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Ask HN: Where are all the parties?

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Re: Ask HN: Where are all the parties?

#221

Post by jeffwask »

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.

Re: Ask HN: Where are all the parties?

#222

Post by Icathian »

pavlov wrote: post #69

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 o…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Where are all the parties?

#223

Post by mattpallissard »

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.

Re: Ask HN: Where are all the parties?

#224

Post by [deleted] »

tarotuser wrote: post #147
nscalf wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peo…

> 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 d…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Where are all the parties?

#225

Post by dr_orpheus »

curiousllama wrote: post #204
wheats wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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…

> (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.

Re: Ask HN: Where are all the parties?

#226

Post by ryandrake »

ffmpegy wrote: post #10
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #5

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!

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.

Re: Ask HN: Where are all the parties?

#227

Post by magneticmonkey »

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/

Re: Ask HN: Where are all the parties?

#228

Post by 1659447091 »

spoiler wrote: post #206
motohagiography wrote: post #184

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 t…

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 wor…

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

Re: Ask HN: Where are all the parties?

#229

Post by tylertyler »

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.

Re: Ask HN: Where are all the parties?

#230

Post by bregma »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #175
INTPenis wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pl…

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