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Facts about throwing good parties

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Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#401

Post by fragmede »

baby wrote: post #397
fragmede wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've organized so many parties that I feel qualified to comment here > I refuse to use an event page personally because I think it makes it less personal. I always DM people directly if I want to invite them. These parties you've organized, I'm sure they were quite lovely, but can't have been truly epic, yeah? DMing, say 30 people is one thing, but if you're looking at, let's say 500, is another matter. If you need…

I've thrown parties with 100s of people and its mostly because people invite other people, for people you care less about a single DM you copy/pasted with the info is enough. I also organize pretty large meetups with easily 500 people trying to get into the guest list and it's the same amount of work to go through the list and vet people tbh

What automation and tooling do you use? Between Twilio and iMessage python library and beeper, even if you don't use Partiful, there's lots of opportunity for software to make things less laborious.

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#402

Post by shadyKeystrokes »

swiftcoder wrote: post #364
MrScruff wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this is a specific cultural thing, in my experience some people host more curated gathering, some more relaxed and informal - doesn’t matter where you’re from. People just tend to think the way their social group does it is the ‘norm’.

I think there's a cultural element to how much of it people will know to do without being explicitly told what to do. In the US successful gatherings tend to require a fair bit of wrangling - I've been to more than one potluck where everyone showed up with roughly the same dish...

MR. Quiche - we meet again..

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#403

Post by GuB-42 »

teiferer wrote: post #275
dominostars wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are able to be themselves and relax when they feel safe. Safe from judgement, rejection, reprisal, etc. When you're with a group of people you don't know, you don't know how safe they are. Getting drunk helps people feel uninhibited from all of that. There are a million other ways to feel safer with new people, but drinking happens to be extremely easy and quick.

> People are able to be themselves and relax when they feel safe. Safe from judgement, rejection, reprisal, etc. When you're with a group of people you don't know, you don't know how safe they are. And how is any of that related to alcohol? My friend can open up to me when we are in a safe environment without the need for first ingesting a drug. It's not the alcohol that causes the safety. Maybe it's a ritual, that c…

Kurzgesagt did an excellent video about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOwmt39L2IQ

It talks about how harmful alcohol is, but also how it benefits society.

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#404

Post by RealityVoid »

bluGill wrote: post #376
RealityVoid wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say lack of imagination is proof of brain damage?

I know plenty of people who lack imagination who I believe never did drugs (I don't know for sure of course) so I can't call it proof. It is very common for the addicted to ignore obvious signs of their addictions and the downsides thereof so it probably is a sign, but it isn't enough to be proof. (I'm thinking of an alcoholic who "had a bad ice cube" and now won't drink their whisky with ice)

Both replies were kind of jokes from my side. Regardless, whether I have or don't have brain damage is... Up for debate. Probably not significant. And I do appreciate my memories of wildness quite fondly. I'm sure other people have other ways of getting their fix for adventure, some more constructive than others. Regardless, we all have different needs and different itches to scratch and I think some people might need a certain amount of risk more than others. And that's fine in my book.

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#405

Post by karmakurtisaani »

teiferer wrote: post #277
Mashimo wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's a fact that you do get more open and relaxed with alcohol. The barriers go down. And over the lifetime people almost all the time had alcohol when they where at parties. You start to associate alcohol with fun and parties. Of course this is generalized and depends on cultures and groups. That's what I like about them young Gen Z, they drink less alcohol. Sadly they also socialise less. I once heard a story…

> You start to associate alcohol with fun and parties. That's probably it. It's a ritual. A costly one though, in terms of money as well as health. Direct cost (liver, brain cells, ...), as well as indirect (accidents, fights, ...). > That's what I like about them young Gen Z, they drink less alcohol. I wouldn't celebrate to soon. Every movement eventually spawns a countermovement. Next gen might be the most booze co…

Gen Z is a bunch of squares. I'm hoping alpha is more relaxed.

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#406

Post by robocat »

vasco wrote: post #319
robocat wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are just being judgy. Dong think of it as rules, think of it as someone explaining etiquette. That is hard to write down without sounding weird. I bet you are oversimplifying how good parties are created in your own culture. If you tried to write down the actual etiquette it would come out sounding weird to us all. Humans create odd rituals and expectations about everything social. You only really notice it when…

You're being downvoted probably because hn is too sensitive to you calling me judgy but you have a good point. It's hard to write about this without sounding weird, and I guess if I wanted to write about what makes a good party I'd also sound weird. I guess my point was more about the mindset of how you even think about the thing. For me it just "is", and that's a good part of why it works. I wouldn't want to think e…

Thanks. I'm no fan of the article, and likely for the reason you mention: trying to write down how to perform social interactions is extremely weird (although I don't think it is "sociopathic"). I do admire people that are good at explaining their internal social thinking!

It was interesting to read in part because different people do things so differently: I'm sure we could find successful party creators that have "rules" that are completely incompatible! An example, the writer clearly very carefully curates their invite list; however an opposite technique can be to have zero curation (which can definitely be great). The network of social ties leads to certain outcomes without forcing.

> For me it just "is", and that's a good part of why it works.

Naturalness is great for those that are smart. The implied rule is to "be natural": that rule makes sense to write yet it is simultaneously nonsense.

Overthinking anything is silly. But sometimes it can lead to insight. I think that "Let your irrational mind run the show" is also a good rule for life yet somewhere we need to fit in rationality even though that is a contradiction.

I think their #1 rule is strangely unobvious to some people. I'm a social idiot yet I can think of more than one case where I have tried to encourage a hostess to let go of their hostessing anxiety (when I've felt I could do so tactfully and hurtlessly). It isn't a sexist thing, it is just a personal observation that it is a common issue (I would try and help a guy out too if I saw the problem and I thought I could help rather than harm).

It seems maybe I've pondered the above, yet writing it down is just freaky weird. Perhaps writing is the issue!? Talking of course has its own failures.

Ideally we intuitively soak up good ways to do things. If we are fortunate then our friends help us to learn when we've been misled by our intuitions.

Going too meta is another fail!

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#407

Post by titanomachy »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #341
titanomachy wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this talk was interesting. You may be getting downvoted since people don’t want to watch the whole video to get the “answer” you alluded to, so I’ll summarize briefly: Aella notes that orgies have recently been very focused on maximizing consent and safety, and as a result people have very little actual sex at the parties and are dissatisfied. She notes that the kind of women who attend orgies are disproporti…

I'm a pretty introverted guy, so feel free to correct me here, but: I fail to see how orgies and social gatherings have much correlation. The kind of people who are engaged enough to attend an orgy probably have entirely different dynamics, boundaries, and safeties to establish than the ritual of getting casual people to even show up at the door.

Yeah I totally agree with you, I think the grandparent comment is a non-sequitur in the overall conversation. I just wanted to summarize the video because I hadn’t seen it before and it was kind of interesting.

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#408

Post by johnnyanmac »

hitarpetar wrote: post #370
johnnyanmac wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

House parties are more common in America, so that may be a big reason. A party in that context isn't just about gathering people, it's bringing people into your own living space to be judged upon. And of course, many US gatherings are also means to move up the social ladder. Meeting new connections, finding mates, or getting intel on an area. Very capitalistic oriented.

> And of course, many US gatherings are also means to move up the social ladder. Meeting new connections, finding mates, or getting intel on an area. Very capitalistic oriented. just like every other claim on this thread, that depends on who you spend time with, and you can find the same behavior in literally any country

Yes, everything varies. We're talking about a country so I'm speaking about a country's general habits.

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#409

Post by [deleted] »

vasco wrote: post #319
robocat wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are just being judgy. Dong think of it as rules, think of it as someone explaining etiquette. That is hard to write down without sounding weird. I bet you are oversimplifying how good parties are created in your own culture. If you tried to write down the actual etiquette it would come out sounding weird to us all. Humans create odd rituals and expectations about everything social. You only really notice it when…

You're being downvoted probably because hn is too sensitive to you calling me judgy but you have a good point. It's hard to write about this without sounding weird, and I guess if I wanted to write about what makes a good party I'd also sound weird. I guess my point was more about the mindset of how you even think about the thing. For me it just "is", and that's a good part of why it works. I wouldn't want to think e…

[deleted]

Re: Facts about throwing good parties

#410

Post by hitarpetar »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #408
hitarpetar wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And of course, many US gatherings are also means to move up the social ladder. Meeting new connections, finding mates, or getting intel on an area. Very capitalistic oriented. just like every other claim on this thread, that depends on who you spend time with, and you can find the same behavior in literally any country

Yes, everything varies. We're talking about a country so I'm speaking about a country's general habits.

there are no "general habits" in a culturally heterogenous population of 340 million people
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