alt Hacker NewsEverybody’s home. No one’s coming over
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We've been actively working to reverse this, getting to know lots of our neighbors. One thing that splits the difference in terms of planning pain was backyard fires. We like to relax around the fire anyway (even summer nights are cold in the high desert) and we just send out a casual "fire night" message to our friends list. We have snacks and drinks on hand, and people show up or they don't. My wife's east coast and was missing her "stoop-sits" from Philly, and this is our west coast variant.
I think this trend will only accelerate with AI until all of us live on our own little islands. I think it'll mostly be good.
https://www.hackyexperiments.com/blog/machines-of-loving-emb...
This summer I went to every pagan group I could and came to the conclusion that, for people who are settled in householder mode, the basic things you can do are (1) have a potluck and (2) have a fire, in that order. Martin Prechtel says "The feast is the only ritual" and even the Christian ministers I know won't argue about it, I mean https://four12global.com/articles/breaking-bread/
Money. In the 70s, a single income family could afford to host. Who has money for that these days?
For me it was the lack of space. I now have a bigger home and even have friends overnight. Appartment living sucks.
I still do this once a month a more frequently, I think Oslo being a small city allows me and my friends to afford this with ease of public transport.
Me and a pal talked about this problem exactly a week ago, we chatted how we just invite more and more friends but sheldomly get invited ourselves, and our conclusion was some people just are not good at hosting. I say that because they never hesitate to attend.
hwoever, my phone contact is fileld with peoples allergies notes, likes/dislikes and similar so I keep the party fit for all. Catering to everyones allergy and everyone seems to have one here in West is mad challenging.
About 8 years ago I joined a meetup of techies that just... meets once a month at a restaurant for dinner; no agenda otherwise.
We stopped meeting for a bit during the pandemic, and then after the pandemic just moved to a group text message.
The big factor is that we all just kinda agree that we're meeting once a month. Because it's at a restaurant, it's super easy and requires almost no planning.
Kinda makes me want to find a place to have a monthly pot-luck with like-minded people.
A few years ago I came across a HN comment by a guy who wrote "The 2-Hour Cocktail Party". I read his comments and then got the book, and it seemed fantastic, smoothing over all the painful issues that happen when you host.
I really wanted to try it out, but moved from the city just after reading it and haven't yet.
I am an emigrant now. When I was still living in my East European country of origin, my wife and I would regularly hold parties. We liked going to other peoples’ places more than hosting but most of our friends would not throw parties themselves, so we had to fill the gap.
Lots of focus on the negatives, but it's rather uplifting to see that fathers are spending 4x as much time with their kids.
To me, the most obvious explanation is that people used to be able to buy houses a lot more easily than before. My wife and I were lucky that we were able to afford one, and because of that I have my friends over a couple times a year to hang out and have dinner (I would do it more often, but we're in a remote part of the city that isn't great to drive in). When we were in an apartment, we didn't even have a dining room or enough seats for anyone other than on the couch.
I am very surprised at the number of people in this thread who are labelling this time old tradition of inviting people into your home as stressfull, unnecessary, or a waste of their time. To be honest it is quite depressing.
This is an interesting article and I think it touches on something I've observed as well across my generation which is a lack of participation in society, institutions, and more. This generation and the one after that prefers to "like" a "post" and maybe go vote. Civic institutions? Maybe a token $5 that they were guilt tripped into contributing. By the way why does Europe have all these great museums and nice gardens? Someone paid for it. You spend 10s of thousands of dollars to go look at their stuff. Maybe you should spend that money locally instead so you have your own stuff at home to look at.
We by and large seem to not understand that nobody is going to do these things for us. I'm not sure if it was a parenting failure or just changes in how society prefers to function, but when you look around and see nobody is inviting you to dinner you should conclude that you should be the one to initiate the change. It's the same mentality I see when folks just want the government to do something, or some corporation to do something about climate change for example, but they are unwilling to also simultaneously take their own personal actions. Change starts with you. Nobody is coming to save you. You have to run for office. You have to volunteer at your local community center. You have to take on the leadership role at your church or other place of worship. You have to spend the money and host dinner parties. You have to coordinate these things and yes you have to do it on top of your other responsibilities. Alternatively, you just don't have these things anymore and social media isn't going to replace them.
Also kids - hard to get people together with kids. Not just time constraints (some seem quite strange to me - kids go to bed at 7PM? My parents just let me go to sleep whenever) but also inability to locate, to engage in conversation - mid conversation they stop some kid is doing something and now you kind of realize whatever you were talking about wasn't important to begin with, and more. I'm not criticizing folks for having kids or anything and I think "childfree" movements are extremely cringe and stupid, but having kids in lieu of extra effort, leads to some social isolation from what I've observed.
Then next thing you know you are in your late 40s and you don't have friends anymore.
Of course these are very broad strokes I'm painting. But I think there's quite a bit of truth to it.
For us the pandemic boosted our social lives, and we've hosted many parties. It's been super fun to host parties, and I wish we'd been doing it earlier.
I wonder, does this correlate to declining home ownership?
A house party seems to me like a great idea if you actually own the house. But if you don't own the damn place (or, worse, houseshare), you are working full time, and are no longer in your 20s, having people over loses much of its appeal. Especially for larger gatherings.
They missed two big causes.
#1 Hording: If you've got a house full of crap, and you're deeply ashamed of it, you're not going to be having visitors over, ever. You're also not going to mention it on surveys.
We, the American public, have been collecting shit at a prodigious rate. Many of us pay rent for stuff that won't fit in our home. It's why the storage industry is so reliably profitable.
#2 Paranoia: Otis Toole[1] kidnapped then killed Adam Walsh. His father publicised his kidnapping, and fueled a moral panic that sent American parents deep into paranoia. Kids used to be free range, and were often collectively instructed to "go outside to play, and come inside when the street lights come on". After that event, we're afraid to even let them walk to a friends house a few doors over.
The end of the fairness rule, and the rise of fear based media like Fox news certainly didn't help in the rise of distrust.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottis_Toole#Murder_of_Adam_Wal...
I was recently introduced to the term "house-shy", for people who don't want anyone else seeing what the inside of their house looks like. I have a few friends who are "house-shy", that I for one reason or another have seen the houses of (often years after becoming friends with them). I think the percentage of Americans who are hoarders or borderline, is underestimated.
If anyone reading this has a job (plumber, A/C repair, etc.) that regularly gives them a glimpse of the inside of people's homes, I would be curious as to their thoughts on this.
I used to host dinners all the time. Since the AI age however I simply don't have time, and I'm in constant threat of needing to work overtime to move myself down the priority list of people to lay off or fire.
I live in the Bay Area, and I've noticed that within Asian and Latino communities there is a great amount of socializing.
Maybe it's the culture or because you are an immigrant in another land, that you feel that bond.
But it's very apparent.
Did I miss it?
The chart for time spent at home exploded after covid, but I didn't see much talk about that. It seems people got comfortable being home alone and it just continued.
It’s just too much work for big dinners. How is that possible for a family of two workers to prepare a big dinner once for maybe 8-10 people once for a while? If I had the time I’d rather spend on sleeping or something else.
There are probably people who are good at this and love to do this, but I think there are fewer and fewer families who are into big dinners.
Year 3626 Edward Gibbon II picks this up like a case study in late Roman Empire decline. He would likely not blame screen overuse, burnout, rising costs/inflation, shyness, loss of communication skills (as mentioned in this chat). These things are symptoms rather than primary causes.
Not all of it, but Americans are working significantly more now than they did in 1975[1]. One would expect compromises to be made to clear space for more work hours.
Isn't this kind of obvious?
Parties (any kind) are entertainment and they compete with other forms of entertainment.
We have way more options to amuse ourselves now than a few decades ago.
>In the 1970 book The Harried Leisure Class, the Swedish economist Staffan Burenstam Linder wrote that as a society gets richer, leisure time takes on the frantic quality of work. As rich people feel like their downtime is scarce—as each non-working hour practically shouts, “excuse me! you could be making money, right now!” —the experience of leisure time speeds up.
I think this definitely applies to my friends and I. They could be working on their next DJ session at the club next month or their next TCG tournament deck/strategy, and I could be working on projects that go nowhere. So many hobbies are now just another form of work.
But I think driving and traffic is definitely another problem, especially in the US. No one wants to spend Thursday evening or Saturday 8am in traffic,
How do gender roles and sexism figure into this? I'm sure it's not the only reason, but it wouldn't surprise me if most of the 'party' work ended up falling on the wife more often than not.
> Putnam acknowledged that women have historically been the keepers of the family social calendar, planning the birthday parties and neighborhood potlucks. For any number of reasons, women seem to do better than men at making and keeping adult friendships and making plans with other families. But in the 1950s and 1960s, tens of millions of women traded their unpaid household management jobs for salaried jobs, and the family social calendar frayed, as men failed to pick up the slack.
Being stay at home parent is super lonely experience, basically the most lonely occupation you can have. In most jobs, you meet people and you do talk to people without trying to. Fairly often, they are unavoidable whether you want it or not. If you are at home with a kid, you are truly absolutely alone, unless you organize something. Every other guy here on HN complains about Covid being lonely, but it was less lonely and socially easier situation than being stay at home parent.
So, alternative framing is that women stopped organizing these as their need do organize them went down. And men did not had that need in the first place, so it did not changed from their point of view.
And simultaneously, it ceased to be acceptable to be the kind of dad who spends multiple evenings a week with buddies, not really spending time with his kids.
> Until 1975, half of Americans said they entertained guests at their home every month.
Television.
root cause: young generation wants to rent, not own. Young generation wants high density living and a shift of ownership towards landlords and private equity. As such, entertaining in a walnut sized apartment is a little less practical.
Getting people to buy (their first and only) home is a really important issue. Creating more landlords doesn't not solve housing problems.
Another challenge to hosting dinner parites today is that everybody is on a special diet, count calories, on ozempic because they need to be healthier or have a athletic goal only few people 30 years ago had.
This makes it even more difficult to host because of everybody's needs and regimes they dont buckle on.
Maybe it helps that 50 years ago people could actually afford to buy things like big houses where to throw parties at.
Its a pain in the ass to host something and id rather see my friends at a bar/restaurant.
A graph about social changes that cuts off at 2022 is beyond worthless.
Inviting friends over for dinner is the ONLY way I can get my wife and daughter to clear their stuff from the common areas.
A party with 10 guests is even better.
All three of us are hoarders, to an extent, but I alone am able to go into a cleaning frenzy approximately once or twice a year and get rid of mega-junk. Unfortunately, they don't seem able to do so.
So, I consider dinners still to be a useful tradition, though perhaps the motivations have shifted a bit.
I feel like my house is never clean/tidy enough.
(title sounds like tim robinson' new project)
May I suggest a thing my wife and I started doing a couple years ago: the monthly brunch.
First Sunday of the month or whatever, we send out a reminder text, we provide coffee and a little food, people bring way more food than we can eat, and we invite everyone we know, from our different social circles. No pressure.
It’s a moderate amount of work, but it’s very gratifying to bring people together. People have made good friends at our brunch that they hang out with all the time now. It’s been interesting to see how hungry people are for social interaction, some people have driven or taken the subway more than an hour to come. People bring their kids or babies if they have them, age range is from 20s to 60s, it’s very chill.
It’s also a great “next step” when I meet someone I’d like to be friends with: “hey, my wife and I do a monthly brunch, it’s really low-key, you should come!”
For the record, I’m an introvert, but I can tell this is really good for me.
American pie
I get caught in the comparison game, the thief of joy.
I don’t want ask my rich well off friends around cause of my humble existence.
Don't take a percent change of a percent change.
Parent of an elementary school child in a rural area. People host holiday and birthday parties, but nobody in our extended circle hosts dinner parties. FFS who has time with two working parents and kids who are involved in a lot of activities? Weekdays we barely squeeze in a meal, and weekends are booked.
My parents hosted many dinner and hors d’oeuvre parties, because my mother didn't work outside the home and was available to shoulder all that organization and work.
I was going to spout off my opinion without reading the article but well, yeah they covered the exact reasons why we don't host more: my wife and I are too busy, the kids have taken over too much of the house with toys to clean it fast and elaborate hovering play dates have taken the place of what would have been adult time in decades past. For better or worse, probably better, people also don't seem to want to drink as much anymore and many people have restrictive vegan gluten free diets. It's more about finding parents of kids who are friends with your kids
I gave up throwing parties after the first two years in the States (1998-2000)
Americans throughout treat RSVPs as meaningless, show up if they feel like it, and think it's fine to cancel plans five minutes before the scheduled start.
Unless you're a glutton for punishment, you take the hint at some point.
Another factor is alcohol consumption and the tolerance for drinking and driving. DUI citations were rare when I was young. I rarely see people drinking at parties I go to now.
> It's too much fun to be home alone
This reminded me of the insurance company TV ad:
https://www.ispot.tv/ad/S7KX/geico-cancelled-plans
> Americans are unhappier than ever
For a slightly different take, the great Experimental History blog wrote about this (in a way...) too:
https://www.experimental-history.com/p/there-is-no-epidemic-...
> More recent data suggests that teenage loneliness might have ticked back up to where it was in the 1980s, and the evidence here is mixed overall, depending on which data sets and cohorts you look at. We don’t yet have enough data to be sure which way the effects go on average, but we do have enough to be sure that those effects are neither large nor universal.