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 you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one.
If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure that they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you.
I had a halloween party once. It had everything: Substance abuse, debauchery, a proper PA system shaking the floor, good lighting, costumes, good people we knew, random other people we'd never met before, a keg of beer, epic bean dip... everything but the police, somehow.
Anyway, my boss showed up. I don't know if I invited him or if he just decided to be there on his own. He was having a great time with everything, and then he went into the back where some folks were enjoying the not-booze.
It was at this point that I lost track of him.
His jacket was still there. His motorcycle was still parked on the front sidewalk. But he was nowhere to be found, and his phone went straight to voicemail. It was like he'd simply vanished.
"Fuck," I thought to myself. "I've only had this job for a few months."
It turns out that he'd walked home, a couple of miles away. He woke up the next morning sitting at the picnic table in his back yard, shirtless, in the rain.
After that, I always made sure that I invited him to my other parties -- and he always made sure to decline, and tell me that he was never doing anything like that ever again. I consider this to be a win.
I learned you gotta have a “that guy” around and you get police showing up at some point almost 100%.
Once upon a time, during my time in sales, some of the permanent sale guys would throw parties at their shared place (near a University campus) that attracted lots of people no one knew and got pretty rowdy.
It would be mostly fine, sometimes a pair of cops showed up & left without incident -- until later in the night/morning after this one shady sales guy 20+ years our senior, who could sell sand in the Sahara but failed at life, became “that guy”.
Not usually violent (unless his buddys were trying to stop him running into traffic etc), typically property damage related; he would mix a lot of alcohol with a lot if other substances by late in the party basically becoming the guaranteed way to clear people out. Also pretty sure the holding cells were his second address.
Anyway, when you went into talking about the boss I thought he might be “that guy” but he declined.
I'd like to write about the party where my friend showed up with no clothes at all (neither on him, nor with him) aside from t set of Playboy Bunny ears on top of his head, but I'm out of time for storytelling right now.
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 it to 4 am, the Italians would break out the spaghetti, cook a big pot of it and serve it with just olive oil (no tomato sauce). Sitting around the kitchen table wicked hammered eating plain spaghetti is the correct way to end a party.
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.
> If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas through your living room window.
I threw a party (illegal, on the beach, with great music) so successful the police just provided security at the parking lot entrance 1km away because they didn’t want > 400 wasted people roaming the affluent neighbourhood if shut down. Oh there were also nudists at the beach when we were ferrying in our gear at sunset who stayed for the whole thing and ended up on the dancefloor in their birthday suits at 2am.
Having a lot of partying people at a place, combined with sensible policemen, is the best recipe for not getting busted. Had that at least twice in my life. Once at a house party with a lot of young, just around the driving age, people. Police showed up, and decided to not bust it, because sending people on the road would be more dangerous then letting things just go on. A few years later, I was at an illegal outdoor tekno party, which also got a visit at 8AM by two policemen. They basically just went up to the DJ and sayed: "We will return at 3PM, and you will be gone."
Posts like this really make me feel like I'm living in a completely different reality from some people. I can't tell how much of this is exaggerated for comedic value and how much of it is genuine.
I'd say a different era rather than a different reality.
The Dave Barry quote is obviously humor. But back from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, I was genuinely at numerous house parties, basement concerts, and un-permitted raves which where broken up by authorities, including some where the power was cut, (or worse, where the music was cut and lights flipped on full bright) and the cops forced everyone to pile into their cars and drive home, with whatever head full of chemicals they might be taking on the road with them. Poor saucer-eyed kids.
Ah, memories, memories. Where is that brain damage they promised us? I'm still involved in a local music scene somewhat. And yeah, there will always be an underground. And yes, some of the underground gets old and had to get up at 7am to pay the mortgage so some of this may be looking back with rozy glasses. But it just seems to get smaller every year. I don't hear bumping bass from the neighborhoods on Saturday night like I used to.
How would you know? Sure you would know if you were walking but otherwise braindead, but if you are "5 iq points dumber" (whatever that means) or something like that you wouldn't know since there is no way to know what "might have been"
Dave Barry is a humor writer. I've followed him for 20 years and this is absolutely his style of writing, perhaps even paraphrased from one of his pieces.
Hats off to OP if this is their original writing, it nails his style.
My introduction to Dave Barry was Slackware Linux and the fortune cookie program, which greeted me with random quotes, often some humorous remark by Dave Barry.
Because of this, I both like him and associate him with my early nerdiness.
In the 90s I was stationed at Anacostia Naval Air Station and would drive in to the base every morning through the warehouse district (it's now the stadium the Nationals play in). At 04:30 most of the raves would be letting out and bleary saucer-eyed teenagers would stagger into the streets of Southwest DC to start walking to their suburban homes.
I’d say is not different to having a hobby. If you spend so much time on any hobby such that you neglect your work or your family then yeah it’ll lead to trouble.
Its from an author who mainly wrote newspaper columns in the 90s. It's his style of tongue-in-cheek humor, and it's aged about 3 decades. I won't say "hasn't aged well", but just "aged".
It's one of my greatest fears to see the Gonzo going out from the world. Whether or not it's the truth, this post captures a value-system that used to be strongly coded into the world, a domain of part truth part bullshit, but all yes forward excitement that the in the know smart exciting people were in for in abundance, accepting the tongue in cheek along side the sheer raw ambition to outdo the meager reality about us.
We threw a few big parties at my apartment in Clemson around 2001. Never had the cops called, but it’s mainly because we let all of our neighbors know in advance and asked them to let us know if there was a problem.
I will never forget the nice 70 year old lady who lived in the apartment above us. She said, “If it gets too loud, I’ll just turn my hearing aid off.”
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 locations, having people vote on something, etc. For whatever reason, they make the night more memorable.
3. Do your best to make introductions natural and low-pressure. Saying things like "you two would really get along" can put pressure on people - especially shy ones. Bring up something they have in common and let them chat while you back away.
4. Go easy on folks who cancel last minute. They often don't feel good about doing it and you don't want to add more stress to them or yourself.
5. More music != more fun. Some music is good, but if people can't hear each other, turn it down.
If you're interested reading more about this stuff, read The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker.
I feel like hosting in NYC is even more of a public service given that space is limited and not everyone has a living situation suited for it. Props to you for making it happen. Been doing what I can here as well. Cheers!
I think a lot of stuff is cultural. For me, I detest music at social gatherings. I'm there to chat with people, not to listen to music. Music, for me, can only be neutral at best (and more often it detracts fun), not a value add. My wife, on the other hand, considers an event "like a funeral" if there isn't music playing. Just different cultures. Sadly, it means stuff hosted at my house doesn't ever align with my preferences, because happy wife and all that.
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.
> 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.
You've never been to a party where you had dispersed throughout the location, and then the host gathered you to eat a meal or a cake (possibly singing a song prior to distributing the cake)?
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 no real formalities to the event. No one cares about making a science out of it.
I’ve never heard of a person complaining about party quality or comparing hosting abilities.
America is a huge place with a lot of different cultures. Even within a big city you’ll find social circles with different ideas of what partying is like. I have friend groups that have completely different ideas of what gatherings are and I adapt depending on the group. There is not a singular American party style.
> In movies or TV there’s even a common theme of guests judging the host’s hosting abilities.
That’s a movie trope. You can find parties and social groups like this if you search around long enough, but most people are decidedly not like this.
Don’t take American movies too seriously as an indicator of American culture.
I like that idea as it means yiu are more likely to host a party. It is also less expensive to do so.
The UK has a show dedicated to a competition to see who is the best host of a dinner party. (come dine with me). Its a great show but shows the culture. The poor host has to pay for everything, prep, cook while entertaining the guest and usually put on some show or activity for extra points.
I think some cultures are definitely more social/cooperative and some less, and Brazil and the US may be on opposite ends. I also think the US may be having a social crisis at the moment.
But my guess is that in Brazil many of the things in this list are things that party host(s) (and their circles) are doing, intuitively and without thinking about it. Or different things with similar effects.
I didn't see anything in the OP about anyone comparing party quality or hosting abilities.
But when you go to a party and it's a great party, often it's because someone put effort into it. The better they are at it, the fewer people might notice. and it might come naturally to them, maybe they never had to make a list like this (a very particular kind of brain, sure). But a succesful party (where people enjoy themselves and it feels good) has people putting energy into making it vibe. Again, perhaps inuitivley and naturally and because it's something everyone learns how to do organically in a society. But I'm gonna guess this is true in Brazil too.
> 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 no real formalities to the event. No one cares about making a science out of it.
> I’ve never heard of a person complaining about party quality or comparing hosting abilities.
This is all true in my experience as well, and I live in the US. Maybe I don't go to enough parties, though.
Even potluck parties tend to be better on average when someone or a few people are "in charge". In my experience, even when people are just getting together for dinner out, there are people who step up more to organize.
Are you sure there aren't certain people driving these "informal" parties?
1. Sometimes an "inner circle" will co-host a party but the other attendees are not expected to do anything except show up and have a good time, and maybe bring booze. This is common with roommates and in college.
2. What you're describing verbatim is a potluck. Potlucks in the US are popular among immigrant groups, family friend groups, or parties for clubs or associations. But ultimately they're considered a bit uncool/laidback and don't fit the definition of an American party. They're better described as "get-togethers".
> What you're describing verbatim is a potluck. Potlucks in the US are popular among immigrant groups, family friend groups, or parties for clubs or associations. But ultimately they're considered a bit uncool/laidback and don't fit the definition of an American party. They're better described as "get-togethers".
As a foodie in the Pacific Northwest I disagree with this statement.
Potlucks are a chance for people to show off their skills. Some of the best potlucks I've been to have a competition aspect to them, complete with prizes.
As a host of a potluck I'll handle drinks, entertainment, and renting a venue, but the guest list is around 80% people who I can rely on to cook a damn good dish.
I would not consider this to be a potluck. I've been to many parties in both LATAM and the US. LATAM parties are indeed just like US parties very often but in many cases they are much more "communal" without being a potluck per-se. A potluck is still too formal a name for what I've experienced at least. Someone's uncle will bring a piñata, someone's aunt will cook pozole, a cousin will bring a speaker, and so on. And these types of parties are not "uncool" or even "laidback" they can be wild.
For me in the US, potluck describes the style of food and culinary expectation of guests. The actual gathering could be fun and wild if it’s a fun and wild family potluck or uncool and lame if it’s an elementary school fundraiser potluck.
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 a holdover from peak 1950s culture/expectations. Many of the expectations and protocols have relaxed tremendously. But it's still a thing. And it's a ton of fun to pull off, if you're into it. A well-executed dinner party leaves me with a warm glow that lasts well into the next day.
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.
I think parties in the Netherlands consist mostly of “have house, bring booze” and things get taken from there. At least, when I was in high school/university (we got to buy alcohol from 16 at the time).
> 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.
This is really a function of the type of party and of the type of people one is inviting to a party rather than a universal among Americans. I was brought up that you don't come to a party empty-handed. If you're going to a party where you know everybody else was brought up that way, you call ahead to see what will be lacking (mostly so everybody doesn't bring alcohol.)
I've brought chairs to parties; if you haven't ever done that you probably don't know what I'm talking about.
There's also a "dinner party" culture, though, where you're going to cook for a bunch of people. They should bring alcohol, but they don't always because people don't always drink, and their bringing alcohol doesn't get you out of providing alcohol. The expectation is that you have a reciprocal party rather than everyone contribute at this party i.e. you're inviting people who also might have dinner parties. They're bringing a guest or two to yours, you'll also bring a guest or two to theirs.
The second type of party is more conversation-oriented, and sometimes the contribution you're making is how interesting your guest is. I'm still bringing wine or something, though. Can't show up empty-handed.
They are called potlucks or cookouts in the U.S. and they happen all the time.
In fact, they are probably a lot more common than having a huge party (so large that you have to invite people in batches of half a dozen at a time) completely planned and executed by a single person.
This article is good, don’t get me wrong, but this type of event planning is not really representative of how folk in the U.S. get together
Some summers I plan on BBQing every weekend and I throw invites out on Thursday. People typically bring something and we all have a good time.
For the parties as described in the article, I maybe go to one or two a year tops. Before I had a kid I used to host large parties like the kind described (~15 people tops though), now I just attend and contribute.
Could be a handful or a couple dozen, depends on the person really. Birthdays are more packed.
There’s no real expectation in a party here. Usually you’ll call up people you know from different parts of your life. People bring plus ones so someone from work will be chatting to your family member, a high school friend to someone’s plus one, etc.
That’s usually how people strike new relationships after a certain age.
Yeah as a naturalized immigrant, Americans are judgy. Everything will be judged relative to something similar. In Asia a party is a party. Food and drink are usually accounted for and the rest just happens. No one really thinks of “rating” it the next day. The whole thing is low pressure and parties are frequent and plentiful because of it.
> The biggest problem at many parties is an endless escalation of volume. If you know how to fix this, let me know.
Ideally, a guest breaks a cheap glass. The sound is heard across the house. The helpers immediately spring into action, leaving their conversations behind, looking for towels and a dustpan. The people nearby go mute with sympathetic embarrassment. Much ado is made of finding every shard. Meanwhile you are laboring over a replacement drink for the guest, which you graciously present in protest to their apologies. The party resumes at 70% volume.
This is ingenious. If I ever host a house party, I might consider stocking on some cheap glassware just in case (and figure out which friend I can trust to do the dirty work)...
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.
> Call me bad at parties, but a dedicated app for inviting people to the party is too much fanfare for my taste.
I agree. We threw a halloween party. We just discussed who we wanted to invite and threw everybody together in a whatsapp groupchat to announce the thing.
The good thing about partiful (the most popular and imo best party app) is that you can set the invite up such that they cant see the guest list unless they RSVP yes
My family used to host yearly neighborhood dinners people brought food, sang, danced. Those things faded over time, but reading this made me realize: that was the heartbeat of a community. Without those rituals, we quietly turn into islands.
22) Turn the AC wayyyyyyy down when the party starts
23) Buy frozen finger food and put into oven in staggered batches. When a batch is ready, immediately transfer to serving tray and walk through party offering people food. Great task to delegate to that one attendee who doesn't know anyone!
24) Polaroids/Disposable cameras are cheap and seem to be universally adored. Get a few and scatter them throughout the party.
25) Sharpies/labels for marking solo cups, drastically cuts down on clutter as the night goes on.
26) If someone brings a bottle of wine or a bottle of liquor as a gift, just crack it open and ask them to share it with other attendees. Same with food. Makes for a good conversation starter.
If you give people glasses instead of solo cups, I find that partygoers will tend to treat your house with a lot more care and respect. We have a set of glasses that have little black stickers on them that are a material that works well with chalk, so people can label them.
Yes, there's a risk of breakage & having to clean up, but overall I think it sets a better tone.
I've organized so many parties that I feel qualified to comment here :D (actually sorry but the other commens I've read feel silly).
Love the number one advice of the post: focusing on yourself having a good time. Although the more you organize the easier it gets.
> 5) Use an app like Partiful or Luma
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.
Also always try to get people to invite their friends as well. That'a the upside of gatherings: you get to meet new people effortlessly. And this solves a number of the problem in the post's list.
> In a small group, the quality of the experience will depend a lot on whether the various friends blend together well
Na, just invite everyone, diversity is a feature.
IMO most of the advice are over engineer. Here are more from mine:
- soundproof with plants and rugs and stuff in the room so it doesn't get echo'y
- play some background music at low volume
- always prepare a punch. People don't realize it but there's alcohol in this thing
- don't have seats otherwise people will sit down, and sitting down is the party killer
- don't prep anything. The place will get messy anyway. Just make sure people bring food and drinks.
Excellent tips, I've naturally followed most of these, it's crazy to see them reflected here explicitly, they felt "such a natural thing" to do. Given the quality of most of them, I'll try to follow better the couple I don't yet.
> 2) Advertise your start time as a quarter-to the hour. If you start an event at 2:00, people won't arrive till 2:30; if you make it 1:45, people will arrive at 2:00.
Needless to say this is highly culture-dependent. I recently threw a dinner at my place in Tokyo, and I had to add the warning:
- Official dinner time was 7pm.
- Told my Southern European friends at 7pm, expecting them to arrive at 8pm.
- Told my Japanese and American friends at 7:30-8, expecting them to arrive at 8pm.
It went much better than expected, everyone arrived within 8pm~8:10pm (okay, except that one friend who is chronically late, but that's a lost cause).
I recently arrived at an Indian birthday party at 11 am (the scheduled time) and the host immediately responded, oops I forgot to tell you the real time... everyone else will arrive after noon.
I prefer to invite people individually, and create a group chat with those who confirmed. Nothing is more demoralising than 24 hours of people saying they won’t come, in the group chat, right before the event.
My flake rate is close to zero, mostly because people personally told me they’ll join.
It doesn’t hurt to get the group chat hyped up on the day of the event. The activity is enough to get people excited. I also pin the time and location so people find it easily.
Besides that, just chill. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Once a few good people are there, the thing mostly runs itself. Try to relax and enjoy your own party.
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.
In my social circles Partiful feels like it's becoming a good replacement for the golden era of Facebook Events. At first you had to invite people manually by sending them a Partiful link, but now they have their own internal invite system where you can invite your "mutuals" (people you've partied with) directly on the platform. It's become the clear standard for house parties in my sphere. Not quite as good as Facebook events used to be though.
Oh man this definitely makes me wax nostalgic for that golden era ... it was 2013-2016 for me. I would throw an annual holiday party w/ my roommate in SF every year and I recall being able to just go down the list of my FB friends and click "invite, invite, invite" and everyone I cared about would show up and we all had a wonderful time. Sigh.
This is ridiculous. When I throw parties I tell a couple of my friends and tell them to tell others and people just show up. Americans are living in some sort of parallel dimension.
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 ensuring attendance.
If you can get 50+ people to "just show up" without putting effort in, that means _someone_ (one of your friends) is putting the effort in, you're in college, or you're just super hot and famous
"Couples often flake together. This changes the probability distribution of attendees considerably"
It's interesting to consider the full correlation matrix! Groups of friends may tend to flake together too, people who live in the same neighborhood might rely on the same subways or highways...
I think this is precisely the same problem as pricing a CDO, so a Gaussian Copula or graphical model is really what you need. To plan a great party.
We tend to calculate "people at percentages", ie: 2 adults, 2 kids, 50% chance of showing up rates as an attendance-load of 1.5 virtual people (for food calculations).
Then sometimes you need the "max + min souls" (seats, plates), and account for what we call "the S-factor" if someone brings an unexpected guest, roommate, etc.
Lastly: there is a difference between a "party" and a "soirée" (per my college roommate: "you don't have parties, you have soirées!")
All the advice is really accurate, makes me miss hosting. If you want to go a little deeper, there's a book called "How to be a Gentleman", and it has a useful section on "A Gentleman Hosts a Party", and then "Dads Own Cookbook" has a chapter on party planning, hosting, preparation timelines... there's quite a bit of art and science to it!
Being brutally honest, I wouldn't be too keen to attend a party from someone that writes up about their 21 party facts lol. This sounds more like a meticulous plan to maximize human socialization than an actually just fun party :)
All good advice, but I’d recommend against removing chairs etc. I have family members with mobility issues and the biggest reason they’re upset and feel left out at parties is because everyone is standing and they don’t feel like they’re included because of it. Have seated areas, and have a couple of chairs in locations that let standing people chat with the people who need to sit too. Make it such that people who usually stand will naturally sit and hang out with the sitters as a part of the rotation.
I did a fun one at a party of mine where I had name tags for everyone (a pretty good idea by itself) but each person's name tag had the name of someone else they had to talk to at some point. Most of the pairings were quite intentional but a few ended up being random. Got a lot of compliments about it!
If it's the kind of party where there's music, stop the music. Everyone will hush, expecting for something to happen. After a minute or two, turn the music back on at a lower volume and the crowd will adjust.
Spaces, as in have multiple locations for smaller groups to enjoy the scene. There is a real reason that some of the better night clubs are not a single spralling space, but a multi-floor building with each floor sub sectioned into dozens of little back to back living room like couch setups. Intimacy works.
That is often coincident w cannibis consumption and if they aren't super drunk people can be prompted politely to bring their voices down. With the music itself volume is best moved gradually enough to not be noticed. Main thing as a host is to guard the volume. It is always a balance to make people want to dance, to provide shelter for intimate conversations which don't travel against too loud where shouting and law enforcement may arise. Rock musicians and their engineers eventually figured out an audience can match nearly any decible level below 110 and can move above it.
Sound deadening and insulation, whether purpose-made or simply walls/trees/incidental stuff. Fifty people in a 200sq/ft space will almost always louder than twenty-five people in two 100sq/ft spaces connected by a doorway.
Unless the space has amazing purpose-built acoustic qualities, put physics obstructions between groups of people (walls, doors, bushes, trees, fences, whatever).
If a house-party is unbearably loud, there's just too many people for the space, or there's some anomaly that is concentrating too many people in one area.
I attended "The Whisper Club" once in NYC, where the music performance was female performers whispering to soft muted horns and piano, and anyone who spoke in a normal or louder tones was asked to leave. Instead of clapping to the music, people snapped their fingers. It was kind of subversively wonderful.
That one struck me oddly; escalation of volume is a problem you want to have. If the party is quiet, it feels dead, and people leave early. I always used to deliberately leave music playing at a level which would require people to speak up a bit, so it would feel like something was happening right from the start; the glorious roaring chaos would then build of its own accord.
db meters are available for purchase, which helps with the problem of not being sure how loud is loud while in an altered state of consciousness and need something to compare the volume to.
Ideally this is something we could solve with data, with letting people see the trend over time, with some call to action moments to quiet the fuck down for a minute, reset the otherwise only up-moving gauge.
Every now and then I'll resort to just turning the volume up so that people give up. No, sorry, conversation is already basically impossible except via shouting, so I'm going to up the volume to prevent conversations for a little bit, interrupt the flow, then go back down.
I'd love some volume meters that have very visible displays. It's in the red! Everyone chill out! Or ideally presenting some view over time. Little tablet screens placed about or above that show some logarithmic time scale of volume, so people can calibrate, see the bad trend line. There need to be enough different volume-over-time systems about so people know where the problem really is coming from too. Most people at the party are just trying to talk, so the real art of debugging this nonsense is finding who is being extra loud, and introducing some observability to let the specific worst offenders fix their specific loudness issues, then the rest of the party can de-escalate too.
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 extra features, like comments when people rsvp, image upload for after the party etc.
never shared it outside my circles but it's pretty polished.
hope this could be of some use for you:
https://create.party
(These don't really apply to parties, but they do apply to non-party events)
1. Do intro circles: If it's a 5-25 person event with a handful of people that don't know each other, do an intro circle about 15-20 mins after the start time. Turns it from something where people show up and might meet 1-3 random people that they happen to walk up to, vs something where everyone gets 1 point of contact with anyone else. Works well up to about 25 people, haven't tested it beyond that. Go round say name, and then pick a few questions depending on the audience (eg could be something you'd like help with, something you're reading about, etc). For non-parties (eg meetups, work mixers, things that don't have alcohol or aren't late), the easiest way to improve any event is for the host to do a brief intro circle.
2. The best events to host are the ones you wish you could attend but that don't exist
3. Minimize uncertainty for attendees: Clear parking info/photos and a photo of the space is always helpful too.
4. Host more events: Very positive sum. Even can be simple discussion groups. Anything that you enjoy doing where it'd be more fun with a few other people. Playing video games together, reading papers together, discussing how you're using AI coding tools, whatever. Workshops, mixers, talks, parties, peer groups, etc. If you enjoy reading about it on HN or twitter, you'd probably also enjoy discussing it with people directly. The world is undersupplied for events.
I think a middle ground is possible. Have people not talk about themselves, but rather how they'd react in some bizzare hypothetical situation (for example), and have a few limited options for them to pick and justify. Kinda like cards against humanity in some ways. Ofc ask people first in private what kind of questions etc they're comfortable with and what they'd like to talk about.
Almost everyone has something interesting to say or contribute, the hosts' ideal job is to bring that out.
What do you do if you only have like two friend (who don't know each other) these days, and you want to get them to invite their friends... I'm planning a thing for the 8th and super worried it's going to be like 4 of us and we're going to hate it.
You’ve either gotta pivot the event from a party (where attendance is considered optional) to a specific gathering/dinner event or something, where people will feel like attendance is more expected. Or, have a frank conversation with your guests about your worries and expectations and see what comes with it.
I don’t like #2 because I hate the game of tricking people to be on time and then people start compensating further and eventually I’m trying to host a Cosmic Comet Party and you’re showing up after the punch has been distributed.
I just like being honest and stripping away the layers of manipulation. “Starts at 2:00. Please be on time. If you don’t want to be the first, show up at 2:10. If you want to come early, we’d love a bit of help with last minute preparation but we won’t be in hosting mode just yet!”
Do I overthink things? Absolutely. Do people comment about how much they love how I strip all the uncertainty and mind games from it all? Yes.
This will not work with south american guests. It's a cultural thing, being a little late (but not too late) is cool; being on time seems desperate or too strict.
Sounds like the perfect filter then. I'd rather have people showing up to my party that are interested in having a good time moreso than how "cool" they appear.
The best and cheapest is open-air, where voices fly into the sky and never return, it would take like a thousand of people before it stops being enough.
Second best are large open windows, missing walls (porch/balcony) or multiple rooms.
Beyond that I don't think there can be a solution without some sort of room soundproofing, which is usually no-go for rented spaces and private houses. The closest one can get is to maximize soft surfaces (rugs, curtains esp. along walls).
Speaking of which, I wish bars, restaurants and other venues were required to place echo reducers on the ceiling, such simple and cheap measure would dramatically improve ability to talk there when they're full.
> Speaking of which, I wish bars, restaurants and other venues were required to place echo reducers on the ceiling, such simple and cheap measure would dramatically improve ability to talk there when they're full.
It's possible they aren't aware, but I have to wonder if it's sometimes intentional. As someone who doesn't drink, I find most bars close to if not entirely intolerable as places to hang out in, not because I mind being around other people drinking, but because they're always so loud. I've always assumed that drinking is what makes this tolerable to people, so now that you bring this up, the idea that this could be a way to sell more alcohol occurs to me. Probably a silly conspiracy theory, but who knows!
At our apartment in the South End in Boston (2023-2024), we had a nice backyard where me and my roommate would host a lot of parties. Some were more successful than others. In particular, one event (dubbed 727 for being on 7-27) was particularly unsuccessful. My good friend and DJ came to visit and we did a B2B backyard sesh. The music was amazing, vibes immaculate but we lacked the crowd. Looking back, our biggest mistakes were:
1. asking people to come at 2 PM on a weekend and saying party will go till 7 PM. There is a limit to expectations, as I have learned
2. not using Partiful or Luma (Apple Invites wasn't a thing back then) so we could never really remind people or confirm people. Plus, many flaked (~40%) or arrived very late (~70%)
3. not making the party interesting enough for 22-24 year olds - many flaked :(
4. not following rules 8 and 9 as mentioned here (whom to or not to invite given a group)
Some tips that worked for us in other parties:
1) Be very generous with drinks, make good ones and buy good beer/wine, avoid temptation to venmo request afterwards (please don't). atithi devo bhava
2) Have something to do. For us it was Dartmouth pong in our backyard lol
3) Have a good vibe
One major pro tip not mentioned: if inviting a girl you want to impress, learn to mix drinks and songs ;)
A good shake goes a long way...
> Most people will only go to a party where they expect to know 3+ others already.
Is that true?
I've been to two weddings where the only person I knew was the bride and I was just like, well I guess I'll make friends there. Had a blast both times.
If you're hosting a party in a place where there's lots of shy or quiet people, you should recruit some people who are skilled at getting others to open up, and keep them in active rotation. Call them firestarters: tasked with making sure that none of the fires go out while making sure that the party doesn't burn down.
It was difficult to read through due to the number of people using it as an opportunity to try and come across as experienced and worldly, which just ends up having the opposite effect, especially when you consider the target demographic of this forum.
This is why I've never thrown a party. I don't hate socialising, but I want to go home. I'll often leave without any fanfare when I've had enough. If I throw the party, I can't just go home or, worse, it's in my home, which is the only place I can go.
> 1) Prioritize your ease of being over any other consideration: parties are like babies, if you’re stressed while holding them they’ll get stressed too. Every other decision is downstream of your serenity: e.g. it's better to have mediocre pizza from a happy host than fabulous hors d'oeuvres from a frazzled one.
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.
I've (co-)organized parties of varying sizes (N=2..50+) and I would say volume hasn't been the top problem, ever.
- As hosts, the main problems are finding a suitable date to hold the party, chasing attendance confirmations and getting people to dance (esp. once they're over 30).
- As attendees, the main problem besides whether on should go or not (which is often made dependent on who else is going) is figuring out what kind of "party" exactly it is (formal/informal, dance party/potluck, enough food?). The definition of "party" is very broad, even leaving aside cross-cultural norms, ranging from "let's sit around the table and play board games" to "let's outdo Hangover I/II/III [except for the giraffe]".
A successful escort who is into statistical data analysis and market research talks about the details of organizing an orgy.[1]
Aella's thing is to ask questions that lead to "what do women really want", and go from there to design events.
She has about 800,000 raw survey responses, so there's enough data to look for patterns. The answers will upset some people. The conventional wisdom appears to be way out from where the data leads.
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 disproportionately into submissive power dynamics and somewhat rough sex, so she tried creating a type of orgy where blanket consent is given up-front, men outnumber women, and everyone is vetted for attractiveness (and presumably other traits, which she does not specify). This apparently leads to parties where the men aggressively initiate sex with many women, and everyone is very satisfied with the outcome. The parties have strict rules, such as absolutely and immediately respecting the safe word.
> The biggest problem at many parties is an endless escalation of volume. If you know how to fix this, let me know.
If there’s a band: if you’re the host or the person paying, just ask them politely to turn the volume down every ten minutes or however long it takes for the volume to drift up. And it will drift back up, because very few bands are able to keep their hands off the mixer.
For conversational volume, either go outside or use serious acoustic treatment. The latter may be challenging.
Surprised no mention of space per person.
The sweet spot is not yet fully known to me. But maybe about 8-10 square feet per person.
You want that intoxicating social energy, but people need the space to bop from circle to circle
This is great advice, parties are a lost technology in some parts of society, like the pyramids. We should throw more parties
For a dinner party specifically I like to force everyone to go for a walk before dessert. By that point they’re all hot and drunk, sending them outside for a quick lap cools everybody off, gets them talking, and is good for the digestion. Then you can come home and crack into that bottle of wine someone brought
> Once an event crosses a threshold (maybe 70%?) of male-or-female dominance, most people of the other gender are likely to decline (or just not-come to your next party) as a result.
I’m not sure that this one is true. Once, as a single guy, I got invited to a party that turned out to be 80% women, and I would definitely have gone to that guy’s parties again.
> " Parties are a public service, you’re doing people a favor by throwing them..Throwing parties is stressful for most people, but a great kindness to the community, so genuinely pat yourself on the back for doing this."
I sort of agree, but I also think they're intrinsically a lot of fun, and if you're not enjoying yourself and only doing it to provide the service then you probably shouldn't be throwing them.
Also, in my experience the best parties were the ones that, at a certain point, would carry themselves forward from their own momentum. Everyone participates in their own way, so if the music needed changing or there needed to be more alcohol, it would sort of work itself out automatically. Basically, it's less about the host providing everything and more providing the environment for the party to run itself.
ask people that stayed late to help cleanup a bit. It will only take them 5minutes and will save you hours. Also cleanup everything before you go to sleep. It will save your next day
For me the main thing is to get people pumped from the first invite.
Like don’t write: ‘hey I am doing this thing for my bday on Friday, wanna come?’
But come up with something like: ´Ok people, I just read in a recent Nasa report that the planets are going to be lined up on Friday evening. Coincidentally, this is the day I am turning X. So, I was thinking it would be the perfect opprtunity for us to show the entire solar system how it is we do it on Earth.’ then some fun lines about how we’ll make Marsians green, and have more love than Venus, and what not. stupid puns like ‘don’t sit on Uranus and come party like you’re the sun’ tend to work nicely.
You get the idea. Be totally over the top in your invites.
As someone who was throwing the most popular parties in my hometown¹ during my youth probably the number 1 thing is finding the right mixture of people.
Nearly the most boring thing you can do is only inviting people who know each other, ideally it is an explosive mix of different ages, backgrounds, interests, styles to avoid people sticking together in their known constellations.
¹: one if the proudest moments was when some random stranger in an European capital spoke to me on the street and told me: "Hey I know you, I have been to your party!" and I had no idea who they were
A little bit of overthinking in there, no? I mean this is kind of stressing me out that I’ve not been doing this properly.
It feels like the person writing this is constently rating the quality of his/her parties, like she’s being judged. Perhaps it’s a NY thing. The ‘flake rate’ also feels very New York-y
My experience is that some parties will be good others won’t, and you can’t really know why. General mood can’t be steered. It’s ok.
I'll probably get uninvited from the party for pointing this out, but Partiful is free for users because they are datamining the shit out of us. If Palantir gives any here the creeps, just fyi, Partiful was founded by several former Palantir employees, including CEO Shreya Murthy and CTO Joy Tao.
Also from their (presumably more binding) privacy policy:
> We don’t sell your personal data as a source of revenue, unlike most apps -- we make money by selling drinks & snacks for your event via our Group Order feature
> We don’t sell your personal data as a source of revenue
What a curiously specific phrase. So if they traded your data to Palantir in exchange for hosting or services, this would still be allowed. The fact that they have another revenue stream says nothing about your data privacy. Or if Thiel has a backdoor to snoop on Silicon Valley's most intimate social networking data.
Besides the founders being ex-Palantir (left in 2018), is there much evidence for this? Their platform doesn't feel particularly data hungry to me at all.
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 you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one.
If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure that they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you.
Anyway, my boss showed up. I don't know if I invited him or if he just decided to be there on his own. He was having a great time with everything, and then he went into the back where some folks were enjoying the not-booze.
It was at this point that I lost track of him.
His jacket was still there. His motorcycle was still parked on the front sidewalk. But he was nowhere to be found, and his phone went straight to voicemail. It was like he'd simply vanished.
"Fuck," I thought to myself. "I've only had this job for a few months."
It turns out that he'd walked home, a couple of miles away. He woke up the next morning sitting at the picnic table in his back yard, shirtless, in the rain.
After that, I always made sure that I invited him to my other parties -- and he always made sure to decline, and tell me that he was never doing anything like that ever again. I consider this to be a win.
I learned you gotta have a “that guy” around and you get police showing up at some point almost 100%.
Once upon a time, during my time in sales, some of the permanent sale guys would throw parties at their shared place (near a University campus) that attracted lots of people no one knew and got pretty rowdy.
It would be mostly fine, sometimes a pair of cops showed up & left without incident -- until later in the night/morning after this one shady sales guy 20+ years our senior, who could sell sand in the Sahara but failed at life, became “that guy”.
Not usually violent (unless his buddys were trying to stop him running into traffic etc), typically property damage related; he would mix a lot of alcohol with a lot if other substances by late in the party basically becoming the guaranteed way to clear people out. Also pretty sure the holding cells were his second address.
Anyway, when you went into talking about the boss I thought he might be “that guy” but he declined.
Perhaps another day.
This is definitely jointly directed by Rogen and Tarantino and I will be watching all 3 hours of it.
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 it to 4 am, the Italians would break out the spaghetti, cook a big pot of it and serve it with just olive oil (no tomato sauce). Sitting around the kitchen table wicked hammered eating plain spaghetti is the correct way to end a party.
There's a whole world out there!
Tomato sauces can be acidic, so not great when drunk. Also tomatoes stain (if it were to come back up) !
I threw a party (illegal, on the beach, with great music) so successful the police just provided security at the parking lot entrance 1km away because they didn’t want > 400 wasted people roaming the affluent neighbourhood if shut down. Oh there were also nudists at the beach when we were ferrying in our gear at sunset who stayed for the whole thing and ended up on the dancefloor in their birthday suits at 2am.
The Dave Barry quote is obviously humor. But back from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, I was genuinely at numerous house parties, basement concerts, and un-permitted raves which where broken up by authorities, including some where the power was cut, (or worse, where the music was cut and lights flipped on full bright) and the cops forced everyone to pile into their cars and drive home, with whatever head full of chemicals they might be taking on the road with them. Poor saucer-eyed kids.
Ah, memories, memories. Where is that brain damage they promised us? I'm still involved in a local music scene somewhat. And yeah, there will always be an underground. And yes, some of the underground gets old and had to get up at 7am to pay the mortgage so some of this may be looking back with rozy glasses. But it just seems to get smaller every year. I don't hear bumping bass from the neighborhoods on Saturday night like I used to.
You obviously just moved neighborhoods :)
How would you know? Sure you would know if you were walking but otherwise braindead, but if you are "5 iq points dumber" (whatever that means) or something like that you wouldn't know since there is no way to know what "might have been"
Hats off to OP if this is their original writing, it nails his style.
Because of this, I both like him and associate him with my early nerdiness.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/bengaluru-news/police-...
Once we had police knock on our door for playing music too loud at 10 PM on a weekend - f'ck Boston NIMBYs
https://youtu.be/7WPZyzeK7IE?si=QUXm5Fg48Wuq-wtr
I will never forget the nice 70 year old lady who lived in the apartment above us. She said, “If it gets too loud, I’ll just turn my hearing aid off.”
[0] Letitia Baldrige's Complete Guide to Executive Manners
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 locations, having people vote on something, etc. For whatever reason, they make the night more memorable.
3. Do your best to make introductions natural and low-pressure. Saying things like "you two would really get along" can put pressure on people - especially shy ones. Bring up something they have in common and let them chat while you back away.
4. Go easy on folks who cancel last minute. They often don't feel good about doing it and you don't want to add more stress to them or yourself.
5. More music != more fun. Some music is good, but if people can't hear each other, turn it down.
If you're interested reading more about this stuff, read The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker.
You've never been to a party where you had dispersed throughout the location, and then the host gathered you to eat a meal or a cake (possibly singing a song prior to distributing the cake)?
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 no real formalities to the event. No one cares about making a science out of it.
I’ve never heard of a person complaining about party quality or comparing hosting abilities.
> In movies or TV there’s even a common theme of guests judging the host’s hosting abilities.
That’s a movie trope. You can find parties and social groups like this if you search around long enough, but most people are decidedly not like this.
Don’t take American movies too seriously as an indicator of American culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil
The UK has a show dedicated to a competition to see who is the best host of a dinner party. (come dine with me). Its a great show but shows the culture. The poor host has to pay for everything, prep, cook while entertaining the guest and usually put on some show or activity for extra points.
But my guess is that in Brazil many of the things in this list are things that party host(s) (and their circles) are doing, intuitively and without thinking about it. Or different things with similar effects.
I didn't see anything in the OP about anyone comparing party quality or hosting abilities.
But when you go to a party and it's a great party, often it's because someone put effort into it. The better they are at it, the fewer people might notice. and it might come naturally to them, maybe they never had to make a list like this (a very particular kind of brain, sure). But a succesful party (where people enjoy themselves and it feels good) has people putting energy into making it vibe. Again, perhaps inuitivley and naturally and because it's something everyone learns how to do organically in a society. But I'm gonna guess this is true in Brazil too.
> I’ve never heard of a person complaining about party quality or comparing hosting abilities.
This is all true in my experience as well, and I live in the US. Maybe I don't go to enough parties, though.
Are you sure there aren't certain people driving these "informal" parties?
1. Sometimes an "inner circle" will co-host a party but the other attendees are not expected to do anything except show up and have a good time, and maybe bring booze. This is common with roommates and in college.
2. What you're describing verbatim is a potluck. Potlucks in the US are popular among immigrant groups, family friend groups, or parties for clubs or associations. But ultimately they're considered a bit uncool/laidback and don't fit the definition of an American party. They're better described as "get-togethers".
As a foodie in the Pacific Northwest I disagree with this statement.
Potlucks are a chance for people to show off their skills. Some of the best potlucks I've been to have a competition aspect to them, complete with prizes.
As a host of a potluck I'll handle drinks, entertainment, and renting a venue, but the guest list is around 80% people who I can rely on to cook a damn good dish.
This is really a function of the type of party and of the type of people one is inviting to a party rather than a universal among Americans. I was brought up that you don't come to a party empty-handed. If you're going to a party where you know everybody else was brought up that way, you call ahead to see what will be lacking (mostly so everybody doesn't bring alcohol.)
I've brought chairs to parties; if you haven't ever done that you probably don't know what I'm talking about.
There's also a "dinner party" culture, though, where you're going to cook for a bunch of people. They should bring alcohol, but they don't always because people don't always drink, and their bringing alcohol doesn't get you out of providing alcohol. The expectation is that you have a reciprocal party rather than everyone contribute at this party i.e. you're inviting people who also might have dinner parties. They're bringing a guest or two to yours, you'll also bring a guest or two to theirs.
The second type of party is more conversation-oriented, and sometimes the contribution you're making is how interesting your guest is. I'm still bringing wine or something, though. Can't show up empty-handed.
In fact, they are probably a lot more common than having a huge party (so large that you have to invite people in batches of half a dozen at a time) completely planned and executed by a single person.
This article is good, don’t get me wrong, but this type of event planning is not really representative of how folk in the U.S. get together
For the parties as described in the article, I maybe go to one or two a year tops. Before I had a kid I used to host large parties like the kind described (~15 people tops though), now I just attend and contribute.
How many is that? It's comfortable being with people I like, but I just consider that "hanging out".
The appeal of parties to me is it's a social expectation to mingle with new people I otherwise would never have had the opportunity to speak to.
There’s no real expectation in a party here. Usually you’ll call up people you know from different parts of your life. People bring plus ones so someone from work will be chatting to your family member, a high school friend to someone’s plus one, etc.
That’s usually how people strike new relationships after a certain age.
Ideally, a guest breaks a cheap glass. The sound is heard across the house. The helpers immediately spring into action, leaving their conversations behind, looking for towels and a dustpan. The people nearby go mute with sympathetic embarrassment. Much ado is made of finding every shard. Meanwhile you are laboring over a replacement drink for the guest, which you graciously present in protest to their apologies. The party resumes at 70% volume.
Also happened with a lamp on one occasion.
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.
I agree. We threw a halloween party. We just discussed who we wanted to invite and threw everybody together in a whatsapp groupchat to announce the thing.
23) Buy frozen finger food and put into oven in staggered batches. When a batch is ready, immediately transfer to serving tray and walk through party offering people food. Great task to delegate to that one attendee who doesn't know anyone!
24) Polaroids/Disposable cameras are cheap and seem to be universally adored. Get a few and scatter them throughout the party.
25) Sharpies/labels for marking solo cups, drastically cuts down on clutter as the night goes on.
26) If someone brings a bottle of wine or a bottle of liquor as a gift, just crack it open and ask them to share it with other attendees. Same with food. Makes for a good conversation starter.
Yes, there's a risk of breakage & having to clean up, but overall I think it sets a better tone.
Love the number one advice of the post: focusing on yourself having a good time. Although the more you organize the easier it gets.
> 5) Use an app like Partiful or Luma
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.
Also always try to get people to invite their friends as well. That'a the upside of gatherings: you get to meet new people effortlessly. And this solves a number of the problem in the post's list.
> In a small group, the quality of the experience will depend a lot on whether the various friends blend together well
Na, just invite everyone, diversity is a feature.
IMO most of the advice are over engineer. Here are more from mine:
- soundproof with plants and rugs and stuff in the room so it doesn't get echo'y
- play some background music at low volume
- always prepare a punch. People don't realize it but there's alcohol in this thing
- don't have seats otherwise people will sit down, and sitting down is the party killer
- don't prep anything. The place will get messy anyway. Just make sure people bring food and drinks.
My Nan used to always say to me:
"You know what happens to girls that sit down at parties?"
"What Nan?"
"Nothing!"
> 2) Advertise your start time as a quarter-to the hour. If you start an event at 2:00, people won't arrive till 2:30; if you make it 1:45, people will arrive at 2:00.
Needless to say this is highly culture-dependent. I recently threw a dinner at my place in Tokyo, and I had to add the warning:
- Official dinner time was 7pm.
- Told my Southern European friends at 7pm, expecting them to arrive at 8pm.
- Told my Japanese and American friends at 7:30-8, expecting them to arrive at 8pm.
It went much better than expected, everyone arrived within 8pm~8:10pm (okay, except that one friend who is chronically late, but that's a lost cause).
My flake rate is close to zero, mostly because people personally told me they’ll join.
It doesn’t hurt to get the group chat hyped up on the day of the event. The activity is enough to get people excited. I also pin the time and location so people find it easily.
Besides that, just chill. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Once a few good people are there, the thing mostly runs itself. Try to relax and enjoy your own 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.
It's interesting to consider the full correlation matrix! Groups of friends may tend to flake together too, people who live in the same neighborhood might rely on the same subways or highways...
I think this is precisely the same problem as pricing a CDO, so a Gaussian Copula or graphical model is really what you need. To plan a great party.
Then sometimes you need the "max + min souls" (seats, plates), and account for what we call "the S-factor" if someone brings an unexpected guest, roommate, etc.
Lastly: there is a difference between a "party" and a "soirée" (per my college roommate: "you don't have parties, you have soirées!")
All the advice is really accurate, makes me miss hosting. If you want to go a little deeper, there's a book called "How to be a Gentleman", and it has a useful section on "A Gentleman Hosts a Party", and then "Dads Own Cookbook" has a chapter on party planning, hosting, preparation timelines... there's quite a bit of art and science to it!
Only way I know is to have a porch, garage, or other connected-but-not-the-same-space open for people to spill into.
Unless the space has amazing purpose-built acoustic qualities, put physics obstructions between groups of people (walls, doors, bushes, trees, fences, whatever).
If a house-party is unbearably loud, there's just too many people for the space, or there's some anomaly that is concentrating too many people in one area.
Every now and then I'll resort to just turning the volume up so that people give up. No, sorry, conversation is already basically impossible except via shouting, so I'm going to up the volume to prevent conversations for a little bit, interrupt the flow, then go back down.
I'd love some volume meters that have very visible displays. It's in the red! Everyone chill out! Or ideally presenting some view over time. Little tablet screens placed about or above that show some logarithmic time scale of volume, so people can calibrate, see the bad trend line. There need to be enough different volume-over-time systems about so people know where the problem really is coming from too. Most people at the party are just trying to talk, so the real art of debugging this nonsense is finding who is being extra loud, and introducing some observability to let the specific worst offenders fix their specific loudness issues, then the rest of the party can de-escalate too.
See also: https://x.com/wangzjeff/status/1983914310738047291
And also Nick Gray's 2 hour cocktail party book
My personal thoughts on events:
(These don't really apply to parties, but they do apply to non-party events)
1. Do intro circles: If it's a 5-25 person event with a handful of people that don't know each other, do an intro circle about 15-20 mins after the start time. Turns it from something where people show up and might meet 1-3 random people that they happen to walk up to, vs something where everyone gets 1 point of contact with anyone else. Works well up to about 25 people, haven't tested it beyond that. Go round say name, and then pick a few questions depending on the audience (eg could be something you'd like help with, something you're reading about, etc). For non-parties (eg meetups, work mixers, things that don't have alcohol or aren't late), the easiest way to improve any event is for the host to do a brief intro circle.
2. The best events to host are the ones you wish you could attend but that don't exist
3. Minimize uncertainty for attendees: Clear parking info/photos and a photo of the space is always helpful too.
4. Host more events: Very positive sum. Even can be simple discussion groups. Anything that you enjoy doing where it'd be more fun with a few other people. Playing video games together, reading papers together, discussing how you're using AI coding tools, whatever. Workshops, mixers, talks, parties, peer groups, etc. If you enjoy reading about it on HN or twitter, you'd probably also enjoy discussing it with people directly. The world is undersupplied for events.
So, turn your party into hell on earth?
Almost everyone has something interesting to say or contribute, the hosts' ideal job is to bring that out.
Or just ask them to invite some people man, don't stress.
I invite people to events almost every time I go out and talk to people.
I just like being honest and stripping away the layers of manipulation. “Starts at 2:00. Please be on time. If you don’t want to be the first, show up at 2:10. If you want to come early, we’d love a bit of help with last minute preparation but we won’t be in hosting mode just yet!”
Do I overthink things? Absolutely. Do people comment about how much they love how I strip all the uncertainty and mind games from it all? Yes.
This will not work with south american guests. It's a cultural thing, being a little late (but not too late) is cool; being on time seems desperate or too strict.
At parties it is mainly due to room's echo.
The best and cheapest is open-air, where voices fly into the sky and never return, it would take like a thousand of people before it stops being enough.
Second best are large open windows, missing walls (porch/balcony) or multiple rooms.
Beyond that I don't think there can be a solution without some sort of room soundproofing, which is usually no-go for rented spaces and private houses. The closest one can get is to maximize soft surfaces (rugs, curtains esp. along walls).
Speaking of which, I wish bars, restaurants and other venues were required to place echo reducers on the ceiling, such simple and cheap measure would dramatically improve ability to talk there when they're full.
It's possible they aren't aware, but I have to wonder if it's sometimes intentional. As someone who doesn't drink, I find most bars close to if not entirely intolerable as places to hang out in, not because I mind being around other people drinking, but because they're always so loud. I've always assumed that drinking is what makes this tolerable to people, so now that you bring this up, the idea that this could be a way to sell more alcohol occurs to me. Probably a silly conspiracy theory, but who knows!
1. asking people to come at 2 PM on a weekend and saying party will go till 7 PM. There is a limit to expectations, as I have learned
2. not using Partiful or Luma (Apple Invites wasn't a thing back then) so we could never really remind people or confirm people. Plus, many flaked (~40%) or arrived very late (~70%)
3. not making the party interesting enough for 22-24 year olds - many flaked :(
4. not following rules 8 and 9 as mentioned here (whom to or not to invite given a group)
Some tips that worked for us in other parties:
1) Be very generous with drinks, make good ones and buy good beer/wine, avoid temptation to venmo request afterwards (please don't). atithi devo bhava
2) Have something to do. For us it was Dartmouth pong in our backyard lol
3) Have a good vibe
One major pro tip not mentioned: if inviting a girl you want to impress, learn to mix drinks and songs ;) A good shake goes a long way...
Is that true?
I've been to two weddings where the only person I knew was the bride and I was just like, well I guess I'll make friends there. Had a blast both times.
This is great, and applies broadly to parenting.
- As hosts, the main problems are finding a suitable date to hold the party, chasing attendance confirmations and getting people to dance (esp. once they're over 30).
- As attendees, the main problem besides whether on should go or not (which is often made dependent on who else is going) is figuring out what kind of "party" exactly it is (formal/informal, dance party/potluck, enough food?). The definition of "party" is very broad, even leaving aside cross-cultural norms, ranging from "let's sit around the table and play board games" to "let's outdo Hangover I/II/III [except for the giraffe]".
A successful escort who is into statistical data analysis and market research talks about the details of organizing an orgy.[1]
Aella's thing is to ask questions that lead to "what do women really want", and go from there to design events. She has about 800,000 raw survey responses, so there's enough data to look for patterns. The answers will upset some people. The conventional wisdom appears to be way out from where the data leads.
[1] https://aella.substack.com/p/a-girls-guide-to-a-data-driven-...
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 disproportionately into submissive power dynamics and somewhat rough sex, so she tried creating a type of orgy where blanket consent is given up-front, men outnumber women, and everyone is vetted for attractiveness (and presumably other traits, which she does not specify). This apparently leads to parties where the men aggressively initiate sex with many women, and everyone is very satisfied with the outcome. The parties have strict rules, such as absolutely and immediately respecting the safe word.
If there’s a band: if you’re the host or the person paying, just ask them politely to turn the volume down every ten minutes or however long it takes for the volume to drift up. And it will drift back up, because very few bands are able to keep their hands off the mixer.
For conversational volume, either go outside or use serious acoustic treatment. The latter may be challenging.
For a dinner party specifically I like to force everyone to go for a walk before dessert. By that point they’re all hot and drunk, sending them outside for a quick lap cools everybody off, gets them talking, and is good for the digestion. Then you can come home and crack into that bottle of wine someone brought
I’m not sure that this one is true. Once, as a single guy, I got invited to a party that turned out to be 80% women, and I would definitely have gone to that guy’s parties again.
I sort of agree, but I also think they're intrinsically a lot of fun, and if you're not enjoying yourself and only doing it to provide the service then you probably shouldn't be throwing them.
Also, in my experience the best parties were the ones that, at a certain point, would carry themselves forward from their own momentum. Everyone participates in their own way, so if the music needed changing or there needed to be more alcohol, it would sort of work itself out automatically. Basically, it's less about the host providing everything and more providing the environment for the party to run itself.
Please let me have some of your cocaine.
Like don’t write: ‘hey I am doing this thing for my bday on Friday, wanna come?’
But come up with something like: ´Ok people, I just read in a recent Nasa report that the planets are going to be lined up on Friday evening. Coincidentally, this is the day I am turning X. So, I was thinking it would be the perfect opprtunity for us to show the entire solar system how it is we do it on Earth.’ then some fun lines about how we’ll make Marsians green, and have more love than Venus, and what not. stupid puns like ‘don’t sit on Uranus and come party like you’re the sun’ tend to work nicely.
You get the idea. Be totally over the top in your invites.
Nearly the most boring thing you can do is only inviting people who know each other, ideally it is an explosive mix of different ages, backgrounds, interests, styles to avoid people sticking together in their known constellations.
¹: one if the proudest moments was when some random stranger in an European capital spoke to me on the street and told me: "Hey I know you, I have been to your party!" and I had no idea who they were
It feels like the person writing this is constently rating the quality of his/her parties, like she’s being judged. Perhaps it’s a NY thing. The ‘flake rate’ also feels very New York-y
My experience is that some parties will be good others won’t, and you can’t really know why. General mood can’t be steered. It’s ok.
As an engineer, I have to say, the answer is obvious: simply install a siren that goes off when average volume over a period of time is too high.
https://help.partiful.com/hc/en-us/articles/26526557943067-H...
> We don’t sell your personal data as a source of revenue, unlike most apps -- we make money by selling drinks & snacks for your event via our Group Order feature
What a curiously specific phrase. So if they traded your data to Palantir in exchange for hosting or services, this would still be allowed. The fact that they have another revenue stream says nothing about your data privacy. Or if Thiel has a backdoor to snoop on Silicon Valley's most intimate social networking data.
You need games. Smalltalking gets old quick.
You need snacks, drinks, music and drugs.
Regulate that lighting. Not too bright.