My parents used to host dinner parties. Actual sit-down dinners at a table with place settings, not pizza with paper plates. They are a lot of work, especially if you do the cooking yourself. I was pretty young and only remember them vaguely, but they stopped because nobody ever reciprocated.

The problem with dinner parties is that they only work if all attendees like each other equally. Any group of people talking at once will boil down to the lowest common denominator, so one bad guest can easily ruin the whole event. Meanwhile during a pizza party it's okay to chat in a smaller group, which means that when you have a complex network of "A likes B but doesn't like C who is best friend of B", there's much higher chance of making it possible to somehow divide the guests into sensible subgroups.

The nice thing about dinner parties is that you can choose who to invite (and not invite).

Well that brings up another thing that we seem to have lost in society: how to be pleasant at a social event even if you don't like or find agreeable everyone else there.

Oh, I can perfectly do this! Actually, I'm very good at this! It's just that after 8 hours of doing so for 5 days in a row, I don't have any more energy for that.

Do you have any tips on how to perfectly coexist with disagreeable people?

Consider I, myself, might be disagreeable to others and they seem to perfectly coexist with me (so far).

Every invitation to fight doesn't have to be accepted.

It sort of depends on a mutual politeness or the sense that a dinner party is not the time or place to bring up (or persist in discussing) something controversial. If someone insists on being an asshole and spoiling the event there's not a lot you can do, but it seems that more people used to have the social graces to not to spoil an event they were invited to, and would be embarassed if they did.

Beat poem about that fifth guest: https://youtu.be/eYJ60eWprlQ?si=VnWBdn-1iqJT3bOL

Well, it depends. If those people are willing to accept our differences, then I reciprocate, and we can be friends. I accommodate them, they accommodate me. But if gap is too big to be bridged (they have a completely different personality), or they don't want to reciprocate (they insist on doing things their way because obviously that's normal and better and everything) then I just stop caring, and treat them as necessary evil. Coworker is passionate about ruining a project and manager won't do anything about it? Not my problem, just make sure that my suggestions were written down and then rejected. I'm not paid to do engineering, I'm paid to put up with stupid people and office politics while doing minimal amount of engineering. Aunt feels the need to spread the word of Jesus? Well, looks like next time I won't make it to visit her, and if I absolutely need to because of complex family relationships, I'll just nod and smile while being mentally absent.

At the same time, I refuse to spend my free time with people who challenge my patience. There's a clear distinction between professional/family me, and the leisure time me.

Yes. Adlerian philosophy. Start with the book ‘the courage to be disliked’ and work from there.

Be polite, even if they’re not. Choose to ignore their bait and slights. Choose to not engage with their negativity, and only say what is necessary and nothing more. If they complain, whine, or speak ill of others, affirm that you see they’re upset, and move on.

Anyone who has raised children ought to recognize these tactics.

Both are great! We love having people over for a nicely presented dinner or pizza. The import part is getting people together.

People are still doing it with game nights: have dinner, then play a board/card game together (usually with drinks.) In the 50s, Bridge or Dominoes was a big married couple date.

I'd like to see a revival of the old setup where everyone has dinner, then everybody in turn, individually and/or in groups, does a musical performance, poetry reading, or interesting lecture to entertain everyone else.

Pro tip 1: Potluck! Cooking and organizing can be a lot of work.

Pro tip 1a: Hot pot! You supply the pot and broth; guests bring the rest.

Pro tip 2: The first one will be waaay harder; then it’ll get easier, as you get a track record and you don’t need to recruit (or “train”) guests; they’re already in and already trained :)

Pro tip 3: They get easier, fast, as you both 1) get practice and 2) learn what doesn’t matter

Pro tip 3: The first people to show up will ask to help; plan something for them to do (I do a make-a-pizza party; I have them grate the mozzarella)

Thanks for this! I hope to put it in practice soon!

I found "The Two-Hour Cocktail Party" on Hacker News, and the advice really resonated with me although I haven't had the opportunity to host yet. The author suggests doing a few of these cocktail parties before a dinner party, as he considers those to be advanced and quite stressful for someone not used to hosting. I have to agree, I read through it right after hosting a Thanksgiving dinner party that was a lot of fun, but was... trying.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32879851

Some variations:

- Formal. Host does all the planning and provides all of the food. At most, some people help in the kitchen.

- Informal. Don't use the good china or fancy napkins, might eat in the kitchen or living room. Often used before a game night or similar.

- Collaboratively assigned. People are assigned a particular set of foods (bread, potatoes, etc.) to prepare (usually about 2 except for the host who might do more), common at holidays (usually formal in winter and informal in summer).

- Semi-assigned. People are assigned general categories of what food (meat, side, salad, dessert) to prepare. Useful if the meal is for a group smaller than the chaotic-potluck threshold, or if you don't have a potluck culture ingrained.

- Location. In a house? In a rented facility? In a public park, or at the beach? Sometimes "on your front lawn / in your back yard" is a reasonable answer.

That's because everyone works for someone else these days. Back then more people (particularly women) worked for themselves, building their own wealth (house, social life, family etc) and their own expertise. Now everyone works for someone else, building someone else's wealth and becoming an expert in someone else's domain etc.