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Comment by asuffield | Hacker News Reader

Alcohol-centric social interaction is another form of exclusion. There are few things I find quite so unpleasant as sitting in a noisy bar with people who are getting progressively inebriated.

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> Alcohol-centric social interaction is another form of exclusion.

I get that, it also happens to be a very popular form of socializing with many people.

To be fair to your point, you can replace alcohol-centric, with bowling, concerts, sporting events, lunch and every single other form of socializing and you can say its a form of exclusion as I can guarantee that no matter what form of socializing you pick I can find someone who it makes uncomfortable.

Honestly sometimes I think the pendulum has swung too far back the other way to inclusion that we are actually exuding people by trying to be all thing to all people and not offending people.

I think the point is to recognize that some people, like the person you are replying to, my have an issue with drinking as a social activity. Not that you shouldn't have that as an option, but you should be aware if someone in the group is made uncomfortable by that.

Speaking to your point though, I have a friend who - no joke - hates bowling. Like, he gets violently angry when we suggested going bowling and said he'd rather sit in the car by himself if we went. Some people...

> Speaking to your point though, I have a friend who - no joke - hates bowling. Like, he gets violently angry when we

> suggested going bowling and said he'd rather sit in the car by himself if we went. Some people...

I'm one of those people.

> Speaking to your point though, I have a friend who - no joke - hates bowling. Like, he gets violently angry when we suggested going bowling and said he'd rather sit in the car by himself if we went. Some people...

What a shitlord. You should have gone bowling and let him sit in the car like an angry 5 year old. If he can't "take one for the team" and at least just have a beer and talk while everyone else bowls, fuck him.

The problem with alcohol is that it is nigh-omnipresent and in many places it is so integrated into the culture that yes, you are automatically excluded if you don't drink. This is different from bowling night because you probably don't bowl AT work, and you probably don't bowl at every single outside-of-work socialization.

Inclusion suggests exclusion. You can't have one without the other. Thus, social interactions always do both.

Not to mention that for religious or personal reasons some people don't touch alcohol. One project I was involved in had two mormons and two muslims. Hate to exclude them from the outings, especially since the PM was one of the mormons. On the non-religious side, I grew up in a household where I never saw alcohol because my mother and father each had alcoholic parents and they never wanted to have anything to do with it. I never knew anything about alcohol and never even stepped foot into a bar until I was 25.

> Alcohol-centric social interaction is another form of exclusion.

And there's nothing wrong with that - people aren't obligated to accommodate everybody.

I don't feel this way about drinking, but I think I can nevertheless commiserate with you because I do feel this way about another pastime/group activity that seems to be becoming distressingly common in the tech circles that I find myself in: Board Game Night.

No, I don't want to play monopoly, because my strategy for monopoly can be expressed in two or three lines of pseudocode and it is therefore an incredibly dull game. And if I have to sit through another hour long lecture about a game like Catan that is prefaced with "It's actually really simple; here, let me explain how it works...", I am going to put a power drill through my skull. Don't even talk to me about Magick or pokemans.

Do you know what I do when somebody proposes a board game night? I wish them a good time, politely excuse myself, and find something else to do. Not everyone likes everything, and I should not expect others around me to abstain from activities that I do not enjoy.

You should try Pandemic. I'd almost consider it team therapy. Yes it's a board game but feels like a condensed team exercise weekend where you end up building bridges (metaphorically and physically).

Pandemic is good in the sense that it is exercise for professional communication skills in a toy environment without business consequences. After you play you should thing about what the experience teaches you about your team. Especially if someone has a very different confidence/leadership/cooperation style in the game than at work projects.

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