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by robofd 3088 days ago
One question I have as a recent grad who moved to Silicon Valley to work in tech is how do I get invited to one of these parties. Setting aside all the social implications, they sound really fun.
4 comments

The parties described in the article are abusive. Stay away from them.

The easiest filter is to look for parties where alcohol and drugs are banned, and latecomers are not allowed.

I go to play parties regularly, but only go to ones that are constructed in a manner that encourages enthusiastic consent and safety.

Be an attractive female with the right connections or be a powerful male with the right connections.
Yikes. I can piece myself as a combination of the two, but don't belong to either category separately. Just trying to have fun..
I call this power discrimination. I demand equal treatment of all men by the oppossum sex.
If you continue to post unsubstantive comments to HN we will ban you.
Same way as the finance industry, be wealthy ,connected, or powerful.

Those parties and connections are not for normal people, more like 1%.

Go to Burning Man or find the crowd that does.
This, basically.

The kinds of parties being described aren't all that unusual for the bay area. It's certainly not isolated to tech.

Meet interesting people, network. You'll figure it out eventually.

Where do I start meeting people? Seek out networking events online?
There aren't really "networking events". It's a community of like-minded people that aren't particularly eager to add more people to the community that aren't also like-minded.

That aside, they can be fairly inclusive.

I got involved in the community in 2002. I was a typical dot-com nerd. I'd been doing some amateur rocketry events in the black rock desert and had heard about Burning Man. Eventually, I decided I had to go. Got introduced to a group of people that had a camp, they discovered I was terribly useful (I could weld, machine, fix electronics, repair generators, build things, etc), and the rest was history.

I went, met a tremendous number of people, cultivated lots of friendships and from there became privy to all the other inter-related things happening in the bay area, including the kinds of parties described above. The debauchery I've had the opportunity to participate in is quite extensive.

Be useful, be nice, be non-judgmental, go meet people, get involved, do stuff, become part of the community and you'll enjoy similar opportunities.