See my edit. This is primarily what I mean. It's like the elderly guy who's incredulous that someone could spend $700/year on video games (~1 new video game per month). They can't begin imagine that anyone could spend so much on something they have no exposure to. Yes, there are people out there who do dinner parties, nothing crazy, every week. Maybe the word dinner party is conjuring the image of a crazy frat party with 300 people. I consider someone like a DnD group that meets every week a dinner party. Would you rent a space to host 8 people every week just to play DnD? How might someone feel being told to consider playing DnD less just because they now have to rent that space?

I am specifically responding to the use of "most people". Certainly some people have parties 1-4 times per month. But most people? As in, more than 50% of people? Not where I am from in USA, but maybe there are cultures where this happens.

Notably I am not imagining large parties (the 300 people you mention). I just haven't had more than 1 person over to my place at a time in over a year.

> Would you rent a space to host 8 people every week just to play DnD?

No but in such a situation only 1/8th of the people involved need to have a living room.

>As in, more than 50% of people? Not where I am from in USA, but maybe there are cultures where this happens.

You got me there, I'm not a sociologist and I can only draw from experience. I come from an immigrant family in New England and one my of my best friends is an immigrant from Europe which places high priority on the eating together thing. That said you could be right as more and more relationships move online.

>No but in such a situation only 1/8th of the people involved need to have a living room.

In a perfect economy with 100% efficient utilization there will never be any waste or duplication of resources. We don't have a perfect economy.

> In a perfect economy with 100% efficient utilization there will never be any waste or duplication of resources.

I guess I am just thinking about it from an urbanist point of view, and how our view of personal space and a relative lack of focus on publicly accessible community spaces affects our land use and exacerbates the housing crisis. I say this as someone in a family which has been in this country for generations, and probably focused too much on personal wealth and access to large homes. I am learning to appreciate the value of smaller private spaces and bigger public spaces as I have slowly moved from the country to a dense city throughout my life. I go to weekly gatherings with friends, but that's at the local hackerspace not at anyone's house.

I can see how from an immigrant background there is more focus on familial togetherness and I think that is a good cultural trait for us to encourage and support in city design. Though as a queer person my family is not who I want to spend time with on a weekly basis.

Either you're an outlier or I am, but I don't have the data to tell which.

We host a few people, often using our dining room, at least once a week and often more. Sometimes two people sometimes twenty. Sometimes dinner, tea, craft night, board games, dungeons and dragons, birthday parties, whiskey tastings, family visits.

We aren't exceptional in this among our friend group - everyone shares the fun and stress of hosting.

I'm not in some exotic culture either, just a medium sized city in the southeast US.

Yeah, even the 'party people' I know only had 3-4 a year. And just having one or two people didn't entail 'bringing out the fine china' and using the dining room.

Honestly this is kind of sad to me. One of my greatest joys is the frequent gatherings of our friend groups... Sometimes even tea with "fancy china."

It's not that I didn't have frequent gatherings, it's that they were at different places and involved things other than candlelight dinners.

The limitations of "I only hang out with friends in businesses" is still sad to me. It means:

No offering your spare bedroom when someone drinks too much, no communal potlucks, no gatherings when businesses are closed...

Where you invest your resources speaks volumes about your priorities in life.

My friends have potlucks at at public parks/beaches. For me I often gather at the local hackerspace which is a collective that I’m a member of. I’m joining another collective that’s a tiny farm and they have potlucks. Theres “bike party” where a bunch of rowdy people meet in the streets, ride bikes for 5 miles or so with music blaring out of special speaker filled bike trailers and we take over both lanes of traffic until we ride to a selected location to throw a dance party.

And I don’t have a spare bedroom. Also most of my friend group doesn’t drink.