Facts about throwing good parties • Hacker News Board

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#131

Post by niteshpant » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 5:09 AM UTC

buildsjets wrote: post #7

I sure miss the kind of parties where they have to get an emergency court order to cut power the building at 3am. I learned everything I need to know about throwing parties from Dave Barry. If you throw a party, the worst thing that you can do would be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw another party next year. What…

Can confirm about police lol

Once we had police knock on our door for playing music too loud at 10 PM on a weekend - f'ck Boston NIMBYs

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#132

Post by ryukoposting » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 5:10 AM UTC

Call me bad at parties, but a dedicated app for inviting people to the party is too much fanfare for my taste. If everyone waits around to see if their friends are going, nobody will RSVP because they're all waiting on each other to RSVP. We're all friends here. A good party fosters serendipity.

Granted, I'm the same person who accepts any invitation to any concert, and intentionally doesn't listen to the band ahead of time because the experience of hearing an artist in a live setting for the first time is so fun. I may have a bias towards serendipity.

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#133

Post by Multiplayer » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 5:14 AM UTC

samuba wrote: post #80

shameless pluck: In my friend circle im the only one throwing real parties. The most annoying thing always was the logistics of keeping track how many people come and what they might bring (cuz usually it's a, bring your favorite food/booze party). group chats are super messy and get taken away by chit chat, so I build a simple, clean product that helps me with all that. it's basically a virtual invitation card with…

Well done. There are some fun features here! Very polished as well.

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#134

Post by ljlolel » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 5:15 AM UTC

nicd wrote: post #88

kelseydh wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss the days when Facebook events worked well for getting people to attend a party. Now, nobody is on Facebook so those event invitations get missed and you need to hustle much harder with individual chat messages to get people to attend.

Partiful works well?

Very high flake rate like 2/3

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#135

Post by ljlolel » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 5:16 AM UTC

dyauspitr wrote: post #125

semitones wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certain kinds of styles of gatherings that do much better when there are 40-50 people present, rather than 10-20. If you are going for a low pressure hang and want 10-20, it's easy enough to just tell friends and tell them to tell others, you'll hit those numbers easy. If you are trying to do something a bit more memorable and you want to guarantee a higher turnout, you have to invest more effort into ensur…

Or you live in a society where people are naturally inclined to go to parties because it’s normal to do so frequently.

If that’s the case then you’re competing with other parties for those 50 so you’re back to it being hard

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#136

Post by unnouinceput » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 5:21 AM UTC

drmpeg wrote: post #69

buildsjets wrote: post #7

I sure miss the kind of parties where they have to get an emergency court order to cut power the building at 3am. I learned everything I need to know about throwing parties from Dave Barry. If you throw a party, the worst thing that you can do would be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw another party next year. What…

When I worked at LSI Logic in the 2000's, there were a lot of young Europeans (mostly Italian) on the staff. They had rented a house in Palo Alto which was affectionately called "The Pleasure Lounge". It was just one of those houses that had the awesome party vibe. The only rule was that if you had to puke, you had to go in the back yard and do it in front of the Mother of Mary statue. The best part was if you made i…

Spaghetti without tomato sauce? That's like pissing in the morning without farting. Sure, it'll get the main job done but it's not the same pure pleasure.

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#137

Post by phito » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 5:21 AM UTC

kashnote wrote: post #34

Love all of these tips. I've hosted dozens of events since moving to NYC and figured I'd add 5 more: 1. If this is a dinner party (or people are all seated), force people to get up and move in a way that they'll meet new people. Do this when you're about 2/3 of the way through the party. Some will complain - do it anyway. 2. Plan 1 (ideally 2) interludes. It can be a small speech, moving people around, changing locat…

1. Maybe it's a cultural thing but it sounds like hell on earth to me. I'd be the one complaining and probably will not show up to the next party ...

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#138

Post by o11c » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 5:28 AM UTC

cvoss wrote: post #122

dlisboa wrote: post #14

I feel like this is really an American culture thing where parties or dinner parties are mostly the responsibility of the host. In movies or TV there’s even a common theme of guests judging the host’s hosting abilities. In Brazil you throw a party to people you like and they all have a hand in helping you, sharing the load. Everyone will be responsible for some part of it, all of it is organized informally, there are…

There's two modes that I know of in American dinner/meal party culture. 1) Host provides main dish, and guests bring miscellaneous supporting items (ideal for a casual party where the menu need not be coordinated carefully, and people spread throughout the house). 2) Host provides everything or almost everything (more formal occasions, typically sitting at one table; guests might bring wine or dessert). The latter is…

1 can definitely be split into 1a) host provides main dish and assigns specific dishes to specific guests, and 1b) full-blown potluck with no official dish assignments at all, hopefully no load-bearing grandma has died since the last potluck.

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#139

Post by ericzawo » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 5:29 AM UTC

Over the years I've thrown many parties, from house parties, surprise parties, keggers, to corporate events, concerts and DJ events that are ticketed, underground, invite-only in cities like Hong Kong, Paris, Toronto and Miami and can 100% stand behind every one of these rules. There is an art and a science to hosting good events and this post breaks it down really well.

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#140

Post by spiralcoaster » Mon, Nov 03, 2025, 5:30 AM UTC

phito wrote: post #137

kashnote wrote: post #34

Love all of these tips. I've hosted dozens of events since moving to NYC and figured I'd add 5 more: 1. If this is a dinner party (or people are all seated), force people to get up and move in a way that they'll meet new people. Do this when you're about 2/3 of the way through the party. Some will complain - do it anyway. 2. Plan 1 (ideally 2) interludes. It can be a small speech, moving people around, changing locat…

1. Maybe it's a cultural thing but it sounds like hell on earth to me. I'd be the one complaining and probably will not show up to the next party ...

That makes two of us. I've never heard of (or thank god, been to) a party where a host is forcing people to move around, especially in an unnatural way. Nothing feels like a forced party more than, well, forcing.