people getting together to eat good food, drink good wine, and enjoy each other's company.

In the darkest days of the pandemic, this same group got together outside nearly weekly, weather-be-damned.

> the community we've embedded ourselves in (via our church)

I think you've hit on something important here. Without getting into the merits of religious belief, the rapid increase in loneliness seems to be strongly correlated with the rapid decrease in religiosity. There just aren't any institutions prepared to replace church communities.

For my part, I get more than enough socialization through my church community: I actively turn down opportunities to socialize because I'm saturated already.

I've got a theory that religion is the convergence of community, morality, spirituality, and mysticism.

In a move to reject the mysticism we're throwing the baby out with the bathwather.

I think the new religions are gyms, fitness classes, sports, volunteering, book clubs, etc. My wife made friends at such places.

But it also depends on a person. I have never made a real friend at a gym or fitness class. I haven't done anything else like join sports team or book club. I also used to go to religious building (mosque) but never made new friends there. So don't think you really need religion for community building.

All those examples you mentioned while you may find some good friends, they cannot entirely replace the purpose of a religious community. Religion and spirituality are far more than a social club or hobbyist group. Maybe you did not make friends at a mosque for some ever reason, but it is more than just a place for friendship. Religious buildings serve communities, promote unity, educate children, and it is all based on belief and practicing these beliefs. True brotherhood in faith far outweighs most any other type of relationship between people.

Undoubtedly the secularization of society has something to do with this, but even that may be part of a slowly evolving trend toward dissolution of civic organizations more broadly. The “Bowling Alone” idea.

I’m involved in a music festival held annually in our city in Canada. It’s organized by the Kiwanis club. But looking at the volunteers who are all septuagenarians and octogenarians, I wonder how long this can last. As far as I can tell, there is zero recruitment of younger adults.

I think we have a built-in need to observe, compare and compete with each other for status. Social events once supplied the forum for that to happen in a convivial setting. Now it’s happening 24/7 in social media and every other online channel. The need is being met elsewhere.

What you've got there is legacy wealth and power, obtained by violence no less, using it's wealth and power to build local indoctrination centres that help sustain the legacy. If that wealth and power built MtG play centres or I dunno milk shake shacks, you'd now be lamenting the value that chilling milk has on communities.

Edit: this sounds way more antagonistic than I wanted. I was aiming for cheeky. Happy Friday, fellow beneficiaries of historical violence!

We place so much emphasis on what we believe as a prerequisite for belonging to a religious community. Maybe its enough just to be hopeful those beliefs are true and suspend our doubts for a little while.

More generally, I think that finding a local community group with a common interest is key here to generating social connections. The common interest is not everything but it is the spark to try and start those connections.

Conversely, I have found it very hard to just establish connection to my local community (i.e. my neighbors) without any sort of central interest. The few of us who are close friends have tried to reach out and create more of a community and have hosted block parties and BBQ's in our neighborhood. But everyone else is still just "my neighbor" to me and not "my friend".

I have some pretty hard stats on this because I'm a long time employee of PaperlessPost.com an online event invitation company. You are correct that the number of parties is generally influenced by seasonal and life arch trends, social spheres and what is happening in the world.

Generally from what we see, most parties happen because of significant events in peoples lives. A 50th birthday party usually seems important enough for most people to want to attend.

Yes COVID did halt most of this but from what we've seen the numbers came back to 2019 levels early last year.

It could be your friend circles but I wouldn't stop trying to host parties or encouraging your friends from having parties themselves. We all have more responsibilities later in life that make it harder for everyone to show up so I wouldn't take this personally.

I might suggest having a reoccurring party. My neighbor has an Oktoberfest party every year. If people miss out one year they often feel pressured into coming next year, it becomes an event that people look forward to and even offer to help coordinate if it happens on a normal cadence.

Thanks for sharing insights from data! If you guys publish more stats somewhere, I'd be very interested in reading more. Sounds like you're sitting on a gold mine of firsthand social science data (sizes of events, rsvp latencies, types of events, etc)

I've noticed the same as well. My main hypothesis is that parties are just less interesting to all concerned because they're not that novel, and often just retreading old ground.

When you're younger, parties are full of new experiences, lives are often changing rapidly (e.g. jobs/relationships/homes), so parties feel like a worthwhile way to spend time.

As people get older and get more settled, then parties often feel similar to rewatching the same movie over and over (sure it's a great movie, but you'll never recreate the experience of seeing it for the first time). Often less is happening in people's lives too ("How's the job?" "Good, same. How's the house?" "Good, got a new sofa. How are the kids?" "Good, difficult as usual.").

Free time also seems to be more of a premium for me and my friends (as work responsibilities grow, kids take time, need lifts, etc.), so events like parties need to be worthwhile enough to give up other things for.

One way that I approach it is to think of what it is I'm be trying to get out of a party. Meeting new people? There are other approaches for that. Keeping in touch with friends? Smaller gatherings or individual catchups work better.

I.e. rather than trying to recreate my idea of what a party should be, I try to break it into individual apsects that I'm looking for, then try to achieve those using simpler/smaller alternatives, instead of looking to a single party event to provide them all.

I find parties that revolve around a common interest work better than “come and speak drunk at me” events. Board games, painting miniatures, LAN games (which is basically just online games in the same room), or if you’re one of the normals watching a sportsball event, dvd watching night, or if you have kids inviting other kids over with their parents.

I imagine people without kids start having a really hard time. Parents with kids aren’t going to come to their “come and speak drunk at me” parties - it’s inappropriate for everyone, and baby sitters make more than tech CEOs these days. Those parents have tons of parties when their kids are playing together. And given the biological imperative to perpetuate the species, at a certain age an awful lot of folks are parents. The “come and speak drunk at me” folks sometimes end up in recovery and can’t be at the “speak drunk at me” parties any more. That an folks just get busy, form their own social network, are traveling for work too much, and all the other things, leads to a lonely existence if you need people to come and speak drunk at you.

Yup, that's exactly the sort of thing I was thinking. Having a narrow focus means friends know exactly what they're going to get out of the evening, which makes it easier for them to decide whether to attend or not.

Same goes for me too, if a friend invites me over for board games, great, I'm up for that. If a friend invites me over for a general hang out, that could mean the even goes in any number of directions, some of which I'd be less interested in (e.g. heavy drinking, watching sports), so I'd be less likely to attend.

Also to hook. Beware folks, never happened once in hundreds of parties I went to. Met others (that stuck around) at school, work, online dating... never a party or bar.

Wish I had most of that time back now.

^up, must have been deleted in an edit.

Well, there's https://twitter.com/defconparties of course.

I just spent a good amount of time talking to a therapist (first time) about how painfully lonely I am. I moved to the countryside because the city was too unaffordable but friends I used to see a couple times a month are now a couple times a year. And I just had my 40th where my wife invited one of her friends (another couple with kids) and it was nice, but it wasn't "my" friends, if that makes sense.

My days are wake up - get kids ready for school - work - come home and basically work nonstop dealing with kids (I love them but fuck they're a lot of work), pass out, maybe text an old friend or two, most of whom also had kids recently.

I suppose after your 30's anymore life is just lonely. Maybe it'll pick up again in a decade or so when I'm not getting summoned to wipe a kid's butt or screamed at because I used the wrong cup or plate but it doesn't really feel like it.

I'm hoping to at least move to a walkable city again. Leaving was a huge mistake I bitterly regret.

Your first sentence about loneliness hurts to read. I'd immediately have a few beers with any friend if I knew they were feeling this way, just to talk, vent, whatever. I hope things look up for you.

Thank you. I am hoping it gets easier when my kids are older and I live somewhere that's less isolating.

I'm sorry to hear that, if it's any consolation I've deal with loneliness a lot too. I've decided to throw myself into new hobbies this year to try to remedy that. I hope things get better for you

I love sneaking into defcon and blackhat. They let me in with a coffee cup lid on some lanyard I had in 2019, I just dressed like a federal agent and took off my sunglasses aggressively and made eye contact to divert the goon's gaze from the extremely fake badge upon entry. It's a real shame they took away the contest for fake badges but there's a bunch of us who make a point of getting away with it still.

I really just go for partycon though

I like it, but it's not what it used to be. A (friend? acquaintance?) of mine has a wife from PRC and is basically a troll, wore a costume PRC police outfit to a talk about the PRC circa 2016 and got quite a bit of side-eye.

But still, it suited the general ethos.

> Maybe it'll pick up again in a decade or so when I'm not getting summoned to wipe a kid's butt or screamed at because I used the wrong cup or plate but it doesn't really feel like

when it's this time of life, this part really sucks.

I graduated right around the time Covid hit, and I feel like that wrecked my social life irreparably. I have 4-5 close friends I can hang out with every other week or so (nobody wants to hang out 1 to 1 every day), but all my friend groups dissipated. Some moved away, some moved on, some just stopped moving at all. I feel miserable and every couple of nights I have dreams of a Third Place where I can just go and make friends with strangers. It's been like 3 years since I went to a club, houseparty, or even a larger get-together (5+ people) outside of birthday drinks, and it's heartbreaking.

Things I've done to successfully restart my social life after Covid in the last year:

* Restarted Crossfit. Social events have included BBQ's, meals out, trips away (normally CF related, but still great fun). Every box I've been to have been full of fun and interesting people.

* Joined my local Wargaming/Boardgame club. Sit around drinking and playing games with a very varied bunch of people. Lots of nerds and the occasional odd person, but they're very much my people.

* Started playing Rugby again. Team sports are an almost instant way to make a big group of friends quickly. Frequently go out for a drink or to train. A boisterous crowd as you can imagine, but all happy to go above and beyond should you be struggling.

* Joined language evening classes at my local college. Dinners out, holidays had. I've met people from all over the world here.

* Made effort to go to lots of music festivals and talk to people nearby in the camp site and the crowd. I have a large group of friends from there, who I go to gigs/raves all over the country with.

How do I find time? CrossFit at 5:40 every morning before work. Language classes Monday evening. Rugby training Tuesday and Thursday evening. Board game club Wednesday eve. Weekends for time with family/partner/trips to visit friends in other cities/countries. Obviously that shifts around a lot depending on what's happening, but I try to keep the habit.

It's a slog, and I'm exhausted a lot of the time, but I wouldn't trade the life I have now for the world. I used to spend my evenings just consuming media before I went to bed. I quit almost all of that (TV, YouTube, video games, social media) at the beginning of 2021 and forced myself to fill my calendar to the brim. It's the best decision I've ever made.

> I have 4-5 close friends I can hang out with every other week or so

Is that so abnormal? I have the same experience after graduating a few years ago but always thought that was what happens to most people.

Other than the friends you made in college, you can always find new people through hobbies or work.

Oh no, if anything I've been super lucky in that regard. It's just that a dinner with 2 good friends is a much different vibe from a barbecue with 15 people, 10 of which you've never met, and I miss the latter, especially post-covid :\

Look up volunteer associations of all kinds. I have a bunch of friends volunteering at everything from museums to food banks and churches and it's a way to grow your group with people of all ages.

Meetups or other platforms also have real world hangouts based on interests.

It takes some effort but it's totally doable.

Try to do it with two kids lol.

"Heartbreaking"? Try having no friends, at all, that have hung out with you regularly, in more than 25 years?

That your situation is of a different magnitude (and it sounds terrible; I'm sorry) does not make the relative change in another person's life any easier.

These third places do exist. I've restarted my social life successfully too, mostly with risky different people. In fact I just moved here before the pandemic so I didn't really have friends before it all started.

I tend to move a lot (this is my 4th country) so building new friendships is a fact of life for me. And I'm a very timid and introverted person. If I can do it, so can you!!

It's hard to get out of the post-COVID depression though, it takes a lot of effort. But I'm trying to make up for lost time now like I always said I would during the pandemic.

Personally, I am no longer in the mood to party.

As I approach 60, living a single life, battling lung cancer, with friends and family around me ill and dying or already dead, it feels like there isn't much left to celebrate.

There probably won't even be any sort of party when I'm six feet under. No celebration of a life endured. The world moves on as we all suffer eternal oblivion.

Sorry to hear that, sounds like a tough situation. Next time I have a drink (many months from now probably), I'll take a moment to remember you.

Sounds like you’ve landed on the wrong path of the last of Erikson’s stages.

I held a 30 person NYE party in the house I just purchased, that's 9 years in a row I've been holding this party. We dance, sing karaoke, drink champagne, and catch each other up on our otherwise busy and turbulent lives. Mostly friends from high school, some from university, and others still we've met afterwards. It's a wonderful atmosphere, partially because nearly everyone there has known each other for years now.

When I throw parties, it's for people I love and care about. I wouldn't go through all the time and stress and effort for acquaintances or coworkers; the reason my friends and I get together so frequently is because there's nothing else we enjoy more, so we prioritize it.

COVID isn't the problem and neither is getting older. My parents are in their 60s and still throw classy, drunken, hilarious parties with their decade long friends. The problem, I'm afraid, probably lies with your third point.

Based on what you say about your parents, I have a feeling a lot of your success here is because you've grown up being shown the way. Congratulations. It's a helluva skill. Many, many people grew up without such examples.

You're absolutely right, I don't remind them enough how good of a job they did with my siblings and I.

- The Covid hysteria was brutal in destroying what was left of the social fabric.

- People have become more and more anti social since the introduction of the smart phone.

- Intense schooling has made people apathetic to life and reluctant towards taking any initiative.

- Wealthy individuals don't need to host parties to impress their communities anymore.

- Sex soliciting apps like Tinder makes parties a place where the action isn't anymore.

- Young adults are extremely poor today. They don't have houses to throw parties in, they're too old to throw them in their parents houses, their landlord will complain if they throw a party in their apartment.

- People are afraid of being filmed when drunk and embarrassing themselves.

- Men are afraid of false sexual accusations.

- It is difficult to cater to people today if you serve food at your party or even throw a dinner. Everybody has allergies, diets and other eating problems, and they're not ashamed to demand you adapt to them.

- Wide spread narcissism. Young women and men stopped having conversations with each other at parties.

- People don't have patience to talk to each other and don't understand how to find something interesting in their fellow man.

- And yes, you're getting older.

But the number one reason I think is that the people who have been keeping up the good fight and throwing parties, barbecues, dinners and other events are sick and tired of always having to host and always invite people. So many people just float along and expect others to plan everything, contributing nothing themselves.

During the many years of schooling in childhood and being raised by parents who were also schooled, most people have had it hammered into their head that the worst crime you can do is come up with an idea or suggest something out of the routine. Of course they will not throw a party.

This is a catalogue of irrational scare-mongering.

Do you honestly believe that "housewarmings, birthdays, holidays, sports games, barbecuing, karaoke, ... parties ... for people joining the team, for people leaving, for projects kicking off or finishing" have decreased because of the prevalence of false sexual accusations, allergies, smartphones, or intense goal-driven schooling?

Do you have a credible reason to think that poverty of young adults, narcissism, or lack of patience, is materially different and has a material effect on the number of parties in the present day compared to 10 or 20 years ago?

Would you also claim that there haven't been other prior time periods where people were just as poor, self-centered or impatient as they are now, and there were more parties? Or is the claim only based on interpolation of specific, correlated changes in the recent past?

What is your standard for a "credible" reason?

What should the parent comment's claim be based on?

The last paragraph of your comment is hard for me to understand.

On the last par: suppose that it is true that a) 10 years ago people were less self-centered, impatient or poor than they are now and b) 10 years ago there were more parties.

Does this form the basis of a well-evidenced claim that there are fewer parties because of increased poverty, narcissism or impatience? Of course not, because there are lots of other time periods we can easily look at.

For example, in the 1950s young people were probably on average poorer than they are now. Perhaps they were also more narcissistic, or equally narcissistic as they are now. Were there also fewer parties? If not, this suggests there is something wrong with the theory.

My question to the GP is: do they believe that there are no time periods like the 1950s in my example, which might raise doubt about their theories? If they think there aren't any, is it because we have never been so poor and narcissistic as we are now? Or is it because there have never been so many parties at any prior time period, as there were in the golden age they identified where we were at our least poor and narcissistic (whenever that might be)? If there are such periods, why isn't that part of their theory? If 'the 1950s' were different, what is it that makes them different, and is that reflected in the theory?

It should be clear here, that any variable which has moved monotonically in one direction for ever and so is currently at a global extreme, is correlated with every other, especially if it is a phenomenon which can't be measured in formal units (like narcissism or fear of strangers). Saying that (satirizing the GP here) 'we have never had so many smartphones, and we have also never had so many allergies, therefore allergies are caused by smartphones', is laughably easy to dismiss, for a number of reasons.

Hmm in the 50s people were poorer yes but everyone could buy a house with a garden and actually on one wage only because the wife wouldn't work.

I totally agree hosting parties at home is much more problematic as people live closer together and get annoyed. I can see it around me a lot. I live in a major partying neighborhood (50m from the most infamous square in town for noise) and I don't care about the noise because it makes me feel good hearing people having fun. But my neighbors hate it. And most of them have moved here in the last decade knowing full well what they were getting into.

When you have a free standing house it's really a different story.

I think this phenomenon is actually something else: in the 1950s people who were commonly depicted as being part of society tended to have a house with a garden and a nuclear family structure where the husband, but not the wife, worked.

There were plenty of people who couldn't afford a house with a garden, or who didn't have one for other reasons, or who were not married or had a different type of family structure, or men who didn't work, or women who did work. But they were made invisible by the lack of portrayal, both in that society's image of itself, and in our image of that society.

(Or by a different mechanism: when people outside of that structure were portrayed, it was as outsiders and aberrations, whereas married couples with children who lived in houses were portrayed as the norm. For example, the protagonist of 'On the Road', commonly associated with that era, does not have a fixed address or a job, nor a wife, nor children. The protagonist of 'Invisible Man', a book central to the discourse of who does and does not get represented in media, lives in a basement apartment alone without a wife or family. The protagonist of 'The Bell Jar' is a woman who lives alone in an apartment in New York while working at a job, then in her mother's house, then in a mental asylum.)

It's difficult to explain credibility beyond the definition of the word, but if you have any purported reason "to think that poverty of young adults, narcissism, or lack of patience, is materially different and has a material effect on the number of parties in the present day compared to 10 or 20 years ago", I can tell you whether or not I think it's credible.

> Intense schooling has made people apathetic to life and reluctant towards taking any initiative.

What do you mean by this?

Not them but I guess it's referencing the fact that education today is largely about having textbooks shoved in front of you until you're able to recite enough of it. University/college is the place where people go to place responsibility for their education on someone else. It's sold as a one-stop shop for a high paying career. Not much initiative needed besides turning up to class.

> I guess it's referencing the fact that education today is largely about having textbooks shoved in front of you until you're able to recite enough of it.

I would argue contrariwise, the education today is bad because the textbooks are devoid of content and nobody can recite any of the little they have. For my parents' generation it was not unexceptional for people to cite poems from memory. I have bunch of their middle school books, and it appears they read more and longer texts for middle school than some university students today. During my grandfather's time kids were expected to recite a chapters of textbooks aloud in front of class, and he also remembered good bunch chunks from the Bible.

Compared to that, fill-in textbooks we used when I was in school seem a bit underwhelming -- and I am in my 30s. Kids today use e-learning environment (makes direct comparisons difficult).

Today, very few people appear to read anything, let alone books, even fewer remembers anything. Thus conversations about anything factual seem often pointless. But it is not like one can blame anyone for that, it only makes sense: Why truly should I remember anything when I can flip out a smartphone and hit query to a search engine? But people reading the same Wikipedia article or repeating the same news cycle talking points at each other makes for a boring conversation.

This is not my experience at all with my children here in Cali. It's a lot more participatory in the classroom and focused on project based learning.

Perhaps YMMV?

Spending most of your childhood forced to sit in a chair and be quiet. Allowed speech is repeating the teacher's opinion on the subject at hand and not enquiring more. Schools are literally sucking the life force out of generations of people, for the disadvantage of all.

Odd then that lots of people meet at schools and have more parties than any other time in their life.

The schools you're talking about are not anymore schools for children, where the worst influence is being imposed.

I was unclear earlier, but I exclusively mean the schooling during childhood years. After puberty things change, but learned behaviors stick for life.

Lots of parties then too (birthdays), more and bigger than homeschoolers.

Spouse and I are mid thirties. We're both a smidge on the introvert side, but have a very healthy social circle. We love to host and generally are the household that brings people out. Others seldom do and when it happens, it's somewhat lackluster. If no one steps up to be host, relationships fall to the wayside and people increasingly feel like you do currently. Be the proactive one because these are few and far between in friend groups. It needs those few who organize and keep things moving; and keep getting people off their couches to get out and have fun. No one gets (too) drunk, no ones belligerent, no one stays to the early morning hours anymore, no one sleeps over, and everyone is just looking for an easy, good time. It's great.

Caveat: we're fortunate and have an open concept house that makes any party very easy to manage. I've noticed that a crammed home full of walls everywhere is a big social turn off. People often come to be stimulated by the atmosphere. Winter can be a slog, but it may be best to do it in a backyard if that's the case.

A hard thing to overcome is removing the fear of inviting people you've lost touch with over the years. This isn't to say where relationships ended poorly, but rather ones where time or a busy life eroded what once was. I saw a friend a couple weeks ago that I haven't seen for 4 years because I reached out and invited him to a poker night party and it was great to catch up. Our last text was in 2018 at that point.

My parents are mid sixties and despite myself feeling fulfilled socially, I don't hold a torch to them. They have huge gatherings constantly and always on the go. Always been that way, even through covid (to my known disapproval...). The parties I saw as a kid were eye opening. My parents own some land and at the end of the night when a lot of people left, they would have large bonfires that were still 3 circular rows deep of lawn chairs. So much chatter. Hearing about their life is exhausting in a positive way. I hope I carry that forward into my later years.

I think work events are definitely in dire need to start up again. I miss them, but they're slowly making a comeback. Cherish your personal friends though, and don't be discouraged to keep arranging things. Friend groups need those types

> We love to host and generally are the household that brings people out. Others seldom do and when it happens, it's somewhat lackluster. If no one steps up to be host, relationships fall to the wayside and people increasingly feel like you do currently. Be the proactive one because these are few and far between in friend groups

This is so massively critical, glad you highlighted it.

30s here. Schedules are busier, both in general and due to kids. Health issues and homeowner responsibilities take up additional time.

Interests are different now. Most of the parties I used to go to were either LAN parties or college parties (mostly a single person scene). Also, tech has taken an antisocial turn - consoles can barely play splitsceen anymore, good luck with a sys link or an independent game server (things of the past).

Maybe people get more closed minded or clique-y as they get older. Or maybe interests get more focused. In many cases it seems like there's not that much that's enjoyable to talk about.

In my own life, I try to plan a cookout for my neighbors every year. Life gets in the way and I get to it about every 3 years. I also try to have a gaming party with friends once a year. It usually ends up being just 2 people instead of 4-6. It was canceled this year. It's also hard to plan that sort of party with multiple people having little kids.

I think like most things in life the success factor directly correlates with the amount of tries. If you try to organize one party in five years its clear that the success will not be guaranteed because your friends might either not be partying so much, not used to be participating in parties, other schedule, etc.

Think about it like this: unless you have been declining parties regularly in the past years it is safe to say you have a selective bias in your friends towards people who don't really do parties (either they don't want to or they don't prioritiize them in their schedules).

The upside is the more you party the more you will find people in your friends group who also like to party and it is a feedback loop with increasing opportunities.

It is age, I tried to setup a day outside with my friends in December before the end of 2022, everyone got their calendars out and to make sure almost everyone was available we needed to push it to late February 2023 ... 3 months to get 8 people calendars synced to have the same free day.

Something about this problem smells queuing theory.

We all know the solution! Over provisioning. Leave some slack in your calendars damnit.

The queuing theory interpretation is that they have events appearing faster than they can consume them, so there is a long queue (of events) to attend. If the queue is ~3 months long and they have about 1 day/time per day we can work out some things about the situation.

"Leaving slack" is impossible, they don't have enough free time to do everything they are committed to. It would make the situation worse.

This. Responsibilities, work, family and reduced metabolism over age.

Also, try to remember how many old geezers you had in your parties when they were held? Yep, close to none. Now we are that category.

I'm getting older and I still feel as bored around older, married people as I always have. I don't want to hear about other people's careers or children anymore.

I didn't experience it but I remember reading a lot more wild stories of the golden era of Wall Street than the tech scene today. Nowadays people just post about putting money in index funds. Too many high-IQ introverts in a room maybe not a good thing?

I'm much the same, in a DINK situation and going hard at life experiences but everyone our age has had children and their lives revolve around looking after them.

It's just not very interesting, and nobody has time for fun outside of that. One of my best friends (female) was in the Royal Marines, travelled to Antarctica etc when she was a late teenager/early 20s but now all she does is bring up her children, visit the grandparents and run a small dog training business as a side hustle.

I find it intriguing that this is what people want.

Perhaps dropping to a single income would make kids a more tolerable experience.

Assuming you mean that your expectations grow and shrink with your means: The person in question is married, husband makes a solid wage, and she would be doing exactly the same if it wasn't for children.

It was a conscious decision/plan to do the kids thing.

I wouldn't focus on this specific example however, that wasn't my intention. My point is that people give up so much in order to raise children. One of the major reasons why people of child rearing age aren't going to parties and having as much fun as they used to is because they're now raising children, so they can't. They don't have as wide a range of interesting things going on in their lives because raising children is an all or nothing type of affair.

This is something you may not understand because you don’t have kids but for my wife and I the kids are the reward. We partied hard (too hard), traveled to other countries, etc but after having kids we realized that stuff was pointless and we don’t miss it at all unless we can do it with our kids. I’m in my 40s and have plenty of friends who are single or married with no kids and if I had to pick who I know seems the most dissatisfied with life or who are the grumpiest about things out of their control, it would the people from this group.

I get that too - I know plenty of people who are very happy about their choice to have kids, despite the lack of what they used to call fun since having them.

I understand that having dependents give you purpose, and that purpose is (for whatever reason) something that us humans need to be happy.

What I don’t agree with is that you can’t find purpose without having kids that gives you the same satisfaction. If the problem being solved is that in the philosophical sense life is pointless, then your children’s life is as pointless as yours and having children therefore cannot create purpose for that life.

If “purpose” can be reduced to “something challenging that you care deeply about and dedicate your life to” then there are things other than children that can create it. For example the quest to perfect a skill (perhaps in sport, or in art, etc). What matters is that you care about it and it is challenging enough to create failure and the satisfaction of overcoming failure.

Travelling and partying are not things that meet that criteria (what difficulty is there to overcome? How do you know if you’ve succeeded?), so on their own they are not a purpose.

Those are my thoughts on it anyway, I know everyone has different feelings about this.

Are you referring to stories like Wolf of Wall Street?

If so, I would not expect stories like that from tech (or any other business where relationships are not the main sell). People getting high together or partying is not going to make the next generation processor or programming language or improve battery technology.

> People getting high together or partying is not going to make the next generation processor or programming language or improve battery technology.

neither is coding yet another crud website and yet that's what 90% of us are doing in their job

I think it depends on which part of the tech sector you look at. Crypto has a very similar vibe.

"Information Security" used to be an industry with extremely wild/hedonistic party culture after events. Not as much anymore.

I guess the fun parties are reserved for the executives and sales staff.

> Now my kids are older and it seems that only they get to party. I try my best, invited some people for parties, but we never seem to get invites in return.

Wanted to address this first as I feel like there are big cultural differences (even in the United States) on reciprocity for invites.

I was raised by an Italian born mother and a US born (German/Scottish Pennsylvania) father. In our family, if someone invited you to a party or event then the thought was that you should invite them to something in return. It didn't have to be exactly 1 for 1 but if it became too lopsided, some kind of action would be taken e.g. just invite over for coffee etc.

Once I moved to New York City, I tried to carry forward this trend and also ended up in situations where I would invite certain people multiple times and not get any invites in return. You can make a whole "the universe only rewards no expectations" etc kind of point but I was curious as to what was going on.

I asked one of the individuals what the reason was for not invites and he said:

"If you are inviting me to your event, it's because you think I'm cool and fun to hang out with and want me there. Given that, I don't feel an obligation to invite you in return."

This feels like one of those life situations where there isn't a right and wrong answer here but if two people are coming at it from different places, it can lead to hurt feelings.

I'm in my early 40s. My way of having parties is through salsa/bachata events around London. There is always something on and most people are very friendly.

I also drop in on Improvisation sessions in and around London - full of friendly people. And before Covid I used to do workshops around Europe too. Again can get invited to lots of parties that way.

I think I could probably rock this out for another 10-15 years easy - so some people here may find this a good hack. You can of course find other people to enjoy hobbies with on 'meetup.com'

I'm happy in my own company - but I wouldn't know where to begin in organizing my own party. I've spent a lot of my life working on personal projects/working. I do know a lot of people, but I generally meet people one on one. It just seems like a lot of stress and effort to set up a social event - but I think that is because it not well suited to it. I respect men and women who have a natural talent for organising social events. IF I were immortal I might have the time, but honestly I find it more interesting to work on a problem.

At the same time, I do like people and did in my teenage years through to about 25 morn that I wasn't that popular. I really did want to be liked, as I liked other people. If I had my time back, I'd have done improvisation / salsa and bachata at this time too. I wonder sometimes if everyone should do them...

+1 The best part about this is that you don't have to get drunk to have a good night.

I'm 55 and have gone to as many parties of my friends in the last 12 months as ever in my life. However, I do this by throwing them at my house. Granted, they're more sit-down-eat-dinner-together-and-drink-wine, and less stand-around-and-drink-beer-and-blast-music, but they're still a bunch of friends in my house at once.

If you want a lot of parties with friends, the best way is to throw them yourself. Your friends might also be interested in attending, but have less energy for hosting them.

Yes, I'm a weirdo procrastinator that's a bit of an introvert. I think all the time "It'd be nice to have some people over!" We'll have a housewarming on the 10 year anniversary of moving in I suspect. I know I myself realized a few months ago that the reason I suddenly only see people individually and infrequently anymore is our mutual friend that threw get-togethers moved up to a rural property during the pandemic which, in addition to the blow that was children, was the death-knell for his caring about his island of misfit friends. I always knew one of us would grow up.

I don't know if I have what it takes to step in and fill that void. I may need to meet a new social friend ;)

This is key. Older people do dinner parties. Maybe even with some light board/trivia games or some other activity. If your friends group doesn’t do it, you need to initiate and host. It often takes time to gain speed. Commit yourself to something like hosting monthly for a year. Send the invite a month ahead. Likely someone will offer to host at their place eventually and you can back off a bit. The ball of yarn doesn’t stay wound up without effort, it will unravel without attention and action.

Also, and I’m horrible at this, but try to intermix your friends groups. So everyone’s network of friends grows.

Also, cheat mode is just organizing dinners out. It’s easier but I think results in less memorable experiences and doesn’t do much to strengthen the relationships of those in attendance.

I'm 43 and partying a lot on a beach in Thailand. I know many other software engineers and testers here who are doing the same, although the climbing around here (Krabi) does compete with our time. One friend works on corporate software while DJing psytrance on the beach.

This is how you keep the parties going. Get single and travel to a place with a lot of travelers.

Preferably travellers that have shared interests with you - then the barriers of age don't matter nearly as much. Some of my favourite people here are pensioners - pensioners that get out and do stuff.

Sounds like a blast. We've been thinking in moving to Thailand and was curious what the expat situation was like.

Do you have problems finding expats and making friends there?

It's easy to meet expats here (better to have an in, like a hobby you're reasonably good at) and the Thai people are almost invariably polite and genuinely friendly.

I'm 36, no kids, yet, and still like to "party" most weekends. My partner and I are quite lucky in that we have a decent amount of friends and family we see regularly. Half of them with kids, half not. Most of the parents do not get to party much since they've had the kids but one couple, we'll call them Alice and Bob, haven't let their child affect their partying at all really. Regular house parties and gigs, late nights, loud music at home and the kid just sleeps through it. Having a couple of good baby sitters and frankly bringing the child up knowing all their friends and joining in has made it very easy for them. I hope if/when we do have kids of our own, we'll be like Alice and Bob.

Back in my 20s, when everyone was single, there were plenty of parties. It was just a matter of putting in the effort to find the right places to meet people.

In my 30s, as a newly wed, there were still parties. A lot of people showed up with kids. Late night parties often had a baby or two who still weren't on a normal schedule.

In my 40s, there's plenty of parties... They just are for other kids. I personally find kids birthday parties fun as long as the other adults are fun too.

I don't really like the parties with kids around myself. It's like a constant censorship. People don't say rude things around their kids, don't get too drunk, don't stay up late, constantly have to keep an eye on them.

To me it's no party when you're not crawling home at 6am after watching your friend make out with someone and having had the most hilarious laughs that you won't really remember because of the alcohol. And watching the sun come up with a friend talking about things you've never told anyone.

I'm 47 and I still feel this way. Maybe I never grew up. Well that might be so but I really don't want to :P. Luckily I've found others like me.

> I try my best, invited some people for parties, but we never seem to get invites in return.

I chose to stop caring about things like that. Some people just suck at organizing things, don't think of it, or don't have time for it. So I take the lead (or did, moved just before COVID and don't have as large a social circle here yet). I'd invite people to my place, or convince the friend with the pool at their house to host but do all the legwork organizing it (inviting, getting people to bring food and drinks), just declare "I'm going to be at <place> on Friday, they've got a live band, and there's a concert around the corner I'm going to check out later on."

And I was pretty indiscriminate with invites. If you were a friend, you got an invite. A coworker who was not an asshole, you got an invite. New person I met at the gym or on the soccer field and liked, you got an invite. Neighbor I saw in the hallway, you got an invite. This is part of what helped me develop a large social circle. Throwing an invite to an event to 30-40 people + their partners who I may not have known beforehand, you'll get takers most of the time. And if you don't, you have fun anyways.

I felt like there was a downward trend in parties before COVID hit for me. This would be me in my late 30s. In our 20s I feel like we still went to a lot of parties and tried to at least "drop by" when we could. But then we had kids and it became a lot harder - but we still try to make the important things ( bdays, graduations, etc ). This was the micro ( and just where I was in life ) now, with COVID I feel like a) there are not as many parties - just kind of like a covid hangover on social gatherings and b) it is much easier to say "no" without social repercussions. One thing I don't like is that now children don't get invited to a lot of other children's birthday parties, where as I remember that was a huge deal growing up for me. You always knew which friend had a birthday coming up and it was a huge deal. Now I feel like most kids in our social circle are fine with just 2 or 3 close friends over to the house for a small gathering. It just seems like the era of big, social parties has dwindled locally/micro.

I really enjoyed this thread as it really is neat to see how other people perceive something I have noticed, but not really acknowledged.

COVID was a huge shift IMHO - we used to complain about large kids parties every weekend (as parents), but nowadays if my kids are invited, they're with close friends and usually not more than 5-6. And it's now like 1-2/mo not every weekend.

My spouse is thrilled with this; we go do family stuff more on weekends. I don't mind the socialization but don't miss the rush to buy gifts every week.

Slightly tangential, but the most effective way to be invited to a party is by hosting them.

My problem with many of the comments is that even at 35 I'd find it quite strange, "taking someone to a party." So assuming that I'm remotely normal by almost 50 there is very little chance of successfully using the host more parties and meet more people that like parties strategy.

If you invite people to a party, I think they are most likely to bring their spouse/SO so you are thus unlikely to meet new people that might reciprocate.

The one exception to this is the dinner party. A main stay of the UK Upper Middle Class that have a dining room that can seat 12 and a cook/housekeeper.

If you have a cook or a housekeeper you're nowhere near upper middle class. Those are bygone times.

Don't know, a friend runs an optician's shop in a mall and has a live-in nanny who cooks for them and looks after the kids.

A live-in nanny from a third-world country is very different from a cook (I assume a professional chef) and a live-in nanny.

Still, your friend is upper middle-class. These people, especially if old, went through an “easier” time and built quite a wealth now (doing the same today is practically impossible).

I guess a cook can be hired for parties.

For work parties, COVID changed everything. The company I used to work for used to love parties. There were parties every month at a minimum (last Friday of the month) and for successful projects etc.

With COVID, many people moved out of the city centre with the option of remote/hybrid work. That means less people can drink at the work parties. Instead of just catching a bus home or walking, they need to drive to the office.

The people I'm still in contact with said the work party group is basically dead now.

For personal parties, that solely depends on your friend group.

This is a very interesting post, thank you for writing it. I'm still quite a few years away from 50 but I have been feeling like this since I graduated. The days after graduation felt like the party would keep going but I quickly noticed that my friends were becoming less and less available.

I think this happened because:

1. They got married and therefore priorities changed.

2. They got kids and responsibilities increased.

3. They got older and interests changed.

4. Most of us moved to different cities and/or countries.

But I think the party can, indeed, keep going (with a little effort). There is a reply here that recommends joining different activity groups and I think that is the right thing to do. In school, you didn't have to work hard to meet new people and make new friends because the community is large and full of interesting people you can relate to.

Outside school, the best way to mimic that kind of life is at places like work, Church, sports clubs, etc. [finances permitting :)]

I don't know, somewhat recently I went to a Halloween party because I saw a flier for it and it started early, had food included with the door entry, didn't know the organization throwing it but it looked cool. Turned out to be a senior citizens nudist dance party, I was the youngest person by 40 years. Sometimes you just need to throw caution to the wind and get naked, dance, and eat fried chicken with the elderly, it was a blast.

Those do exist? "What is this a half-nude buffet party?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY8BSHVWGxk

Just for context: it could be worse. Age 45. Since elementary school I have been invited to probably between 1-3 parties total, and never invited to any party after college.

I'm not good at socializing. Or maybe have bad breath. But point being, some social life is better than none.

For me it is a combination of age, having kids, having moved around, and general deterioration of the social fabric. Especially church-related events are mostly absent in my social circle.

But boy am I glad that I took the decision to join a "Studentenverbindung" (fraternity) in my university days! Three times per semester we put on suits, sit around a long table, drink beer, and sing nonsensical songs. This has been going on without fail for 140 years -- well, almost without fail, there were gaps during ww1, ww2, and covid. I go to about 1/3 of these events. I meet my old university friends, their families, and a bunch of young students. I expect to continue doing this for many years to come.

Combination of all three. I'm about 20 years younger than you. When COVID was a thing, there were a few months to a year almost without parties. But it has ramped up again, I am invited and going to more events than in 2019. However, I made a deliberate effort to improve my social and professional network. I also started a local meetup, which is basically a cheat code to meeting new people and becoming more influential.

If I had to guess, COVID and aging weakened the bonds in your social circle. Just start to reach out to old friends again and try to find new ones. There are a lot of interesting people out there, probably eager to have a good party.

It’s fairly simple…

As people get older,

1. they have more responsibilities/obligations and less free time

2. as well as, they also grow into having new interests besides partying, so they use their (limited) free time differently.

I held one Christmas party and attended one Christmas party.

In both cases, the number of guests were very few, all guests had left before midnight, and the amount of drinking wa modest. People with kids left earlier, and every couple had one designated driver who didn't think they were missing out on drinking anyways.

As an adult, if I want more of an intense party experience, I have to go clubbing.

I just don't have drinking friends any more, and I don't drink anymore.

Argentinan here. 38 yo.

"Parties" Are now dinners with friends, no more than 10. Many of them has child's so is hard for everyone to go, but we do some meetings.

As professional, parties moved to After offices, until pandemic, no more than 1 or 2 hours in a bar with colleagues (even we had the adminbeers for sysadmin community). That was really nice.

Anyway I'm moving to Chicago, so just tell me when you wants to do a BBQ.

Unfortunately I don't even live in the US, but BBQ with someone Argentinian would be incredible.

One Argentinian I knew really wanted to BBQ a whole cow. Does need the ability to throw a big party!

Very common on regional parties to do that, but the whole cow meat is not good for BBQ. Some meat is better for stews, other to bake or to cook in a pan. It is common to BBQ the whole ribs.

My view - adults are generally boring. Something about busy schedules and responsibility ;)

Go to a concert. Buy some overpriced beer - the party happens. (my experience with rock concerts only)

I've never enjoyed parties at people's house (too few people, too intimate) - but very large groups I enjoy. All of my neighbors are the opposite (prefer intimate at home gatherings) which I always skip.

It's just real hard to get people to commit to things. Lots of "maybes" and flaking. I'd way much rather have someone tell me flat out "no" instead of ghosting or maybe.

I faced the same issue and decided to solve it by making an app. The issue mainly boils down to not knowing who is free when and when they want to party. So I made an app where people can input when they are free during the week, and it auto suggests plans.

You can check it out at : https://www.bl1p.app

I just wanted to say this is the spirit. This is what this community is about. Seeing a problem and building something.

The best parties I ever went to were when I was in my early teens and my parents were in their late 40s. Massive bonfires, kids running all over playing hide and seek on 20 acres, adults and older teens with impromptu softball games, elaborate plays written to commemorate the party (not necessarily well written, but included wacky stunts!). Parents sneaking off to smoke weed and getting a little weird. The weather just right. Really all the parties I’ve been to as an adult have been a disappointment in comparison.

So I’m saying you still have time for some real good times. But yes, “post” covid my social life has dried up a bit too. Haven’t lost friends, but see them less, and all the not really friends that would just shoot me a text if they were at a bar in the neighborhood have stopped doing that. Just lost the habit I suppose.

I kinda remember these same kinds of parties at a similar age and honestly I don't think you need 20 acres for it either. Just a someone's backyard (or neighborhood) or a community center - I remember all of those fondly.

I have a feeling this post-pandemic period will be uncertain for a while but will swing back into more social in a year or two.

As we get older, we (and our peers) tend to have busier lives. It's not a bad thing, but it does interfere with our ability to have get-togethers.

"My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child. We can't decide whether to ruin our carpet or ruin our lives."

- Rita Rudner

Mid 30's, married, no kids here. My social life took a significant uptick midway through 2021, even compared to pre-pandemic. And I can attribute that to one factor:

Weddings.

Both my brother and one of my sports buddies got married in 2020 but had to delay wedding celebrations. And suddenly, not only are there weddings but there are bachelor parties, hey-maybe-we-should-meet-before-the-wedding gatherings, follow up dinners, "hey we hang out every Memorial Day, want to come?" offers, etc.

Of course, my buddy and his wife are expecting now (congrats and I'll see him again in 5 years), my brother will likely be there soon and I just took on a bunch more work responsibilities. The flow of social gatherings will almost certainly ebb this year.

Interestingly, we started having parties around October 2020 with other libertarians that were fed up with Covid restrictions. Our house became known as a bit of a party spot, we’re in our mid-30s and spent some money to make everything nice in our basement for hosting guests. It also served as sort of a semi official “plot to take over the state libertarian party” event, as the official party stance was curiously mum about lockdowns (despite acting as if they were always against them now, revisionist history).

The parties stopped happening after two things. First, they got a bit too raucous. We’re 30 somethings with kids and didn’t want drunk people who have decided to play strip poker in the basement when our five year old is asleep upstairs. What the heck. The things we are looking for in a part are very different than the slightly younger single demographic, and telling them to behave gets their brains to short circuit. All that drama we’d left behind flooding back. So we had to ban a good number of bill headed people who thought they’d done nothing wrong. This caused grumbling and the network effects fell apart since “well so-and-so is banned so we can’t go there”. Second, once restrictions were lifted people stopped showing as much interest as we weren’t the only game in town. It’s easy to have parties when you have essentially a captive audience.

Then I tried running a regular D&D game by soliciting from a local Facebook group, and met some of the most entitled and rude people I’ve ever met (also some great people). It was such a chore managing everyone and people’s weird personalities and expectations that I eventually disbanded it.

Just want to check. Were parties illegal at that point in your local jurisdiction?

It's a great story but as anecdata on the question of parties in general it's quite a specific scenario

They were not illegal. We weren’t breaking any laws just nobody was having parties, bars were mostly empty, just in general people weren’t inviting friends over.

I’ve seen no uptick in parties since then. Pre Covid we often got invited to SOMETHING.

I am close to 50 and I get invited to parties a few times a week; in and around the summer and December, that becomes daily. The past 30+ years there are very few weeks I haven’t been to at least one. Of course the term ‘party’ can mean many things to many people, but you named a few and those I go to. And also sometimes to raves in the mountains nearby, and sometimes to bands.

I do work on friendships and social life; I select new places to live based on the liveliness of the place, but also the willingness to connect (which doesn’t happen everywhere; too cliquey).

My friends from school/college have different lives and didn’t fit (maybe like you are experiencing), so I make new ones to fit with my stages in life.

My friends and I had the exact problem. We used to (host and attend) parties all the time.

In my experience it’s because: Covid decimated any chance of gatherings for 2 years. It caused all of our friends to be paranoid. People started getting older and it was hard to communicate with everyone. Platform fragmentation. Some people use SMS or messenger exclusively and no one uses facebook events anymore.

We actually started to try and use different apps, partiful, evite etc… We found the UX to be a challenge to interact with and no one wanted to use them.

So we built our own event planning app that tries to solve these problems: https://dateit.io/

How many parties do your parents go to? When you went to parties when you were younger, were there a lot of 50 year olds hanging around?

my parents have a way busier social calendar than I do. It's almost like when you're finished with work, the late hours, unusual shifts and occasional weekend call-outs, professional development and week-long 'team strategy' off-sites you actually have time to live life, have friends and enjoy their company in a relaxed environment - who knew!

Both of you can be correct here. It's possible (and I would say likely) that you end up having a bunch of social activities and yet still not go to parties.

I know as I've gotten older (still younger than OP but well on my way), my tastes have changed and mellowed. Gone are the days where me and my friends want to be in a noisy, booze-filled environment. Dining out, theatre trips, hiking, even an international holiday with friends to take part in a running event. Just no parties.

We celebrated our 15th anniversary with board games and silent disco. And people who don't like either of those can still have drinks, food and talk. It was a great combination I can strongly recommend.

You have a limited view of what can be called a "party".

My dad raised hell after he divorced and was single again. I was only 6 so I don't remember most of it, but I remember in general the house was the spot for the community's late-30s people. The high water mark I remember was he knew the drummer in a fairly-famous 80s hair metal band and they agreed to jam in his basement. The whole town came over for that one. I don't remember which band it was but they were big enough that it was newsworthy.

Just to counter balance the anecdata, I’m in my mid 30s and have lots of parties in my life. It’s entirely due to my friend group.

Try moving to South America we have someone having adhoc party at least twice a month just among family and friends

Yep! I just spent a few weeks in my wife's hometown in Argentina. Did as much partying/socializing in that time as I probably do in six months of regular life, even accounting for being out of commission for a bit with the inevitable bout of covid.

Being more on the introverted side, I actually found it to be exhausting after awhile, even though another part of me loved it and I could feel my overall sense of mood and wellbeing improving substantially. Something in the realm of 50-75% of that pace would probably be ideal for me.

At 50 or thereabouts, people's priorities in life changes and they change away from partying. The reasons you have listed are all valid points, but there is nit much you can do, other than befriending a younger generation, who tend to party a lot more than people in your (and mine) age group. But then, you are looking into being called the "geezer" in the group. Accept your new status quo. Be happy with the few parties you attend or host. That is my best advice. Yesteryears are not making a comeback.

Macro trends and averages, so anecdotally everyone could be an exception but my observations are:

If you are 20 you have more parties than when you was 10.

If you are 30, about the same than when you were 20, possibly with different people than 10 years ago.

If you are 40 some of the people you were partying with are unavailable because of work, family, moved to other cities, etc. On average it's increasingly difficult to make new friends because you're starting to be on the downhill slope of the make_friends() probability distribution, which depends not only from you but also by the other people. 20 yo are looking at you as ancient and out of touch with their reality and you might look at them as weirdos and out of touch with reality at all.

If you are 50, more like so. Add that some are not here anymore. The music 20 yo listen to is weird shit and their fashion is in part the n-th iteration of what you already saw. Currently it's some variation of the 80s. A friend told me her daughter is dressing like her mother when my friend had the age of her daughter.

Same and more like that for every extra 10 years, up to when it will be difficult to get out of home or let people in and stay long enough to call that a party.

Add that more time gives people more ways to dislike each other, because stuff happens, people take stances and some fights cannot be forgiven because they define who we are and what we believe.

I hope that this is not depressing :-)

Organise parties, invite people. Eventually people will bring more people who like parties, while people who don't like parties will stop coming. Eventually, you will have got to know party people and will get invited to other parties they know of.

Not sure where you are at in life, but I like the concept of a salon as a form of party (if you need inspiration): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_(gathering)

Anecdotally the regular parties ended for me about 8 years ago (25 y/o). Since then my friends have been distributed around the country and all have houses / kids / professional work ect...

Recently we've tried organising two events. A get-well party for a friend and an in-person DnD session. Both are scheduled to happen soon but planning began back in October or November. When organising 6 people in to a room together takes three months notice i can see why people don't bother so much....

For me, being the first one to become a parent meant saying no thank you to so many invites that they stopped coming. Then aging has dwindled the number of friends I stay in touch with. Covid sure affected things quite a bit, as did breakups and fights between mutual friends, so groups that used to hang out can no longer. Being single as more and more people get married has also been an issue.

For society at large I know many people who still haven't cleaned their home from covid. And for those that are still working from home, it's harder to invite people over to a party at your office.

But for the trend before covid, I think the recent political divides may have had an impact. People on the "left" and "right" are reluctant to socialize with each other, and people in the middle don't want to hear it from either of them. For example, seeing a friend share political memes might make someone think that person will be annoying to be around, and not worth it.

But really I think as we get older less and less people host parties. I know I tried to host them a few times, but I hate it, so I stopped. Certain people are "entertainers" if you're the entertainers in your group, then it falls on you to throw the parties.

Personally it's just being married to someone who's covid-cautious, has a busy job, along with having kids. It's difficult if not impossible to have a social life when all your efforts are dedicated towards work, chores and the kids (and your spouse won't budge on things that would simplify these pressures) There is no real party time, just responsibility and the occasional escape when the grandmothers can watch the little ones.

What are some examples of areas you think would be reasonable for your spouse to budge (but they do not)?

For me it comes down to perfectionism vs pragmatism:

Do you hire cleaners or clean your house yourself? Do you send the kids to a more expensive private school even though it's farther away? How much do you cook for yourself and how elaborate are the dishes you make? Do you prepare food for the kids every day even though the school has snacks anyway? How much time do you spend on your job? How much time do you spend commuting? How late are bed times when you get back late from your job? How many belongings do you keep that have to be stored and organized?

So I guess I would say that when all is said and done there isn't any social time.

I see. Thanks for the reply. I originally interpreted your comment to mean your spouse is covid cautious and will not budge on certain decisions related to that. This is not what you said though and this reply made your intended meaning clear. Best of luck navigating these things. I'm newly married and am certainly in store for similar areas to pick tradeoffs.

I use to be.... a pretty big party guy. But eventually I kind "aged out" of that scene. I recognized a few years back that I was missing the hanging out. But I still didn't want to go back to the club life. So I reached out to a few old friends to see if anyone was interested in playing d&d. Now, for years, my wife and I host a game every Friday and Sunday. It's helped fill the niche in an old man kinda way.

I'm close to your age and I don't particularly enjoy parties anymore. I think a big part of that is I don't really drink anymore but in general large loud gatherings don't hold that much interest for me anymore. So when I'm invited to stuff it often feels more like an obligation than something I'm excited about. I would much rather plan a low key game night or a online watch part than big party where we can focus on interacting with a couple close friends rather than 15 minutes a pop with a large group

Life, travel, location etc have exacerbated the issue but even though our daughter is all grown up a lot of our friends are still middle or early years raising families which is a huge time commitment so they aren't throwing many parties either.

In many ways I lived that lifestyle, hard from 17-32 and even then I kept having to make younger and younger friends to keep a party crowd with me because with maturity comes obligation.

I would rather poke around my yard, hop online and game with friends and family and not have to deal with crowds, drunk people, and etc and I bet a lot of your friends fee the same way.

I'm almost 50. Parties change. The last party I had in November was a few couples drinking wine, eating charcuterie, and listening to Jazz records. Not a bad way to spend a night in my opinion.

I still like like to be social, so I took up vinyl DJing! That kindda tempers my urge for parties: https://baus.net/miami-vinyl-dj/

People get married, have kids, and have elderly parents they need to help.

My friends and I don't have the same amount of time anymore for parties that we had even 15 years ago. Most of the time I see my friends is at lunch and even that was destroyed by covid and work from home.

An older friend of mine died last week and his funeral will sadly be the first time I see the majority of my friends at the same time.

I would strongly recommend people who are looking for more music and dance in their life to check out the vr clubbing scene. I've been on it almost constantly for the last 3 months and love having partying back in my life again from the comfort of my own home. (I don't want to say it's a perfect replacement but for me it's good enough to scratch the itch)

See my prior posts for more info.

I invite anyone who wants to go to VR parties to come to my mansion in the Metaverse. Enjoy the professionally designed modern architecture as you mingle amongst other guests and have VR drinks (while enjoying your own beverage at home), and watch our preprogrammed live entertainment. Sometimes we go out on the yacht too. Tell the bouncer up front you’re with Hackernews for VIP status.

I'm intrigued by this but I can't quite get my head around it. I'm a millennial so grew up with online communities and gaming but my god this being a thing blows my mind!

Honestly I love it. It's beyond anything I thought I would live long enough to see.

Not cheap, unfortunately. Especially if you want to do it well.

Also for me only vrchat is good. Meta's offerings seem very sterile and corporate

I blame COVID, but our neighbors started doing low-key happy hours about once a month and these have been wonderful. We've also started meeting people for pizza at restaurants again and that has been similarly great. So I'd like to think that we're all out of practice and it's taking a while to get to ball rolling again.

Speaking for myself, I went to every party (invited or not) with my group of friends when we were 18. In the mid twenties we went to almost every party we were invited to. By the early 30s, we all moved to separate places far away abroad. Me and my girlfriend went to a few parties by colleagues of mine at our new country of residence, and they were nice but not really interesting (too many kids, more like family events). By now, late 40s and early 50s, nobody organizes a party and I don't want to go to a party anyway. They're boring and I'd regret drinking too much the next day, and if you don't drink alcohol, they're even more boring.

So there's that. It was a gradual process. Now if we lived in Beverly Hills and had many acquaintances, I'd probably go to parties. But I'm not working in showbiz, I'm working in academia and unfortunately most of my colleagues are not very interesting personalities.

I find the parents of my kid's friends are pretty cool usually and since I have a long commute my coworkers don't live near me - we end up spending decent time with them.

As to alcohol - I try to limit aggressively. It ruins my sleep these days. I prefer edibles anyway (if that's legal where you live).

I went to more parties last year than the previous 10 combined (maybe past 20)! However, I think this is exceptional and it took me seeking out folks that wanted to have fun like that. Life circumstances and mismatched schedules get in the way for sure and I still think there is a strong covid hangover for most people.

Speaking as one who used to host (along with spouse of course) the occasional dinner party, brunch, whatever and now doesn't, there are two factors:

1. Kids (older than the "small and cute" stage). 2. Out of practice due to COVID! Worry about the virus is pretty low now, but in the meantime the clutter has grown, social connections have weakened, and the longer you don't have a gathering the less confidence you have to organize one.

The kids thing has multiple angles. One is that with all their stuff the house is a lot messier than it used to be, so much more intertia to make it presentable. Another is than active social life exists to fill a need for companionship that is just not as strong when you have multiple humans around you 100% of the time. The third is that the social crowd's growing kids have the same effect on them!

Sounds like you need to throw a party instead of waiting for someone else to throw one. You don’t need an excuse!

I felt similarly as I entered my late 40's. Strangely enough I was comforted by a rerun of "Magnum P.I.": Magnum is trying to organize a major party with his friends "like the old days," but finds everybody is too busy now working on their careers, early to bed-early to rise etc. I guess it's all about getting down to business and building a life. I was comforted to see that this seems to be the norm.

Now that my child is a teenager, I've been actively looking into volunteer opportunities in my community.

I've also come to realize that what's mostly expected of older people is money, or at least ability to raise funds. Social opportunities come from getting involved in sponsorship of organizations and people. So it looks like my role model may be switching from Magnum to Higgins.

I go to a lot of concerts so I get a feel of being at a party, but I don't see my best friends very often. Most of them are not in my area anymore and it takes hours to days to go visit. Haven't been to a house party that isn't just dinner with family in quite a while.

Time changes. Individualism is high these days. Back in the past we can have our arguments, conflicts, disagreements but they can be set aside and all are happy. Nowadays, each one of us is too occupied by many things that we prioritize more than getting together.

I think it's the 'old' thing mainly.

Most people in our age range have families and lots of ties and commitments. We recently booked a weekend away with 7 friends and for most of them it was the only weekend in March they still had free. Birthdays, kids trips, judo contests, blah blah..

For me as an expat needing to travel for it, I complained that it was too far away in the future to know if it would work to fly over (eg important work commitments like trainings in the adjacent weeks)

I can't really blame them but as a childless single it's boring yeah. Good thing I have some nice social communities with similar people.

For me it is mostly COVID's fault, because people my age definitely stopped partying as much as they used to. Some are still worried about it, many just realized during lockdown that they don't even like "parties" in the traditional form. We still get together but it's usually a quiet dinner thing, not dozens of people in the same room, drinking and dancing and whatever else. Even karaoke is not as popular in my circle since being in a closed space with people opening their mouths wide feels weird.

I think smaller parties like housewarming and barbecue are still fine though, but maybe it depend on the country.

I've noticed the same thing. I suspect it's a combination of the legacy of COVID and the rise of digital media. As humans, sometimes we are lazy and prefer the predictable, non-messy comfort of a movie, show, news outlet, or digital social network to the hard work of real relationships with real people. Also I think that because of COVID, and the rise of remote working, we are out of practice of the skill of socialization, which can increase the frustration and resignation to not-caring and not-trying. The people I know who are the most social, also have the least amount of screen time in their lives.

I'm closing in on 50 as well. Not into sports, nor alcohol, mostly an introvert, and married with 4 kids. I do a weekly date night with my wife, have a monthly lunch recurring-schedule with my 3 closest friends. I also volunteer at church in the local clergy (Bishopric) and am very involved with the church youth, along with a plethora of administrative churchly duties. There are occasional concerts and double dates smattered in there as well. For me, this is very challenging and I don't like adding anything further to the mix. So ultimately unlike you, Rod Kimble, I don't party.

Life happens, especially past age 30, maybe even less than that. If you’re single and don’t plan to have kids AND have a network of similar people - parties are still pretty common, even if they are slightly less ambitious.

In all likelihood, your peer group had many fewer obligations 10 years ago than it did now. Fewer people with families. Fewer people in management positions. They now have more obligations and less energy. And as people go along in their lives, they tend to have fewer and fewer strong bonds outside of the family, which they prioritize. That's normal. What isn't normal is how many people have their free time eaten up by non-hobbies. My dad's generation was certainly more handy with general repairs and carpentry than mine is. Fewer shared hobbies equals fewer shared experiences. A guy who you know nothing else about can still talk to you about the best way to install drywall. These are prompts for potential friendships that we no longer get nowadays.

Back home in Louisiana, we primarily have three types of get-togethers.

The first is a seafood boil, which usually happens in the spring and early summer months. Everyone takes turns paying for and hosting a feast for friends and family, and everyone in the family groups are invited. The kids do kid things, and the adults sit around and eat, drink, and be merry.

The second type is festivals. These are community-wide events that all happen on different weekends, usually in the autumn. The Des Allemands Catfish Festival will be scheduled on a different weekend than the Luling Alligator Festival, which will also be on a different weekend than the Destrehan Fall Festival. Most of the same people show up to these festivals, so you can always run into and enjoy the company of someone you know.

The third type is Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras isn't a day as much as it is a season. While the media tends to focus on the drinking and debauchery that occurs on Bourbon Street, the vast majority of these parades are small community organizations that just want to give everyone a good time. If you're on a float, you're having a party. If you're catching beads, you're also having a good time with your community. People will schedule the time and location they're gonna be at the parades and be there to have a few beers and catch a few beads. There's even an entire hobby that revolves around the collectible memorabilia from those parades.

So... congratulations. You've made it to older age.

On Good Parties: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/on-good-parties

My guess is your first two hypothesis. I'm in my mid 50's, and if I want to socialize, I find I'm almost always the one to have to initiate it. Generally with younger friends/colleagues.

I've been asking myself the same question, and my answer is a combination of post-covid general trauma with human interactions and social media turning people ironically more anti-social (actually having fun is not very instagramable).

Single people that travel may have a different experience, but things are just not as fun as before for most people, and very few of us seem to be actively trying to change the new status quo. I learned this the hard way while organizing a bachelors party for a friend a couple weeks ago.

So work has taken on such a major component of our life that it seems fitting that work is where we do our socializing as well.

The best parties I have attended in my adult age have been sponsored by Microsoft, Veeam, Dell, Salesforce, etc. The bar is open, the hotel shuttles are running all night, Uber for the bougie, and Snoop Dogg, Flo Rida, or Coolio [RIP] is the VIP entertainer. And work pays for it all!

And in the morning I can hold my head high knowing I'll never have to see these people ever again.

Houseparties are out! Tradeshows are lit!

Honestly it just feels like people have less energy these days. People seem more lethargic and they just want to relax alone. I am only 28 and no one my age parties anymore within my vicinity. Even when I was growing up when my dad was 40 he would throw constant parties.

I've also heard that the zoomers don't want to drink or anything, which is pretty surprising to me. I think I caught the end of the crazy drinking party culture when I was at uni around age 20.

People just seem tired and sedated.

All of the above. There were always more parties 10 years ago.

I think it's not the age, because I knew plenty of older people (average age 50+) who would socialize regularly. They did go out drinking pretty much every night, and have plenty of parties. I don't know if that's still going on because I don't live there anymore. I'm also not sure if it's possible to replicate this without alcoholism, cannabis or the usual things that bring people together ;)

I actually find I party with work people more often now, my guys from high school in south London are scattered across NW Europe.

With work people, we're all in the same place regularly so no scheduling issues and, being London, there's always a pub nearby. It's a startup so the engineers aren't siloed off in some dungeon, we hang out just as much with sales and operations, who always bring a bit of party atmosphere.

I used to have a lot of parties. Had kids and moved across the country. Not so many parties after that. Several years pass, had more kids, and moved again. All of the sudden parties all the time. Big ones, sometimes for no reason.

In my case I think it's totally local culture; where I'm at currently people like to get together and if you're a parent they _expect_ you roll up with a bunch of kids.

For me it was definitely COVID. I went last weekend to my first (indoor, winter) party since the pandemic started, and it was absolutely lovely. Still haven't thrown one but it makes me think I should; my 5yo got the bivalent booster in Dec. and we're rebalancing our risk / reward tradeoff. For us, at least, I expect parties to increase substantially over the coming six months.

Here is a relevant song, maybe you find your answer there;-) Jonathan Richman - Parties In The U.S.A.

https://open.spotify.com/track/4axPxMZwpzQWjcNjv1JOP6?si=Jaq...

Definitely a downward trend visible on Google Trends for e.g. "housewarming party":

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...

I feel the 19th century societal norms (as documented by Austen and Tolstoy etc) are often derided and laughed at for their formalism and rigidness, but while recognizing the many problems there I do also see lot of upsides too. I wonder if we could apply something from that without having those downsides.

People don't know their neighbors anymore -- everyone's acquaintances are online and the guy who lives next door to you is a stranger whom you barely nod to on the street. To have a party you need a bunch of people that you know and like who are in the same geographic vicinity.

You know that parties work both ways and you can organise one? Invite your old friends, your children and maybe some of their friends to a party that's around end of February, so everyone has enough time to book the evening off. Ask to re-confirm their attendance a few day before

Poster said they threw parties but aren't invited in return.

> COVID happened and we still haven't restarted partying the way we used to

Only that it's still ongoing. Of course, one thing is that most of us no longer give a s* about it and we don't care getting infected a dozen times in a year with a disease that can sometimes be deadly.

My opinion: Life always carries a risk. Since the body bags are no longer lining the streets and the hospitals are no longer overwhelmed we can go back to normal.

There's lots of nasty illnesses, one of which will most likely kill you in the end. What matters is the fun you had getting there.

The parties I have are with people whose kids are similar age. We end up playing poker for money while the kids play or we have potluck dinners etc. it was actually getting kind of exhausting so we stepped back but I think that’s basically how it ends up centering around kids.

I'm 45 and went to a lot of parties in my 20s and never actually enjoyed any of them. It was really just to meet people (specifically women). Since getting married and having kids, I just don't need it anymore and have zero desire to attend one.

Have kids. You'll be swimming in birthday parties within a year or two.

If we're asking where are all the parties, I'd also like to ask what are we missing out on by not having them? What is the draw? What are some of the reasons for making the effort to host or go to them?

We used to go out for drinks after work every week. Now lots of people WFH so people aren't around. The other thing is lots of the young people in the team now dont drink, which is a big change for me.

Move to Melbourne I'm in my 40s and still lots of parties. We had a massive house warming with a great Gatsby theme a few months ago. Lots of friends in their 50s still attending parties

Could it be related to COVID or to high inflation / bad economy?

That was my first intuition, although when I thought about it a bit I realized that in my life the lack of parties was a trend I was observing for several years before the pandemic. I kind of attributed it to my department/institution (or in a few limited cases, even to myself) but this post has me wondering if there's sort of a broader trend.

It's probably impossible to know in the absence of some kind of hard data or compelling surveys, though.

I don't think it's an age thing per se, because if anything my older colleagues seemed to persist with parties, although there might be some kind of generational age thing, in that my younger colleagues didn't seem to pick that habit up.

Parties are the result of social interaction, not the cause of it.

I just organised one for next week.

I tend to have to do it because a lot of my friends are poor and live in cramped living conditions.

The equivalent is going to the pub. That's what it's for.

61yo. Still have parties often enough but mostly it is between narrow circle of old friends. Also I have get together with friend or two 1 - 2 times a week.

And now jagged edge is singing “hey where the party at” in my head, and if you know that song the party was 20 years ago and you missed it.

for me it ebbs and flows depending on my current circle and other things. My mid 20s-30s we didn't go out at all, just doing the family thing. Then we clicked with a bunch of people nearby and started hanging out every single week with parties on every occasion and everything, even through covid. Post covid a bunch of people moved and it seems to have died down again.

I like talking to strangers rather, and outdoor, on a walk or a trance music festival, that should be fun

I’ve done enough partying to be honest.

Be the change you want to see. Throw a party!

You’re gotten old

This turned out to be a nice thread :)

I thought mark told us already, the parties have moved to the metaverse. There’s a great #hottub and everything.

In this comment: I'll tell you why you should never host a dinner party, how to make new friends, why "cocktail parties" are better than dinner parties (even if you don't drink alcohol), and discuss the macro trends in parties and relationships.

Hi! I wrote a book called "The 2-Hour Cocktail Party" that people seem to really like on Amazon and Audible.

I've hosted hundreds of parties myself and personally coached 175 people* over the past year on how to host a simple, effective party or gathering to help them make new friends and build relationships.

*see these party photos for proof: https://party.pro/hosts/

Here's what I've learned as it relates to your questions:

(1) YES the macro trends on partying are down, and reports of loneliness are way up. Do a search for "loneliness epidemic" or "friendship recession," two phrases that I track with Google News Alerts, to see constant press pieces with supporting data showing people have way less friends and social interactions today than they did 10 years ago.

I'm less interested in the reasoning for this trend and more interested in how to fix it, which- spoiler alert- I think anyone can learn how to host a great little gathering or happy hour, even if you don't drink alcohol (I don't but my friends do).

(2) Your hypothesis about COVID knocking out a lot of house parties seems to be directionally correct, based on my own experience and that reported to me by my book readers. I hear again and again something like: "We used to host an annual summer party," or "We hosted dinner parties every Friday night before COVID."

Why I say "directionally correct" is that I don't believe parties aren't happening due to COVID concerns, largely, and instead because COVID washed out the momentum that many long-time hosts had. Whether it was the regularity of hosting that built muscle memory for them, or even the geographical displacement we saw of some people during COVID- something major happened and I've never seen anyone specifically write about this. When you have a long-time host who annually throws a Christmas or New Year's bash, and they miss that for two years straight, it becomes REALLY hard for them to pick it back up.

^^ that's anecdotal, and I don't have the data to back it up, but I just feel it from conversations that I've had and heard about: that long-time party hosts have changed their habits post-COVID, not out of fear of infection today, but because they lost momentum or dropped the habit and haven't since picked it back up.

(2a) The habit of hosting, by the way, is huge. I've seen people get the BIGGEST benefits in new friendships and new relationships when they can make hosting a habit. When you can learn to throw a monthly or quarterly event, you start to go through life "collecting" people to invite to your parties. It really is a "life unlock" or "life hack" or whatever you want to say. I did it, first when I moved to NYC, and then later when I moved to Texas. And the relationships I built from hosting those parties helped me launch a multi-million dollar business (Museum Hack), which I say not to brag but to just hint that there are benefits beyond your personal life that come from hosting parties.

(3) If you want to get better at hosting a party, you can! This is a skill that literally anyone can learn. As much as the vibe-shakra people are going to hate me saying this, I've found that success for a new party host largely comes down to pre-planning, logistics, and filling the room.

Here are the key things that will help you host a great gathering:

- DO NOT host a dinner party. They're too complicated and too stressful for a new host. They take too much work, too much time, and WAY too much moderation. Instead, host a cocktail party or happy hour. After hosting dozens of dinner parties and hundreds of cocktail parties, I found that I could get 80% of the benefits of hosting a dinner party — with 20% of the work in a cocktail party. Cocktail parties helped me cast a wider net, too, and connect with more people.

A note about the phrase cocktail party: I personally don't drink alcohol. And there isn't a single drink recipe in my book The 2-Hour Cocktail Party. But we use that phrase "cocktail party" because it represents a simple social construct: an easy, casual, lightweight gathering where you'll have a lot of little conversations. It is low-commitment and generally low-stress.

This is the longest comment I'll ever write on HN and I'm worried I'm talking too much, so apologies if this sounds like spam! I'm honestly like MLM-passionate about convincing people why they should learn to host parties because it changed my life SO MUCH.

Here's my personal website: https://nickgray.net/about/

and an executive summary of my book about exactly how to host your first party with a little bit of structure: https://party.pro/how/

I will wrap this up. Here are the pro-tips:

- 15 to 20 people. You need 15 people, minimum, to show up to your party. Any less than that and the room never reaches a critical mass or energy level and excitement. It feels… a little flat. So I've found that 15 people needs to be your minimum, which means you'll need to invite more than 15 to actually get 15 to attend. Over 20 and things get hectic.

- Collect RSVPs. For the love of God, PLEASE collect RSVPs. Use a free tool online. GenZ loves Partiful, I suggest and use Mixily, you can even use Paperless Post. Please don't use Evite because they have a thousand ads and JavaScript pop-up crap and they'll spam your guests.

Why do we collect RSVPs? Well, the biggest success indicator of a party- for a new host, at least- is whether they can fill the room. People come to parties for the PEOPLE, not for the drinks, not for the food, not for the music… they come for the people.

You have to collect RSVPs to create a social contract to get your friends to actually show up. People who read my book The 2-Hour Cocktail Party report over a 93% attendance rate of those who say they're going to come (people who RSVP) and those who actually show up.

Compare that to the days of Facebook Events, when I'd do the "spray and pray" method of mass-inviting people and be lucky to get a 50% attendance rate.

- Send 3 reminder messages. I like to do: 1 week before, 3-4 days before, and morning of. These are important: they will boost your attendance rate and increase excitement. They also help show that you're a host who actually cares, which is rare in the age of "Let's just show up and hang out!" parties.

- Add a small amount of structure. This helps shy people and introverts, and encourages a lot of new conversations (which in my mind is the whole point of a party: to meet new people). The structure that I like and preach is always using name tags (I will die on this hill), and one or two rounds of icebreakers (please withhold your burns about icebreakers: you're probably doing them wrong, and I've done thousands of them, I will teach you how to do it right).

Anyhow. Sorry this is going so long.

If anyone is serious about wanting to learn how to host a party, you can call or text me at +1-917-635-9967 or email hello@nickgray.net and I will talk your ear off about this. If you want to make new friends and you are interested in party hosting, but you can't afford my book, reach out and I can probably mail you a free copy of the paperback.

I do believe that the loneliness epidemic is real, but I also believe that a simple happy hour- with your friends or neighbors- can help you and your friends meet new people. Nobody really teaches adults how to make new friends, which is crazy, but I think I figured this part out.

Thank you for reading!! This is my longest comment ever on HN!! I love parties and helping people learn how to make new friends.

I hope I have earned the permission to link my book, which I will do here:

The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings on Amazon, Kindle, Audible, Kobo, etc https://amzn.to/39rfb2V

I actually just took Nick up on the offer to call or text, and we just got off the phone. We chatted about how we can find people to meet even though we just moved to a new city.

Definitely going to try hosting our own party.

#1 of course

My general thesis is that you have to do cool stuff to make new friends. Do interesting things to meet interesting people.

But it doesn’t have to be hard! The unlock or LPT I’ve found is that hosting a super simple small party- becoming the “organizer of people”- is the fastest, easiest way to become interesting to others.

After hosting hundreds of these small parties myself, I figured out a formula to make them effective, interesting, and ultimately successful. It is a method that can work for almost any person in any town.

First: the good news. ANYONE can learn how to make new friends. There are lots of people out there like you who are reading this HN thread or sitting in your town thinking, “Damn. I’m getting older, I have less friends, I wish I had more friends.”

But: the bad news. The macro trends on partying are down, and reports of loneliness are way up. Do a search for "loneliness epidemic" or "friendship recession," two phrases that I track with Google News Alerts, to see constant press pieces with supporting data showing people have way less friends and social interactions today than they did 10 years ago.

Here are the pro-tips if you want to host a well-run party or event or whatever:

- 15 to 20 attendees. You need 15 people, minimum, to show up to your party. Any less than that and the room never reaches a critical mass or energy level and excitement. It feels a little flat. I've found that 15 people needs to be your minimum, which means you'll need to invite more than 15 to actually get 15 to attend. Over 20 attendees and things get hectic and stressful for a new host.

- Collect RSVPs. PLEASE collect RSVPs. Use a free tool online. GenZ loves Partiful, I suggest and use Mixily, you can even use Paperless Post. Please don't use Evite because they have a thousand ads and JavaScript pop-up crap and they'll spam your guests.

Why should you collect RSVPs? Well, the biggest success indicator of a party- for a new host, at least- is whether they can fill the room. People come to parties for the PEOPLE, not for the drinks, not for the food, not for the music... they come for the people.

Here's what I know works. It all revolves around adding the slightest bit of structure to your gathering.

- Decide you’re going to host a party and commit to it.

- Pick a date for your party three weeks from now, ideally on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday night.

- Keep the length of your party to two hours.

- Invite your friends, colleagues, and neighbors.

- Ask everyone to RSVP and confirm their attendance.

- Space out three reminder messages leading up to your party.

At the party, do these four things:

1. Use name tags with first names only. I will die on the hill of why this is important.

2. Facilitate three quick icebreakers. They won't be cringe, I promise.

3. Take a group photo, you'll use this to help invite more people to your next party.

4. End the party on time. My book has a whole chapter on this or if you search for "How to end your party" I believe one of my articles will come up.

Follow those guidelines and you’ll have a gathering better than most. People appreciate the structure.

I wrote a step-by-step guidebook that seems to be generally well-liked enough that it has helped hundreds of people learn how to host their own events to make new friends and meet their neighbors.

The name of my book is The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings and you can find it anywhere books are sold plus Audible. Happy to give any HN readers a satisfaction guarantee if you don’t think it is packed with actionable, helpful advice.

i rent a room from 2 ladies who are ski instructors in their early 60s. They seem to have a lot of friends and party a lot ( i get invited to some) and go to a lot of trips and play/ski/camp in the mountains here in the colorado. They are leaving this weekend to party somewhere in streamboat springs.

I guess its important to have hobbies and put effort into weaving those into your life ? Its also easy to find other people who are into and hang out with them?

Maybe you should try hosting a party?

Did you read the post?

> COVID happened and we still haven't restarted partying the way we used to

Our reaction to COVID happened a lot more readily than COVID itself.

Playing pandemic has consequences, as it turns out.

Your hypotheses are all false. I partied harder than my parents when we were young adults, but they partied much harder than me in middle age. The decline in festive activity is observed in diverse data and began years before COVID.

The dominant politico-social order in the West has become Puritan in many respects, from drug use to purity of food to purity of beliefs. This may have something to do with it. Or maybe they have a common cause, like the declining rate of economic growth. Or maybe it's substitution of online activity for IRL activity.

Probably a combination of all three reasons you listed. Covid did kill a lot of parties, and rightly so, and it's not over yet. That said, a lot of people seem to think Covid is over and are desperate to finally have a party again. Friends of ours celebrated their 12.5 years of marriage with a party on a big sailing ship. My wife and I celebrated our 15 years of marriage pretty big (food and drinks, board games and silent disco) and everybody loved it.

So if you want parties, organise some. But maybe first check what the Covid infection rates in your area are...

Covid is over in the sense that it's a risk we all have to live with forever. In practice, a combination of vaccines, less deadly variants and being over the peak of the pandemic means it's a manageable risk, at least until a breakthrough variant shows up.

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