[vasco]

So I live in Amsterdam and my friends are from about 6 European countries and we do the same as the Brazilian guy.

Imagine being in the playground as a kid. You just are there. And if its fun, its not fun because of you, its fun because of the group which is there. So are parties, they just "are".

All these rules you guys have appear to me like watching a movie about a psychopath lining up pens in the living room.

[robocat]

You are just being judgy.

Dong think of it as rules, think of it as someone explaining etiquette. That is hard to write down without sounding weird.

I bet you are oversimplifying how good parties are created in your own culture. If you tried to write down the actual etiquette it would come out sounding weird to us all.

Humans create odd rituals and expectations about everything social. You only really notice it when polling at other cultures - ie is hard to see in your own culture because you implicitly understand the "rules".

#1 is amazingly insightful:

  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

Well written. Unobvious to many. I'm sure we all recognise when a hostess or host is trying far too hard and failing badly. It is tricky to learn the skill of being a relaxed hostess/host (some people do it naturally, or have learnt from others).

[xxs]

I'd also strongly support the notion - the article is very US centric, It feels overly concerned about being a host, providing close to a formal experience and expectations for/from the guests, too.

[vasco]

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

Like imagine if during sex you think your partner is just meta-thinking about giving you a good experience - they should just be enjoying and so should you. To me this example makes it more visceral but upon reflection I'm just making a basic "live in the moment" cliche.

[swiftcoder]

I don't know about the Netherlands, but having spent a bit of time in Germany, you may be underestimating the mount of party planning that is ingrained into the various European cultures.

From an outside perspective, even fairly casual German gatherings feel like they are orchestrated with a level of precision that would do a military campaign proud - but the Germans I was with don't really seem to notice this (likely because they all already know their roles, and to them it's just part of their culture)

[MrScruff]

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

[swiftcoder]

I think there's a cultural element to how much of it people will know to do without being explicitly told what to do.

In the US successful gatherings tend to require a fair bit of wrangling - I've been to more than one potluck where everyone showed up with roughly the same dish...

[MrScruff]

I think that goes everywhere though, I’ve been to at least one of every type of party described in this discussion thread in the last year and I’m not American.

[shadyKeystrokes]

MR. Quiche - we meet again..

[robocat]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Going too meta is another fail!

[bonoboTP]

It's the same with dating. The American rules about first dates, second dates, the exclusivity talk etc. is just not how it works in Europe. Maybe with online dating it moves towards it, but the regular way is much more informal and low pressure.

[hitarpetar]

I'm American and have no clue wtf you're talking about

[albedoa]

Same. This is completely foreign to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45797794

It's the conclusions of someone whose understanding of America is formed entirely from television.