8 ms·

That only explains half of the picture, though. The photograph in the linked article explains it quite well to me - regardless of how 'real' it is, there's a p

That only explains half of the picture, though. The photograph in the linked article explains it quite well to me - regardless of how 'real' it is, there's a picture of a shiny gathering with the dresses and the shiny clothes and the fancy food, and so on. And there's nothing wrong with that. I love me some good dress-up and the food there looks super yum. But the simple gatherings seem to have disappeared. Outside of family, do people visit just for the sake of visiting anymore? I think it was the unified purpose, the school catchment area, maybe. That proximity. Everyone is everywhere now. My park is not your park, my pub is not your pub, etc.

WalterBright 10y ago
I find it tiresome that it becomes hard to just have friends over. Have to negotiate a time, clean the house, get food, and if you're going to a friend's house you're expected to "bring something", etc. Sigh.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  Back in college, the rule in the dorms was if your door was open, you were welcoming anyone who wanted to drop in and hang out. 40 years later, I still miss that.
  - shanusmagnus 10y ago
    The recapturing of some of this is one of the best things about my job, not because my job is anything really special in that regard, but because I'd spent so much time contracting (alone in a room by myself) or in grad school (same.) Having an office, and a culture where people would 'drop by' sometimes, either for real work reasons, tenuous work reasons, or purely social, has been a godsend. Now I'm thinking about how to consciously engineer this given our environmental constraints...
  - dcposch 10y ago
    I miss this as well! Stanford still has this and calls it the open door policy I really hope something like Campus Housing works out. They had a great idea but didnt execute. With the right group of people I'd be super down to live in something like a dorm again.
- shanusmagnus 10y ago
  The 'cleaning the house' especially. At some point adulthood seems to inculcate this notion of formality to visits. It's been universally to my social detriment.
- enobrev 10y ago
  My wife and I use it as an excuse to clean up. We try to keep an active social life, as-is, so the place is generally clean-ish. But during especially busy weeks (or minor sickness, or random bouts of laziness and existential despair), the place can really fall apart. So one of us will look around in disgust, invite someone over for dinner or drinks or something, and then politely pop in on the other, like "hey honey... I just invited [so-an-so], and they'll be here in an hour". Suddenly, within 20-30 minutes, the place is spotless.
  - randycupertino 10y ago
    Hah... this is awful but so true. We go through the exact same thing. We just had overnight houseguests, the place hasn't been this spotless in years. I even had the carpets steamed!
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    Haha. My wife makes me cancel the invitation.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
cmurf 10y ago
Do a weekly (or monthly) dinner. They key is consistency (OK an informality: byob, bring something you like, open invite instead of rsvps, etc).
- markeroon 10y ago
  This is spot on.
- EGreg 10y ago
  Jews do this - they have Shabbat every week, and festivals and other things where people live in a community and have to interact. Christians also have traditional Church attendance and so do Muslims and many other faiths I'm sure. The point is, traditional life revolved around a community. Today, everyone is very individualistic in the USA. They move out and have their own place, not just the men but the women too. The grandparents live alone and then are shipped off to nursing homes while the kids are shipped off to daycares. But it wasn't always like this. In our modern society we are disconnected like never before.
nostrademons 10y ago
So, the answer to that is very much "yes", but you have to make trade-offs in your life that show you value it. In order to have impromptu visits that fill up the empty spaces in your life, you first need to have empty spaces in your life. That is largely incompatible with filling every moment of your life with work or career advancement. That group of my high-school friends who are now largely janitors, retail clerks, and dropouts? They get together pretty much every weekend, usually with spur-of-the-moment plans made on Thursday night or Friday morning. My wife often just invites a friend over for Saturday brunch; occasionally I'll wake up and they're chatting downstairs. I remember one time when I was still at Google, I'd gone over to a friend's to play Starcraft, but his roommate was trying out different cellos and he had played the cello in high school, so we ended up with an impromptu cello trio in the living room. Another friend dropped by unannounced, we got the fireplace going, and when the third roommate arrived home, he was like "This is like a scene out of the 19th century." The thing is, this is largely incompatible with spending long hours at work or doing things in your off hours (applying for jobs, going back to school, learning new programming languages) for career advancement. I haven't had a moment like that (other than ones my wife initiates) since leaving Google for a startup - I suspect my friends (or some subset of them) still do, but I'm often too busy to be worth inviting. I think that the number of comments here suggesting a technological solution - an app, societal change, whatever - is pretty amusing. Technology is not going to matter. What does matter is making a decision that friendships and relationships are important to you, and seeking out other people who have also made that decision. And accepting the trade-offs that go with that. There are plenty of people who do live like that, but they are largely not the folks on Hacker News.
- stegosaurus 10y ago
  I think you're absolutely spot on with this. I'm going through a period of change in my personal life at the moment, and I'm definitely going to keep this in mind, so thank you. One thing I would take issue with is conflating an app with societal change, though. The latter is much much harder. I think that in developed countries we have lost our way a bit. Work-life balance, to me, would mean that I work hard, and play hard, but that fundamentally work would fit around life. At the moment, life fits around work, for me, and for everyone I know, including those that are really quite well off. And I don't think we are individually choosing this state. Some higher power is, Moloch, I guess.
criddell 10y ago
> I think it was the unified purpose, the school catchment area, maybe. That proximity. My high school was super-stratified. The cliques were out of control. As an adult, I have much more control over my surroundings and have found a place that fits me (it took some time - I've lived in two countries and 7 different cities). At 46, I'm much more comfortable with who I am and liking what I like than when I was 16. Teenagers often try so desperately to fit in that it ends up taking a long time to discover who they really are. BTW, I love how the movie American Beauty addresses this. These days I have the resources to do what I want to do. That includes eating out with friends, going to baseball games, or just to the park to play with my kids and dog. I think the only time I get the sense of stifling that you describe is when I go to a formal event but that too is an experience I want.

WalterBright 10y ago

I find it tiresome that it becomes hard to just have friends over. Have to negotiate a time, clean the house, get food, and if you're going to a friend's house you're expected to "bring something", etc. Sigh.

WalterBright 10y ago
Back in college, the rule in the dorms was if your door was open, you were welcoming anyone who wanted to drop in and hang out. 40 years later, I still miss that.
- shanusmagnus 10y ago
  The recapturing of some of this is one of the best things about my job, not because my job is anything really special in that regard, but because I'd spent so much time contracting (alone in a room by myself) or in grad school (same.) Having an office, and a culture where people would 'drop by' sometimes, either for real work reasons, tenuous work reasons, or purely social, has been a godsend. Now I'm thinking about how to consciously engineer this given our environmental constraints...
- dcposch 10y ago
  I miss this as well! Stanford still has this and calls it the open door policy I really hope something like Campus Housing works out. They had a great idea but didnt execute. With the right group of people I'd be super down to live in something like a dorm again.
shanusmagnus 10y ago
The 'cleaning the house' especially. At some point adulthood seems to inculcate this notion of formality to visits. It's been universally to my social detriment.
enobrev 10y ago
My wife and I use it as an excuse to clean up. We try to keep an active social life, as-is, so the place is generally clean-ish. But during especially busy weeks (or minor sickness, or random bouts of laziness and existential despair), the place can really fall apart. So one of us will look around in disgust, invite someone over for dinner or drinks or something, and then politely pop in on the other, like "hey honey... I just invited [so-an-so], and they'll be here in an hour". Suddenly, within 20-30 minutes, the place is spotless.
- randycupertino 10y ago
  Hah... this is awful but so true. We go through the exact same thing. We just had overnight houseguests, the place hasn't been this spotless in years. I even had the carpets steamed!
- emodendroket 10y ago
  Haha. My wife makes me cancel the invitation.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

cmurf 10y ago

Do a weekly (or monthly) dinner. They key is consistency (OK an informality: byob, bring something you like, open invite instead of rsvps, etc).

markeroon 10y ago
This is spot on.
EGreg 10y ago
Jews do this - they have Shabbat every week, and festivals and other things where people live in a community and have to interact. Christians also have traditional Church attendance and so do Muslims and many other faiths I'm sure. The point is, traditional life revolved around a community. Today, everyone is very individualistic in the USA. They move out and have their own place, not just the men but the women too. The grandparents live alone and then are shipped off to nursing homes while the kids are shipped off to daycares. But it wasn't always like this. In our modern society we are disconnected like never before.

nostrademons 10y ago

So, the answer to that is very much "yes", but you have to make trade-offs in your life that show you value it. In order to have impromptu visits that fill up the empty spaces in your life, you first need to have empty spaces in your life. That is largely incompatible with filling every moment of your life with work or career advancement. That group of my high-school friends who are now largely janitors, retail clerks, and dropouts? They get together pretty much every weekend, usually with spur-of-the-moment plans made on Thursday night or Friday morning. My wife often just invites a friend over for Saturday brunch; occasionally I'll wake up and they're chatting downstairs. I remember one time when I was still at Google, I'd gone over to a friend's to play Starcraft, but his roommate was trying out different cellos and he had played the cello in high school, so we ended up with an impromptu cello trio in the living room. Another friend dropped by unannounced, we got the fireplace going, and when the third roommate arrived home, he was like "This is like a scene out of the 19th century." The thing is, this is largely incompatible with spending long hours at work or doing things in your off hours (applying for jobs, going back to school, learning new programming languages) for career advancement. I haven't had a moment like that (other than ones my wife initiates) since leaving Google for a startup - I suspect my friends (or some subset of them) still do, but I'm often too busy to be worth inviting. I think that the number of comments here suggesting a technological solution - an app, societal change, whatever - is pretty amusing. Technology is not going to matter. What does matter is making a decision that friendships and relationships are important to you, and seeking out other people who have also made that decision. And accepting the trade-offs that go with that. There are plenty of people who do live like that, but they are largely not the folks on Hacker News.

stegosaurus 10y ago
I think you're absolutely spot on with this. I'm going through a period of change in my personal life at the moment, and I'm definitely going to keep this in mind, so thank you. One thing I would take issue with is conflating an app with societal change, though. The latter is much much harder. I think that in developed countries we have lost our way a bit. Work-life balance, to me, would mean that I work hard, and play hard, but that fundamentally work would fit around life. At the moment, life fits around work, for me, and for everyone I know, including those that are really quite well off. And I don't think we are individually choosing this state. Some higher power is, Moloch, I guess.

criddell 10y ago

> I think it was the unified purpose, the school catchment area, maybe. That proximity. My high school was super-stratified. The cliques were out of control. As an adult, I have much more control over my surroundings and have found a place that fits me (it took some time - I've lived in two countries and 7 different cities). At 46, I'm much more comfortable with who I am and liking what I like than when I was 16. Teenagers often try so desperately to fit in that it ends up taking a long time to discover who they really are. BTW, I love how the movie American Beauty addresses this. These days I have the resources to do what I want to do. That includes eating out with friends, going to baseball games, or just to the park to play with my kids and dog. I think the only time I get the sense of stifling that you describe is when I go to a formal event but that too is an experience I want.