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Comment by QUrprUd1nCeicw | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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.

(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.

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.

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

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.

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