About a year ago, I wrote * A Full Investigation of Why Nobody Comes to My Parties*, which was exactly what you might imagine. For my entire life, I’ve struggled to get good party attendance—I’m talking fewer than 50% of invitees actually showing, often far fewer than that— and I wanted to figure out why. This article eventually caught the attention of one of my favorite podcasters, PJ Vogt of
When I wrote the original article, and throughout the episode, I had the feeling that the issue was simply that I was, how you say, annoying. The episode essentially landed on this conclusion too (no offense taken). But—and I don’t say this to deny having an incredibly poor understanding of social cues for most of my life, which I’ve consciously improved—I don’t think it’s only me and my personality, because this is happening to many other people too, especially parents. In fact, one of the baffling parts of the podcast investigation was that my party attendance actually got worse after I learned social skills, which some commenters took as a sign that I was “unconvincingly masking.” But this drop in party turnout also happened after becoming a parent, and throwing parties for parents.
I tweeted about this issue, and many parents chimed in with their own stories about nobody showing up to parties or events they were hosting—sometimes even children’s birthday parties. And a few people were bluntly honest about why they never respond to invitations or attend parent or family events: they don’t want to meet anyone new. They don’t see the point of going to anything where they don’t already know everyone. Some people, bafflingly, declared that all other parents are boring (I’m either assuming these people aren’t actually parents, or are some of the least self-aware parents alive.)
So what the hell is going on? As we hear more and more about the “loneliness epidemic,” and how parents are so “isolated,” I’m wondering why so many people are rejecting opportunities to make friends. Moreover, I’m getting the sense that these flakey parents do have friends—probably friends from an earlier era in their life—and are simply resistant to any event where they might run the risk of encountering people they don’t already know. At some point, they had to have met those people, but presumably after a certain age or number of friends, we’re supposed to just shut that down.
So perhaps, for many parents, it’s not so much a “loneliness epidemic” but a “refusal to meet anyone new” epidemic. As I did for my own party predicament, I want to investigate why—because there’s no way every parent with an empty Paperless Post attendee tab is as annoying as I am.
