> It was not something my parents enjoyed, but rather an obligation they felt they had to uphold. ... I don't think she enjoyed it at all, though there were a few couples I can remember who were good friends of theirs, and those meetups were always a pleasure to listen in on. The rest were simply a drag.

It's worth noting that not everything that's good for you is enjoyable, especially in the moment.

Avoiding everything that's a "drag" means staying alone, passively consuming easy media, not exercising, eating hyper-palatble junk food, getting obese and probably depressed, etc.

> I should note that their life in the 70s (in a middle-class college town) was not some idyllic paradise without the Internet, either. Everyone was constantly falling ill with colds or flu, and days were spent running dreary errands to shop for boring things that we now can get with a click. The rotary-dial telephone that hung in the kitchen was the heartbeat of the house, since replaced by Facebook and smartphones.

While I agree that those cloying clickbait articles/videos idealizing random pre-smartphone teen photos and videos are obnoxious (as someone who grew up in that era). I think the modern emphasis on mindlessly reducing "friction" is going to prove ultimately unwise, though probably uncorrected as generational turnover causes people to forget what was lost, and certain degradation gets redefined as "normal" and accepted.

> My parents were always busy and exhausted.

So are modern parents, and all indications are they are more exhausted.

Back in the 80s/90s, when my grandma was alive, we used to have big holiday dinners for the whole big family (I think in total of 10+ people) in her small apartment (about 20 m^2, perhaps even less). It was extremely crowdy and some people used to eat standing outside and chat with each other. But it was also one of my best memories.

30+ years forward, I moved to a new country, and we only have one kid. We haven't had this kind of big dinner for decades since my grandma passed away in the late 90s.

The families are getting smaller and more atomized, so only people who are VERY into big dinners throw them.

> Everyone was constantly falling ill with colds or flu

That’s just anyone who has small kids. Or works in healthcare, childcare, or any service industry really. It has nothing to do with 1975 vs 2025 (unless you’re one of the small amount of people who work remotely, and you don’t have kids or a spouse who falls into one of the above categories).

Also after a few years you stop getting so many colds.

There also used to be pretty strong social expectations to host and visit such parties. That was essentially gone by like 1990, for my area, and I always kind of got the feel that everyone was glad to see the expectation disappear.

They can be fun, but I and almost everyone that I'm friends with much prefer to simply visit and hang out with no plans at all. Just be there, maybe chat a bit, maybe ignore each other and read a book for a few hours, maybe find something to eat / do a lightweight potluck. Which rather sucked that COVID ended up shutting down almost all of our communal places to visit for that.

> It was not something my parents enjoyed, but rather an obligation they felt they had to uphold.

understandable, but if you think about it, it's kinda the price of keeping your "social network" alive. people nowadays understand that romantic relationships need maintenance and effort, but don't (yet?) understand that friendship require at least some maintenance as well. i guess that was even true-r before social media when you weren't constantly updated about what happened in friend X, Y and Z's lives.

most people nowadays don't really want to pay that price to keep relationships alive... and it's showing.

> My parents were always busy and exhausted.

what i'm about to write is absolutely anecdotical, but: i don't see people my age (30-40 years old) like super-relaxed either.

Pretty much my experience. My pre-teen childhood was the 1970s. My parents had dinner parties or cocktail parties at home at least a few times a year, and so did most of their friends. We often had a sitter for the night while they went to these gatherings. Some time towards the end of the decade, and certainly in the 1980s, this pretty much stopped. I asked about it once and my mother said that hosting these gatherings was a lot of work and fewer and fewer of their guests ever reciprocated, so they just stopped hosting as well. I do think that they did it mostly out of obligation or "just the proper thing to do" and not because they particulary enjoyed it.

I feel odd reading a good description of my parents' social evolution in the 1970s-90s, realizing that what I thought was a very personal change was actually part of a popular trend. The proposed explanations don't seem to apply, though. My observation of the change was that my parents seemed to give up on it all due to lack of personal reward. Maybe they lacked the external influences that would have prompted them to keep up old social habits.

All of that sounds many times better than just being alone without a community.

When I was a child, visiting other families was a highlight. Sometimes it was family, sometimes it was friends of my parents. We'd pack everyone in the car, drive to someone else's house (different! better!), and have piles of fun with the other kids. Plus dinner! Next time they'd come to our house!

My sisters and I knew all these other kids, because our parents had all been socializing for as long as we'd been alive.

Good news, "introvert"! Your side won. I hope the dusty walls and ragged headphone cushions stay comfortable. If not, you can replace them with one click.

I love sober reminders like this that the good old days weren't all that good. Thank you.

Maybe it's like strength training, in that it hurts but it's good for you (or a plural of you's).

This is really good perspective and an interesting story, thanks for sharing.

Thanks for sharing that intimate anecdote. I see that phone on the wall in my own parent's house.

Same for me in the 80s. We'd always have the extended family together multiple times a year and frequently at my house. My mom always stressed out over it and it's the only time she yelled at my brother and I for not cleaning enough. I occasionally enjoyed playing with cousins but mostly found it annoying that all these people were using my house.

Nowadays, we definitely get together much less often but also it's usually at a restaurant.

I think this makes a lot of sense.

It's very interesting because this is obviously still the reality for elite people; they have to attend all these events to maintain their political positions.

It's hard to believe that Mark Zuckerberg enjoys having to step off his Yacht to meet with Donald Trump. Not because of animosity, but simply because it's a lot of work and there is a lot at stake.

I think the insight for regular people is that regular people within the same social class nowadays have nothing to gain financially or career-wise from each other; so they don't see as much benefit from getting closer to each other.

My experience is that it's impossible to get close to software engineering colleagues; they're way too cynical and sometimes very jealous. And we can't really help each other anyway. My experience with other software engineering colleagues is that you can't trust them. I've been back-stabbed by colleagues which I tried to help on 2 occasions; including a very bad case which essentially destroyed my career through lies and sabotage. Let's just say I will never give another referral for a ex-colleague or developer friend with a current employer ever again.

I have a couple of software engineer friends who I've had for years who I consider close but I only met them online (including a few video calls); we worked on several projects together over many years, none of them worked out financially, unfortunately. I think if we had succeeded, we may have met each other in real life and become close enough to invite each other over to each other's houses... But I guess we're all just in that hustling mindset still and we live in different countries and lack the financial freedom to choose where we live. A shared successful business would certainly have helped to bring us closer.

I think you need to have achieved a certain level of financial comfort and your network should bring a certain amount of social value to justify inviting people over or attending events.

The social benefit has to pay for the stress and hassle, then enjoying people's company is the bonus that seals the deal to really make it worthwhile.

My experience with friends is that there's nothing to talk about besides complaining about all the problems we face and how crooked everything is. We're just simmering in our own misery.

Unfortunately, rich people don't want to befriend me either because they think I want something from them besides friendship; and they're right, do does everyone else in their lives! They don't appreciate honesty.

It's similar with my spouse in a way, but at least there are other things you can do with your spouse besides talking!

Society is in a very bad place IMO.

I think, objectively, I'm a decent and interesting person to befriend, yet the only person I ever met in my life who I can call a friend (besides family members) is my wife. So 15 years of adulthood yielded only 1 true friend out of maybe tens or thousands or hundreds of thousands of people I met. I don't think that's unusual; I think that's the baseline of how hard it is to make true friends when people do not have a financial motivation to be nice to each other in our current low-trust society.

This is such a sad and pathetic interpretation. Please consider you might just be depressed or lazy person and reading this wrong.

There should be a name for the amnesia people seem to experience for the covid era. For 2 years, more or less, most forms of social activity were frowned upon or (in some states) made outright illegal. I feel strongly that this has affected our collective psyche more than anything since WW2. My sister (10 years my junior) seems to have had an extremely different early-adulthood from me. The lack of reflection on it is strange...

For me it's indeed around COVID where my habits changed. That deserves more attention indeed. Something about the vibe changed. Could be just me, and could be just a coincidence that is happened around COVID. But it's worth considering.

If you're stressed out all week and you pick up an infection then your immune system might not settle into fight mode until the weekend, because you can't afford to be down for the count when what you really need right now is to run from the bear, except it's not a bear, it's just the grind.

If there are more potential infections out there than there were before (also, greater population sizes to communicate them) that's a higher concentration of weekends lost to sickness.

That's gonna have an impact on how often you go to a friend's house... squared, because it's both you and that friend. Like the network effect's evil twin.

I noticed that too. It's unreasonable to extrapolate anything from that graph when it only ends at 2022.

The chart cutting off in 2022 makes it hard to glean too much.

I no longer worry at all about attending a crowded indoor gathering - those would be impossible to avoid in NYC - but enjoying “a night in” without kids is a distinctly post-COVID phenomenon for myself and many people I know

> COVID made spending time outdoors/around other people an actual physical danger for over a year, and the psychological effects of that are lingering.

It actually never stopped being a physical danger. The only thing that changed is how long it takes for the damage to unfold.

At the start of COVID, people were rightfully shocked that hospitals and morgues were overflowing, and they reacted accordingly. That's no longer an issue (for now) with these latest strains, but acquiring Long COVID and dealing with its effects is definitely still a real concern.

Long COVID is vastly underdiagnosed. You might not get it until your 4th/5th/6th re-infection. That reinfection might also be asymptomatic, and/or Long COVID doesn't set in until weeks or months afterward, meaning people often don't link the two events. People not taking precautions (majority) are getting re-infected on average once per year since immunity from a previous infection typically wanes after 6 months, and there are about two waves per year for any given area.

Vaccines are of limited utility since they don't prevent transmission. A consistently worn N95 in public spaces is the only reliable means of defense, and everybody in your household needs to do that in public for it to be effective within your household.

The risk has not gone away. What's gone away is our willingness to acknowledge it or do anything about it.

It varies a lot depending on people and personality type. What's energizing to you is very exhausting and unfun to others. Extraversion / introversion basically. I don't like having many people over. 3 or 4 people who I know well is optimal for me.

Making a large party could be "type 2 fun" sometimes, ie exhausting and not very fun at the time, but satisfying to look back on as a kind of hard challenge I managed to accomplish, like climbing a cold mountain or so. But few are enough of those.

I agree about the two groups. I spent years trying to invite some friends to our home for dinner, but we always had "scheduling conflicts." Then one time I suggested going out to a restaurant, and we immediately scheduled it and did it that weekend. I finally figured out that they didn't want to come to our home because they thought that then they would have to recipricate and invite us over, which they didn't want to do.

> But what people (probably the ones that never bother) tend to forget is how unbelievably gratifying it is to get a bunch of people together, to feed them and to make them talk, laugh, dance, etc. Afterwards you are tired but also grateful and socially energized in a way that feels fundamental to my existence.

As someone who has (and occasionally still does) throw parties, I totally do not relate. It's just tiring. I don't have time to mingle with the guests.

I prefer small, simple invitations. Ideally 2 families. Simple food. Not a lot of ceremony. Get together and talk (or play games, or whatever).

Similarly, I've drastically reduced going to bigger parties - at least with some hosts. These are people I like and want to spend time with, but they only throw large parties, and I get virtually no time with them at the party - they're too busy.

What I'm finding is that - as you noticed - people tend to want to be all or nothing. I'm having trouble finding people like me. I want to socialize, but not this way.

When I read the article, I immediately thought of several reasons he hadn't listed. Too tired to go into detail, but some of them are: Marriage and what was previously a 2 body problem became a 4 body problem (4 being the lower bound). Dual income with kids - we barely get enough time with the kids, and throwing a big party means neglecting them much, much more. Several other factors. This really is death by a thousand cuts.

My wife is an extrovert and I'm an introvert. We are also the party throwers. If we didn't throw parties I don't think our extended family on her side would ever see each other. But even as an introvert, I feel very grateful and energized after hosting people at our home.

I love hosting, especially because I have invested a lot in my cooking skills. However, now inviting someone over means hosting an entire family and my job has evolved into cleaning, doing dishes, and prepping food, while everyone else is having the time of their life (we don't have a large space). Just not so enjoyable, so we have slowly stopped doing them and others rarely host them as well. An alternative is that we now do dinner picnics at the park, way more easier and no one is stuck doing hosting work.

> Middle aged European here. I still regularly go to parties (dinner and otherwise) and I notice that there are two kinds of people: people who throw parties, and people who don't

Middle aged American here. I go to more social gatherings than I have in any time since college.

I would add a second dimension to your stratification: People who have kids and those who don’t. Once you have kids who enter school age, there are more social opportunity than you have time for. Even many of the people who never threw parties before now host a few cookouts or birthday parties per year.

The events are based on people who attend the same school or whose kids are friends with your kid, so you’re not always hitting it off with all of the other parents as future best friends. However you do get exposed to a lot of new people and each new introduction increases your odds of finding people you connect with.

One realization is that it didn’t actually require having kids to start doing all of this. Inviting people over for a backyard cookout or a simple dinner was always easy. Easier without kids, actually. Most simply don’t make the initiative.

Another problem is the increasing burden that people create for themselves or their friends with social events: Expectations of bringing gifts, showing up with a bottle of wine that isn’t too cheap, dressing nicely, and the biggest event killer of all: Trying to find a date that works for everyone of the guests. Parent get together dispense with all of that. Everyone’s busy with kids. If you show up for 30 minutes in shorts and a T-shirt bearing no gifts and you have to leave early, everyone is just happy you came. A date is sent out and whoever is available can come. If not, we’ll see you next time.

I'd get more energy from sitting alone in a dark room than by throwing a - or attending a - party...

That doesn't mean I don't enjoy attending (never throwing) parties on occasion, but it's exhausting to me. Whenever I come home from a social occasion I need time to recover.

It's very much down to different personalities.

I do think it’s possible to move between categories though. I used to have potlucks and house parties every month in my twenties, but now a decade later I just don’t really have much interest in the idea.

It might just be a rationalization, but the way I justify it is that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized more what actually matters to me, and being a party host / spending time at parties doesn’t fit that category. I’d rather spend my time doing something else.

Middle aged American here, I enjoy them. To be fair, my wife does all the cooking when we host but I at least take care of the clean up. We haven't done many dinner parties lately, but I like the dinner party "circuit" if you will. With and without extended family.

I grew up in a multi-family apartment as a child (3 floors) with my grandparents, and aunt/uncle/cousin, along with my family. I'm half Sicilian as well, big family dinners on Sundays were a tradition and some of my fondest childhood memories.

Yes, they require planning and energy but they're well worth it if you enjoy the company of other human beings. :)

This. It’s also why I started celebrating my birthday and throwing a party. I am not doing it for me, I am an introvert and it is a lot of work, but I am doing it for my guests who have a great time.

(For perfectionists: people always have a good time when there’s some food and drinks and other people. Everything else, even music, is really optional.)

Personal experience and observation so take it for what it's worth: people are more flaky and less committal now.

It used to be if you throw a party and invite a bunch of people, the ones that say they'll come will probably come. Now, you invite a bunch of people, you get mostly a bunch of maybe and half don't show up.

It makes it both harder to plan and have the social risk of a dud of a party. Worst thing you want as a host is people not having a good time.

I used to throw parties not long ago. At least once a week, often more than that. Anywhere between 5 and 35 people.

Then I became a single father and I haven't thrown a single party since then.

Damn I miss throwing parties.

People might be getting fatter or more unfit. Still there are subcultures where people are fit as all --. The commitment is unreal. The amount they can talk about fitness is truly endless. And if you asked them it would be all about character and social milieu. Things might have changed in the last decades, but that’s at best uninteresting facts to them.

More and more divergence, subcultures, while the mean tends towards a bad direction. And no understanding. Because why don’t they Just Do It?

Edit: But I hear that Europe is a large country.

This is my experience exactly. We used to host a monthly board gaming party before we moved and it was very energizing and exhausting at the same time.

After the two kids the games disappeared and it just became a normal party where we could talk and such and a playdate for the our and the other parents kids.

We will probably do it again when we settle into a new home at least I hope.

> But what people (probably the ones that never bother) tend to forget is how unbelievably gratifying it is to get a bunch of people together, to feed them and to make them talk, laugh, dance, etc. Afterwards you are tired but also grateful and socially energized in a way that feels fundamental to my existence.

I doubt its that they forget - it probably just isn't gratifying to them. Different people find different things gratifying.

There is no joy for me in bringing people together. I’m plenty happy in my little bubble with my wife and kids. All get togethers seem like bringing acquaintances briefly together for some thing that no one enjoys. I think it would take fundamentally different kind of people to enjoy these get together and I think over the past few decades culture has bifurcated people into these two buckets and the “extroverts” are significantly fewer than the “no party throwers”. For us the only get together we throw is a “splurgy” birthday party for my kids each year and thanksgiving where all the family visits. They’re both nice but nothing that I look forward to. Maybe me and a bunch of other folks are fundamentally broken on enjoying get togethers.

>people who regularly throw a party and people who never do it.

I have no doubt it might seem that way, but it doesn't seem like an interesting divide because the categorization doesn't really tell you anything about the people. But it's definitely a good rule of to thumb to remember the next time someone feels annoyed that "so and so never throws parties." It's also true when you visit friends in cities you never been. Some are natural and enthusiastic tour guides, some shun such a role.

But my guess is many the "never hosts" threw at least one party in the past and had a terrible experience and decided they suck at it.

I'm also assuming the never people you know are capable of throwing parties in terms of house size etc, and that you accounted for the ineligible in that respect.

I know people who are self-conscious about their messy houses and the idea of maintaining a presentable tidy house for parties would be enough for them to dismiss the idea outright even though they would like to do it in theory.

This also depends on the pennies we have to spare. I also as a middle aged and middle class European like to invite friends over, but the youth these days (and many many adults, at least around here) don't have the money to spend on this. Not the only reason, but a substantial one IMO.

Absolutely true about the two divisions in people.

I had an introverted girlfriend who enjoyed my tradition of inviting couples over for small dinner parties, but if said couple didn't reciprocate the invitation within some arbitrary period, she would claim they were impolite and we shouldn't invite them anymore.

My view was and is: the number of people happy to be invited to a party is lower than the number of people who are happy to host. It's not rudeness, nor even selfishness; it's sometimes just a flavor of introvert behavior.

If this weren't true, you'd be too busy with invites to think of some friends as "they always throw great parties".

I'd like to share my experience throwing parties, and some thoughts on introversion & extroversion.

I held weekly board game nights at my home for a year or two during the latter part of COVID. I loved board games and missed the weekly meetups that stopped happening due to lockdown. I only invited very close friends, all of whom are still very close. And I genuinely ruined my love of board games from how frustrating the experience proved to be. I put in a lot of effort to be a good host and everyone sure seemed to want to play board games, but over and over it was like herding cats once they were over. They were all acting in good faith, and yet that experience burned me out so much and my brain now associates board games with that experience so much that I barely play anymore, and don't enjoy it like I once did.

Now whether you want to use the label "introvert" or not, I was determined to push outside of my comfort zone that was staying in alone. But each of those dozens of nights drained me in a way that that cumulatively has left an emotional scar deep enough to impact my identity (being a person who loves board games was part of who I was, a part I liked)

I suspect that of the ways people will respond to this story, there are two that will be most common

1. What the heck are you talking about? I can't imagine having that experience

and

2. Yeah, that tracks

Whether or not you call those groups extrovert & introvert, and whether you believe such preferences are inherent, learned behavior, or social conditioning, here is a truth:

Trying to change your nature, however you came to have it, comes with a cost and can go wrong.

So for those who consider introversion to be mere choice, I encourage you to be less flippant in how you try to convince people of that.

We used to have parties. But then my wife had a few realisations:

1. "I hate losing sleep, and there are very few things in the world now important to me than a good night's sleep".

This has been a life changer for both of us. I used to be a late owl, but when she started going to bed at 9:30,I did too. We now have competitive "what was your sleep score" in the mornings over breakfast

2. "I do not enjoy conversations with more than 3 other people at the same time"

I don't mind crowds and can "hold forth" with entertaining stories and have fun doing it, but my wife has social anxiety that really only emerged in larger groups. She doesn't even like going to parties or bars, and after a few drinks, leaves me to it.

3. "I don't like getting wasted, and I don't even like getting slightly drunk if it screws up my sleep"

For me it's more medical. While I'm perfectly healthy, I noticed around the age of 45 that red wine gives me palpitations and tachycardia. Lots of beer (especially really nice beer) does the same. My father is 99 years old because he never drank alcohol. I honestly believe a single hangover would actually kill him. But certainly, years of "not kicking the shit out of his insides with booze" have contributed to his long life.

I self-identify as an introvert and don't much like social obligations. Nevertheless it's nice every once in a while that my wife drags me into them. If she's not there as a catalyst, I would probably be rotting at home with vitamin D deficiency.

Grateful for people who host and provide social opportunities even though I'm sometimes not outwardly social.

I can feel equally socially energised meeting people outside and I don't have to spend hours cleaning up after!

I think people who throw parties are invited to parties.

People who don't throw parties might want to think about this. :)

> Afterwards you are tired but also grateful and socially energized in a way that feels fundamental to my existence.

Every culture with a tradition of being a welcoming host has a saying along the lines of, “the pleasure is in the preparation”.

For those of us that live that life, it’s hard to imagine it any other way.

Thanks you for this comment.

I’m bad at throwing parties and I’m a bad cook.

So instead I invite friends/family to stay over. Even with kids.

Thats also very gratofying, play some board games, sit next to the fire and then have breakfast together.

Best way to copē with the world at it’s current state.

(Also a European here, mildly affectrd ny war)

100% I have been a "party thrower" for years and it is obvious that the bulk of our friend group never hosts an event. I think this is probably the way it's been with humans for a long time though. It is an interesting observation.

One thing you may not have thought about is that not everyone has a big enough social circle to throw parties.

I'd love to throw amazing parties, but I can't reliably expect more than 2-3 people to show up, so I don't try.

This is my experience too, and I'm more of an introvert who finds throwing a party both gratifying and exhausting. There are friends who reciprocate and friends who don't, and I don't judge.

My wife and I have hosted dinner parties a few times. I have never gotten the same sense of gratification that you have.

There's a third and fourth group. People who get invited to these parties and people who are never invited to parties

I got tired just reading this comment.

there's more than two types, because the type that never throws parties can be subdivided into smaller groups of people who throw parties due to familial requirements - kids, visiting relatives from other countries and so forth.

This seems to be the divide between introverts and extroverts.

> But what people (probably the ones that never bother) tend to forget is how unbelievably gratifying it is to get a bunch of people together, to feed them and to make them talk, laugh, dance, etc.

I haven't forgotten anything. As I read your sentence I felt revulsion filling my soul. The idea that someone might find such thing gratifying adds another layer to already a terrible feeling.

Sometimes I'm hosting one or two people, rarely more. Talking, laughing, feeding sure, dancing never, unless you consider Beatsaber dancing. I never feel it gratifying. It's just a mental price of having an interaction.

asabiyyah is a vital component to the survival of civilization

> But what people (probably the ones that never bother) tend to forget is how unbelievably gratifying it is to get a bunch of people together, to feed them and to make them talk, laugh, dance, etc.

Nope. Its a bunch of work and stress and thoroughly beaten by a dull night in. If I want to bring people together, I'll pay for it to be done - e.g. a restaurant.

You're doing the Lord's work. Thank you so much for that, even though I don't directly benefiting from it.

There is an epidemic of disconnection and loneliness, Putnam and others are 100% right. There's an organized effort by some people to isolate humans from each other as much as possible, and they have their own swarm of useful idiots to aide them.

The solution to this problem needs explicit action, this is not something that will take care of itself, or people would adapt to it.

I bought a domain recently, https://clubs.fyi that I will devote to this purpose of human connection[1], if anyone wants to join shoot me an email, there's nothing there yet but there will be stuff in a week or so. :)

1. Not connection in the SF-sense like Facebook, Meetup, etc.

It's almost unbelievable that people like you exist. Attending a gathering is torture enough. Hosting one, repeatedly at that, sounds like living in the ninth circle of hell.

Thanks for your service to humanity.

In the almost 11 years I have owned my home, I just hosted a group for the second time. It was a game night with dinner.

You are right: It was work, it was money. I am not exactly a social butterfly, but even I was able to pull off a gathering of four other people. It was so worth it, because we all had an absolute blast.

It was also very much needed. So I, for one, plan on doing my part to counter this trend.

alright, where do I rsvp?

[dead]

Spoken like someone with no friends or relatives that live far away. Screens can also be extremely connecting. They are a tool and as such value neutral. Is it evil that I can have a weekly video-call with family members on another continent when the alternative would be...simply no contact at all, super expensive phone calls or letters. I don't think so.

I agree with you general sentiment but how did you end up in a situation where you feel this way but also wanted to try a VR headset but then also decided to throw it away immediately after trying it seemingly surprised by what the experience was.

Or, it's because no one can afford spaces to host company:

https://fortune.com/2026/06/22/1-in-3-young-adults-living-wi...

Why, then, do you look at the speck in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the log in your own eye?

People are downvoting because the tone is a bit harsh but he has a point.

While TV has been a thing for a long time, content was limited, and more importantly curated. You couldn't manage your own playlists/subscriptions and almost infinite content on subjects that interest you.

Video games were mostly for kids.

There were no social media feeds optimize to monopolize your attention and make you doomscroll.

Hey even having a TV/widescreen at home has a direct impact on couples sex life...which magically reactivate when the light goes out.

The internet is wonderful for many things but nobody can denies it has an impact on our in person social life.

It is what you make of it. It gives and takes, heat and light, waves for waves, words for words. It lets time stay alive as bits, as long as they don’t rot. In exchange, it suck up your real world time. To use it is to used by it.

We need a new way to use it safely for us and the world writ large.

This has been going on since at least the mid 1970s if the graphs in the article are anything to go by. How will you blame the screens then?

I actually doubt it. For one, "blame" implies damage and I'm not sure this is even a real problem. But I actually think it corresponds with rising prosperity (which councides with the rise of technology). People associate with tribes and clans for mutual support and protection and it's just much less necessary now.

It's not only the screen. It's everything about late Capitalism. The families are more atomized. There are less families and kids. Big dinners are usually for big families. It takes a lot of skills and practices to prepare a big dinner for 10-12 people quickly.

I have a friend who is married and have 3 kids. His wife is a SAHM. She didn't know anything about cooking before they got married back in 2011, and nowadays she could easily throw a party for 10-12 people with only half of day of preparation (excluding shopping) -- and that's 10 Chinese dishes she had to cook, not BBQ stuffs. That's crazy for us. I can't imagine how much time it would take us to prepare even 5 dishes. I used to watch she cooking and it was so elegant. She uses the stove to its full, including baking, and still has the leisure to talk to me and cut raw food quickly.

It takes practices. She having 3 kids definitely "helps" with the practice. Nowadays people don't get to practice these things. It's like a myth to us.

I think it's kinda impossible for a two-worker family unless you are really into this kind of stuffs. Otherwise taking care of work and kids is already way too much for us.

that's true. and I noticed that was true when I met my internet friends in real life and I noticed the real life interaction made the bond much more valuable and more complex than it was.

even when it's GOOD it's not as good as real life, however, it does take less effort.

Tell her that again man, I'm sure it warms her heart

Just want to chime in that I have had the same experience and am similarly appreciative!

I do agree that this is a very good quality of a wife. I have a friend whose wife is like this and I can't tell you how much effort he saved for himself.

That guy really ought to read How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard.

But that's also great, meeting in a restaurant or bar. Or perhaps renting a cabinet space in one. Or just going on a picnic or free outdoor concert together. Doesn't need to be someone's home. I feel a lot of these things have shrunk massively.

Same here in Japan

That's because you don't eat dinner until 10pm

Some of my friends are married with kids, some are married without kids, and some are single. My wife strongly prefers hosting couples and not my indidividual friends, so they dinners are my friend plus his wife/gf who no one knows as well, and I never really like that awkward dynamic where he and I are the only people who really know each other. But she understandably doesn't like 3rd-wheeling it with just me and the friend alone. So we mostly only ever have friends over who are married, unless it's someone we're both friends with.

I think there's this huge gap coming with age. Nobody does that spaghetti thing anymore, good friends after finishing school move elsewhere, responsibilities in many new fields increase and the opportunities to meet hundred candidates decrease exponentially. So even if you'd continue doing the spaghetti, I doubt you'd have too many to feed...

- "Sorry, but I'm on a low-carb diet, no carbs and especially not after 3pm"

- "Do you use gluten-free pasta? I think I have a gluten allergy."

- "Why always ethnic food like pasta? What's wrong with white people food, like Cheeseburgers?"

People have become too complicated.

Quite frustrating as I can’t quite pin down how they adjust for this or whether there’s some massive discontinuity between ‘75 and ‘85

Doesn't that seems like a more accurate measurement? what's the percentage of adults who check "yes" for "friends i'm hoping to hook up with" versus those that say "oooh, you mean actual friends"?

> - mixing circles -- people are often isolating their friend groups into niches (pickelball friends, church friends, D&D friends...)

I was raised in a social environment where mixing circles was normal and it took me a while to realize that that's not how Americans do things. It certainly creates a lot of difficulties connecting with others, and at least for myself I am a lot less motivated to get to know people better when I'm the X or Y buddy they reach out to when the people they actually want to hang out with are unavailable.

> - People unwilling to commit to an event > 7 days in advance

You want N people. Assume 1/2 won't show. Invite 2N people. Either ask people to bring a bit of food, or provide food for 1.5xN and if you get only N then you'll have leftovers.

> - Unreciprocated $100s of dollars spent is non sustainable, and lowkey feels kinda like buying others friendship

If you have the disposable invome for it then it's its own reward, and you're not buying friends: you're helping them make new friends with your other guests, and this is something they'll appreciate about you. They might or might not reciprocate because as we've seen in this thread, many are not into hosting.

> - mixing circles -- people are often isolating their friend groups into niches (pickelball friends, church friends, D&D friends...)

Mixing is half the point!!

> - And IMO the overarching issue in America that creates so many problems -- Everyone is so overworked that they don't have the energy/capactity to do good things: Exercise, and hosting parties being two examples.

That's what long weekends are for, so host a party on a day in a long weekend.

I don’t get the commit thing. I see it too. “I’ll see how work is and let you know” or something like it. My view is always that an advance plan reduces rather than increases anxiety.

> Unreciprocated $100s of dollars spent [...]

See, that's your problem. You don't throw a house party because you want to go to other house parties. You do that because and only because, you want to throw a house party.

I think it’s harsh to publicly describe your wife as neurotic for following basic etiquette

Maybe that neurosis explains another phenomena I’ve noticed.

My household hosts a lot and we’ve come to expect a full on 50% flake rate, down to multiple instances of people getting to our street and deciding to stop at the restaurant at the end for food and go home instead of arriving.

It means if we invite less than 5 people there are occasions where literally no one shows up. It’s also difficult to plan for when the odds go in the other direction like one news year party where we invited 30 people, expected ~15 and had 29 show up.

You'll want to try and expand your circle of friends to include those that are the planning type and will bring variety to the location. Either that, or start changing the location.

If you don't, people will get bored and eventually the group will disband.

Overbooked children or just mathematical combination? If you have 5 friends each with 1 kid and the kid only does 2 things a week chances are you won’t ever get them all together.

Seems like these parents are prioritizing their kids and probably encouraging things they enjoy doing rather than wine night. Chances are the kids are enjoying life.

> it was rare that I had a scheduled sports event on a Friday or Saturday evening

When I grew up in the South, football & basketball games were Friday & Saturday nights. Apparently this was common[1].

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_Night_Lights_(TV_series...

A culture where people with 2–3 kids are already swamped with work and obligations.

But how come the fertility rates are low? they ask.

Same - my friends group had weekly (and sometimes more than-weekly) gatherings that all faded away when kids arrived. The group aligned more around kids and new friends met through kids activities.

I think the problem is that self-reported scores of loneliness go down, but a lot of the data suggests that our increasing solitude and isolation isn’t good for us, whether we feel lonely or not.

Good article on this a few days ago that I’ve been thinking about a lot: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49812533

Do you have data for this? This contradicts common sense and every datapoint I’ve seen so far that isolation is a rapidly rising issue.

My mother was a stay at home mom and at least from my perspective she never seemed isolated but that seemed to be because there were many other stay at home moms on our block. We basically knew everyone on our block that had kids, which was most of them back then. I distinctly remember all the time we spent at our neighbours' houses for combination play dates and card games. Us kids would play inside or outside and the moms would play cards and socialize. There were always people coming and going and it felt like the entire block was a sort of extended family. I don't remember many organized dinner parties but that could just be from being a small child at the time so we weren't up late and didn't spend time sitting at the "adult table" when there were gatherings (we'd be fed something and then go play with the other kids in the basement or another room).

> If you are at home with a kid, you are truly absolutely alone, unless you organize something.

There are parks, splash pads, playgrounds—plenty of places where parents naturally gather without needing to be organized.

Ya it's a real thing. At 35 y.o, I've hosted people in the 600 sqft basement my partner and I rent, but realistically all of our space fits about 3 extra people and all of that is in the same space as the kitchen. Some of my friends have older places with more space and better layouts for such a thing, but they're also spending quite a lot more and still need decent dual incomes usually to pull it off. They also tend to position themselves as "hosting" type people. With such volatile careers, it doesn't make sense to extend ourselves unnecessarily and don't plan on having kids or getting married. This place was a reluctant upgrade after getting kicked out of our studio, so at this point we consider it a luxury to have any separate rooms at all. We don't have any upward mobility to look forward to in the next 5 years, and although I'm generally satisfied in life, typing those words feels a bit depressing.

To be fair, if owning a place or renting with more space was the most important thing to us, we could hypothetically move to a lower CoL area, but we ultimately find that a rather poor tradeoff that would only save a marginal amount on net anyway. We're thankful to have those close friends that have the space and enjoy hosting.

Canada fwiw.

I mean, there is a sliding scale what "hosting someone" means. Most of this thread seems to assume classic dinner parties where you prepare all the food for the people, and they may include aquintances.

We often host a group of good friends, and it's more like a potluck. Brunch is especially easy, as everyone can bring some random dish and there is little coordination necessary. It's also pretty cheap, we don't really spend much more money than we would on regular breakfast. Dinner may be a bit more expensive as we usually do the main (meat) dish.

As they're all good friends we don't have to prepare the place either, they don't care when it's a bit messy. We're lucky to have a big place, but every now and then also go to other friends where people have to sit on the floor due to lack of chairs when there's more than 8 invited. It's fine (and I'm in my 40s, it's not a bunch of college kids).

You have to get comfortable with friction. Friction is part of a healthy human life, anything remotely challenging involves friction. Getting ten people together will always be more complicated than staring into a screen.

Adler made the profound observation that people don't suffer from anxiety, they invent and maintain it to avoid their life tasks. Same is true for blaming things on friction. "Oh I've only there wasn't that much friction, I wasn't so busy" etc. Accept the friction, do it anyway.

I think we also need to increase the friction of social media. But yeah, I used to live in the same apartment building as two friends so “hosting a dinner party” was as complex and sending a DM at 4pm to arrange something after work.

I would do this multiple times a week because it was so easy and required minimal coordination.

> Modern parents ARE tired and parenting a lot. That's why on the weekends we invite our friends with kids over and the kids run around and entertain each other so we can have some "Just talk to adults" time with the other parents

In my social circle, if you're inviting people over, then you need to satisfy:

1. Neat + Tidy house

2. Good food, and lots of it

Both take time, and not for tired parents.

(To be clear: These are not my expectations...)

I'm a parent and while I invite people over (indeed, this last Sunday we had another couple and their kid over) and do this thing, very few of our parent friends appear to do it. Or I guess maybe they do it with each other and just don't invite us, but I think it's rarer than you think.

Yeah, I found this weird. Maybe it's some over-obsessive American thing? Random, no-reason sleepovers, or BBQ-style sunday gatherings, and other "just get together and eat so children can play" activities are fairly common among parents with small kids.

It's certainly not like I remember it in the 80s, but still happens a lot, and my uninformed take is: "community" in the US was never that cohesive, it only took so much to make it fall apart.

Social Media brought a decline between 1975 and 1995? It surely plays a role (at least as a confounder), but can't be the sole cause.

I really didn't like reading your comment, but I can't argue much against it...

All I can say is the consequences of a degrading mental/social health are harder to grasp than a hangover or, for the lack of a better smoking example, lung cancer.

Still I'm also puzzled by the amount of people, even in my own social circle, that "just want to wind down after work" (read: completely fry their brain)

That doesn't explain the declines before that. It requires a lot of domestic skills and time to host a good party.

> Personally feels insane that people find this surprising or puzzling. (…) This is obviously because of social media or other algorithmic applications.

Facebook was founded over twenty years ago. There are adults in the world who have no recollection of a life before social media. In that sense it shouldn’t be surprising or puzzling, should it?

> It couldn't be more obvious how unhealthy it is, yet there is no demand for it to get outlawed and there won't be any time soon.

Remember when young adults were literally shouting online “let China suck up all my data” in response to the proposed TikTok ban? I (and probably you) lived in and can remember a world before the internet was in every part of our lives, but there are adults living now who can’t. It is not obvious to them.

> Personally feels insane that people find this surprising or puzzling.

Who finds this surprising or puzzling? I do not see this sentiment in the article or in the comments here. Are you making up people to get mad at?

> yet there is no demand for it to get outlawed and there won't be any time soon. It is pretty sad.

Fortunately this is very slowly starting to crack. Maybe not from social pressure as it deserves, but litigation is finally starting to catch up with the tech and some recent court rules have started putting some simple yet major compromises on Meta. We're talking "need to remove likes" levels of major.

I think these are still in appeal (or have already settled), but I'm keeping a close eye on this.

this predates social media significantly, aligns more with both partners in married couples working

and why wouldn't it? we went from 40 hours of one person being able to support a household, now it's more assumed to be 80 hours from two people

our time has been stolen from us

productivity has increased, but so have working hours, people in the workforce, commuting time, etc

I doubt Social Media would have become as nearly as popular as it did, if the middle-class had the same social life as it had in the 50s.

The people in my life who are always throwing parties, have insteresting hobbies like surfing, playing music or rock climbing are basically minimal users of social networking.

Smoking actually has gone up in the recent few years with younger people, especially women. Not sure if buy the same amount in every country, but an uptick is noticeable.

And yes, this is all down to a few celebrities and influencers who are popular with that crowd showing off the habit in public. A fashion.

> unpaid household management jobs

Such a drab, dystopian, ultra-capitalist, and essentially dishonest description of the homemaker role.

I think people also forget (or don’t even know) that before mobile phones you’d often walk over to someone’s house just to knock on the door to find out if they were in or see what they were doing.

So allied to the lack of dinner parties, there’s fewer reasons to even go to someone’s house any more, you can just text them… or not even bother and check their socials to see what impression of a life they’re presenting today.

I did debate in the 00s though and my experience differed - it was already a highly technical affair that didn’t really require strong communication skills, but rather was more about playing logic tricks to be technically “correct” and saying so much that your opponent couldn’t counter all of it during rebuttals. That was enough to get me into the final playoffs at the national championships, and to this day I’ve been told that I focus too much on being “right” rather than being empathetic or persuasive, so debate was not the social panacea that it might have once been.

I really do not think debate team modeled healthy communication. It is mostly about debating as a sport, basically coming up with a sleazy twist argument on the position you do not even believe in. If anything, it makes you greatly prepared to be keyboard warrior of the bad-faith argument kind and teaches you to enjoy it.

I did enjoyed debate team activities btw. The above is what I eventually realized later.

I went to a school with a debate team in the 2000s, and there were organized national tournaments all the time. And watching social media debaters is still a popular niche past time?

Maybe it's declined since the 50s in favor of football or so on but I'd like to see the numbers.

> Another thing that caught my attention is that my female friends all have active social lives, whereas that is very rare among the men I know (again, past a certain age).

Yes, that is a pretty typical thing. Starting around late 20s, pretty much most guys are either part of a steady relationship, usually with kids or permanently without a relationship. The men with families have their own family events and get included in the wife's social and family circle. The guys who do not get paired up are not welcome at those events and wives forbid the partnered up guys to hang out with their single male friends on the other days. To be fair, there is nowadays anyway so much online entertainment, that it probably will be fine in the end.

This is a charming idea and I am inspired to try it. We just need more face time (vs. Facetime) in our lives.

You might be on to something. I am one of those school nights people. Having people over will kill all "me-time" for that evening - once you get them out of the house, you do the dishes and it's straight to bed, usually. Meaning I had zero time for myself, I was hosting. The idea of having no "me-time" between two work days is hell for me. It was OK in my 20s and 30s, but not now in middle age.

There's probably some mathematical relationship between car dependency, time, and urban sprawl too.

Back in the 70s there may have been 1 or 2 affordable neighborhoods in your metro area where people in their late 20s could buy a house -- and they were both probably fairly close to the city center. Nowdays, I'd say those neighborhoods are likely to be farther away from the city center (exurbs) and thus farther away from each other.

I think about this with my hometown friends in the PNW. Growing up we all lived in Bellevue, Redmond, and Kirkland, and now those areas are all too expensive and folks are living in Issaquah, Duvall, Renton, etc.

DUI in the 1970s was just not as much a worry. The BAC limits were higher and enforcement was lax. Driving after a few drinks, as long as you weren't totally blotto, was pretty common.

Live in NYC and my wife and I were just commenting on how when we learn about our friends' lives in the suburbs in our home states they really seem to lack a social life. It's like it just dies in your 30s. This seems to be independent of obvious things like having kids, as the parents I know who live here seem to have similarly rich socialize lives to the DINKs I know.

What do you regret exactly? I have found that friendships are rarely balanced in that sense. Sometimes you spend more (effort, worry, money) but it's also for your own benefit.

Sounds unfortunate but I don't think there's anything to regret, you spent time and money no one else was spending but you still (hopefully) created positive experiences in return.

Freeloaders. It tells you something about the relationships that those "friends" choose to build.

If the only friends you have are those you have to pay, when the money's gone, are they likely to stick around? (Likely not)

But if they do, then maybe you've found a true friendship.

i really started to loathe potlucks. i'd rather not be invited tbh.

The first comment I see saying this. What about the percentage of people who actually own their home? Who can afford a "party"? It does mention dual income but how correlated is this change with the decoupling of economic productivity gains with worker wealth and income?

When I was growing up, a good deal of these sorts of parties involved backyards, barbecues, and swimming pools. Rarely did we spend time indoors.

I think the point of the article is more about meeting with others at all, as opposed to it specifically being at home. So hang out with friends outside!

No need to suspect ;)

Family and community are highly valued and protected in their culture. Something Americans have lost their way from.

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Fun dinner parties with no conflict or drama don't make for good TV. You should try watching less TV and going to, or hosting, more dinner parties.

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Agreed - my social life has frequent gatherings only because my wife is, despite working and having kids, extremely motivated to meet up with friends. If she didn’t have that motivation we probably wouldn’t be seeing anyone, and if she weren’t working then that could compensate.

I am surprised i had to scroll this far to see the whole thing was powered by women’s unpaid labor.

> So many questions and so much to clean up.

Yes -- the main reason my wife and I stopped doing "Spaghetti Sundays" was because I hated cleaning up the house (for hours and hours!) before the guests showed up.

#1 is a big reason for our house. The house (and garage) badly needs a significant declutter, but we are both working professionals and don't have the energy to make a significant enough dent, especially since we both have hobbies where we accumulate more stuff all the time as well (especially me, I impulse buy board games and don't cull the ones I'm not playing often enough).

It doesn't help that I design board games too, and have too much of an easy excuse to want to get these games so I can 'research' them.

And because I'm mentally tired all the time after work, that also seems to lower my willpower. And clicking the 'buy' button online is way too easy to do.

We did used to host a monthly game designer playtest night before the pandemic, but our house had a lot less stuff back then. And being stuck in the house during the pandemic with nothing to do but play solo board games and video games (and also the uncertainty if I was even going to make it through the pandemic, since I already had respiratory issues from asthma) definitely accelerated the bad impulse buying habits I already had.

We have made slight dents in it, but the significant declutter probably won't happen until the next time I'm in between jobs, assuming there's at least a month in between jobs.

The period in my life when I hosted parties was when I was a mostly broke college student and flatsharing (you can get a surprising mileage out of cheap Sangria and snacks).

For most people posting on HN, I would guess, money would not be even in the top-3 of reasons.

I’ve been there myself - but your actual friends don’t care.

Try easing into it - go on a late afternoon sunset picnic (ironically also on the list) - a blanket, cheese, crackers, cured meat and wine and a portable speaker. Everyone is happy and it’s super cheap, the outdoors is your living room and a couple hours before sunset never disappoints (though depending on where you are the weather might be a challenge).

I remember a pot luck dinner where I was the only guest that brought food. The invitation was clear, just ignored.

That is quite an ugly posture and without any bit of substance. What was this meaning to add? I'm genuinely wondering.

This is quite bleak but relatable. I used to strive to be a 'connector' type and the only thing that kept me going was my optimism and trying to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. That broke around COVID. The sad truth is there's a lot of shitty people :( A better long term strategy is to try to identify and avoid these people as their attitude will chip at you and bring you down.

Much easier to sustain a positive attitude and disposition when you surround yourself by people who are also investing in the friendship / relationship or who are likely to pay it forward with others.

This is essentially what held old world cultures together before the rise of capitalism and it's individualistic attitudes.

Also living in a dense urban neighborhood (in another large US city) and I have a similar experience. There are many bars and restaurants in walking distance, but also my friends and I host each other often. We know each other well, so we don’t worry too much about trying to come up with impressive dinners. I have some go-to recipes that I can scale up easily. Dinners are often spontaneous: group texts light up towards the end of the workday and whoever’s available will show up.

I think the real key is that we are all within walking distance of each other. Friends who live a ten-minute drive away (still close!) are also invited but rarely show up. Also, no one has kids yet.

We're in our early forties with no local partners and yes, compared to all the years we spent in suburbs, living here in NYC makes a tremendous positive difference. We can't overstate how much it's done for our mental health to have found community hangouts we can reach on foot in all of several minutes.

Can't speak about the USA but here in south of Spain houses tend to be small, weather good and eating outside relatively affordable so people are used to meet outside.

Most of our gatherings are actually at the beach because for most it is just a short walk from home and there are shops very close that sell super cold beers and drinks so you don't even have to carry a huge cooler.

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Surely you could still meet people outside of home while living in a small apartment? At least that’s what everyone here in Japan does.

The percentage of Americans who own their own homes has gone up 1% since 1970 so that isn’t it.

for people not having a home calling job, get a glimpse by peering into people's cars. you will see horrors beyond comprehension.

Your comment deserves more responses. The observation that leisure becomes work is definitely true for contemporary video games, many of which are stuffed with so many "busywork" features and mini-games that they become tedium, like another job. And since ancient times, the wealthy have hunted for recreation, almost like simulating the need to directly acquire food in the wild that they have lost.

Dinners don’t necessarily have to be big though. My wife hosts friends over all the time but usually it’s still small intimate affairs, like average 1-2 people (and their kids if they have any) - don’t need to invite everyone at once. Maybe it’s more normal here in Japan to do small groups - when my American friends come visit they always come in giant groups and it makes everything logistically challenging (which my wife also complains about, alongside the fact that it’s impossible to have a deep conversation when 12 people are in the room).

Plus they also don’t have to be polished. Don’t bother cleaning up the house and order a pizza, and everyone will still have a good time. Or just go out to a restaurant and not worry about any of that.

My wife was a volunteer coordinator at our school district. One time she roped me into making food for 150 teachers for teacher appreciation week. I’d much rather do that than prepare for a party in my house regardless of how much or little food I have to prepare. The food prep is the easy part. I can put in AirPods and listen to an audiobook while prepping or cooking things late at night. I can hand over the food and receive compliments via proxy. I don’t have to interact with people at the end and spend hours counting down the minutes until my house is empty and I can relax again.

I did wonder about that. It mentions that lower-income individuals have less friends and thus throw less parties. But part of me wondered if that was precisely because they lacked the space to host anything more than a few friends over. Someone in a $2000/month studio apartment may not have the time nor money to try and host anything to begin with. And given costs these days, even the thought of eating out and meeting with friends is difficult.

>Sure, those are fictions for TV

When you noticed you were relying on evidence from fiction, instead of verbally acknowledging that that was what you were doing, you should've stopped relying on the "evidence".

It might make sense every now and them to rely on fiction for evidence in domains where it is very hard to obtain any data at all, but in this particular, there is plenty of hard data of what US workers used to earn, what they earn now, what houses and food used to cost and what they cost now.

(I expect that the hard data will fail to support your belief that things have gotten significantly harder economically for the average person.)

I would think that in 1600 years, it would be more like Edward Gibbon CC or such.

I have a theory that the internet gave antisocial people an outsized voice they lacked before. Poorly socialized people before the internet had little forum to say anything where as now they can overwhelm any forum online while continuing their anti social mentality.

It’s like if you gave your grouchy shut in uncle a megaphone to scream at everyone from his veranda every day nonstop

This is HN. The land of eternal futile optimizations.

no, it's the culture even when they're not immigrants

That was the first reason given in the article: more dual-income households, less free time for women to organize and cook.

This is really true, people used to have to figure what was a dietary preference vs a dietary requirement.

I was just planning a dinner party a while ago and the Venn diagram of what foods I could make was truly vexing.

I will move heaven and earth and scrub pots and pans for someone with Celiac, but working around people’s mere preferences is irritating.

prior generations would just eat around it or suck it up.

I'm not sure how big a deal that really is in a broad sense.

My friend circle in our old city included both Falstaffian omnivores and vegans, and we entertained often. It's not hard to ensure there's food available for folks on a more restrictive diet, and even my friends with UCI racing licenses generally ate like normal people at social events.

Mileage varies, obviously.

(I will say, however, that after having made a vegan "bolognese" once, I have no need to do so again. It was much more effort than the already time-consuming genuine article.)

Take a look at this graph https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/housing1.png?...

You don’t need a big house to throw a party. After divorce I decided to relive my teenage years and thrown many parties in a 40m2 apartment. You can easily fit 30 or more people in.

Were houses that much bigger in the 1970s, though? Families definitely were bigger, so there were more people per square meter. I think overall, it's a sociological change, not a financial one. People are just less into hosting parties; too much hassle of cleaning up & preparing food, too many online distractions, etc.

Could be, but your income should be going up in unison. If its not, its time to re-evaluate your career. Cost of living adjustments should be keeping pace with inflation, which is also a check-and-balance for business owners, to realize inflating costs to customers isn't necessarily a good thing.

If you're not getting that, you're being scammed.

> everyone demands they are catered to on their terms.

How much of a thing is this in practice? To me this also feels driven by the expectations of the host towards the guests beeing fully accommodated by them. It's probably a mixture of both.

Like, I'm happy to bring my own food, when invited. E.g. I would presume most vegans would be cool with bringing their own or ordering, as you are used to that anyways.

Every Mormon house I go to is crawling with guests. Family friends, relatives, neighbors. Watching a game, cooking dinner, doing a construction project together, kids in a Nerf-gun war. Most other houses/apartments I go to are sterile, cold, and lonely. That difference is why.

I wouldn't call diagnosing people for actual medical issues we learned about since the 70s an en vogue thing. Other than those, it's pretty much just vegan / non-vegan.

Maybe you live somewhere extremely shitty but my family's friend groups get together all the time, it's not that hard. Just go over to their place, you just make up 101 excuses not to do it.

You should move to a different apartment. That's the only language landlords understand.