Comment by morganf
8 hours ago
I did almost the identical project the OP did, for the same reasons, in the same style. Reading that article could have been (with 10% of details tweaked) about my experience.
The biggest difference in how the author approached and how I did: he did it monthly; I did it weekly. I found that made a HUGE difference in building community. If it's once a month, and people come on average 50% of the time, then you'll see these people 6 times a year. That's nice, but one of my goals was to build real, deep relationships with more people, and having a party where I speak a few minutes to each person (if you're the host, it's hard to get more than 30 minutes with one person) 6 times a year - you can't really build a real relationship. Also, once a month puts pressure on people psychologically to attend, but I wanted it low-key, "Come if you want, if not next week, or the week after - or never! It's all cool and you go live your life and you be you!" was part of the vibe I was going for, and it's easier to get that vibe when it's all the time, but the less frequent it is, the more subconscious pressure there is, and I wanted a low-key event (for example, imagine a wedding - that's very irregular, hopefully once in your life - so there's massive pressure to attend, and I wanted the precise inverse).
But my doing it weekly, made it a bit more like church/synagogue, in the best communal sense of the word: a place to go at the same time, same place every week, time to build real relationships, you always knew you'd have a place to go, etc. And because many of the people were the same week on week, it naturally led to longer, deeper conversations, both individual and group conversations.
I was also strict on a few rules. There were a few topics that were banned from being discussed ("politics, business, and sports" basically - and everyone knew going in those were banned) so that forced people to avoid those generic and tiresome topics that (politics in particular) just make unhappy. Also, I had a very strict "no cell phone" rule and I enforced putting cell phones into a box near the entrance.
It also became a HUGE success in my city. Mentioned in the media and featured in videos. Because it became known as the nexus of interesting conversations in a spot with cool energy. Many dotcom/tech superstars as well as ambassadors and other interesting and curious figures, when they were in my city for a few days for business, they'd hear that my apt was the place to be that night and they'd contact me to invite themselves.
It revolutionized my life and my social network. I'd strongly recommend everyone who is suffering from these same sorts of social challenges create their own sort of variation of this concept.
This lasted almost a decade, almost every Wednesday night from 2007 to 2016. Then... adult life happened: family, moving internationally, and... alas. I have a personal challenge these days that I should invest energy in figuring out: the best way to reboot this for me, but in the world I life in now, not only post-covid, but with kids and family life. Sometimes I think about rebooting it but in a public venue on my "date night", sometimes I think about doing a "Zoom" version of this where it's beers on Zoom, etc etc there are many possible ways to approach this challenge - but I haven't yet been inspired with the right formula for me.
There's a time and place for everything under the sun and this was a beautiful and life-changing era of my life.
If anyone is interested in creating their own version of this (particularly the OP), just drop me a line and I'm more than happy to Zoom any time with you and give you some tips. My email is morgan@westegg.com (I still love meeting people even if through email and Zoom!), and my personal website is westegg.com and I have an ancient and embarrassingly bad web page 2008 tumblr-style page about these events at: wnip.org - If the above sounded interesting, I'm always up for a brainstorm so ping me!
As a WNIP OG who made it to 90% of the meetups, I can honestly say these nights were a highlight of my time as an expat in Buenos Aires.
Between the consistent curation and Morgan’s "Kevin Bacon-style" network, I met a huge spectrum of people—both locals and world travelers.[1])
Side note: if you’re in a relationship, these nights are even better. You end up with so many fresh ideas to share with your partner from conversations they weren't part of.
Thanks for hosting, Morgan! And a special thanks to Celia for being so gracious about those late-night "extra innings"
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon
I echo these takeaways! I also stumbled upon a few of these meetups while briefly living in BA, and the people I met during these meetups and conversations we had were many of highlights of that fun chapter of my life. Thank you Morgan for facilitating these!
OH MY GOD DANNY DOVER!!!!! I had no idea you read HN!!!! Our conversations were always so awesome! Wow long time, I'll send you a DM somewhere on some platform, let's catch up!
I found that a weekly meeting for a language-learning group worked great. Your family and even your friends learn, "Oh Wednesday evening, D-Coder's busy."
The WNIP.org (Wednesday Night Interesting People) home page says:
Invitees: Interesting Guys, Hot Girls.
Exceptions Tolerated: Hot Guys, Interesting Girls.
The organizer sounds like an unpleasant person.
Hi andrewl,
Yeah, I wrote that 20 years ago, and I tried to be funny and more offensive than. I'm sorry, I was young and more uncouth; today I'd never even consider thinking-or-talking like that.
That line was meant as a joke. Some of the most frequent, prominent attendees were actually among the top female intellectuals in our city. In that sense, the joke cut both ways: the guys were mostly nerdy software developers, the girls were nerdy intellectuals, and they were generally much smarter. So the line on the webpage, which was just a silly overnight Tumblr thing I wrote 20 years ago, was really self-mockery, mocking the guys for being less intellectual than the girls. Everyone was extremely nerdy and not cool/hot by traditional standards (hence the "hot girls, intellectual guys" joke), and the idea that we'd only "tolerate" "intellectual girls" was absurd since it was mostly intellectual girls anyway, we guys were outnumbered, hahaha. The joke is bad, and yeah, sorry, my humor doesn't always land, especially decades later. (And I did warn with the web link that the page was "embarrassingly bad" - I meant not just the design but the content as well.)
Also, as brabel points out, times have changed. Back then, those sorts of jokes were common and considered funny and not offensive. I'd note that that was written 20 years ago, which is about 33% towards 1966 - the Mad Men era (20/60=0.333) - a different world in which people spoke very differently than they do now. It wasn't an overnight one day to the next transition to our new way of thinking and talking. Even remember that was the same era, around 2007, when our own beloved founder of our HN forum paulg was cancelled for making some comment that was widely considered anti-women. "The past is a different world" as they say.
I even briefly considered updating that wording (having not touched it in 20 years) worrying someone would respond like this; but I decided to leave it, as a testament to history and how we spoke then. I try not to rewrite the past with modern standards, and I own what I wrote.
Continuing my apology for my offensive joke in 2007, as I've grown and gone through my own journey of life growing up, I feel bad for offensive things I've said-and-done over the almost half-century of my lifetime. My words have hurt people. I've been going through my past and asking for forgiveness from those who I have hurt, while also forgiving those who have hurt me. My latest book is about my attempts to reflect on the meaning of forgiveness, on my asking for forgiveness, and my forgiving others. In case you're interested, it is here: https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Forgiveness-S-Morgan-Frie...
Finally, andrewl, I'm interpreting your message as an interest in learning more about my journey and transformation, and if you'd like to talk about personal growth, forgiveness, or what the world was like in 2007 or the 90s or 80s, it would be an honor to meet you via zoom and talk to you about life, with an open mind and open heart. This threat is about making new friends, after all, and it would be an honor to meet me, I know your username from your many great comments on HN! You can always email me at morgan@westegg.com or schedule a zoom: https://westegg.com/metaphysical-beer-29-min/
OP said it started in 2007. At that time, something like this would be seen as funny, not toxic like today.
Hi brabel,
Your words were beautiful and I appreciate them. See my long response I just wrote, a sister comment to yours now, explaining my thinking when I wrote that joke. Your analysis is consistent with mine: the times were different than, and I made a terrible joke, that didn't stand the test of time. And due to my offensive and sometimes hurtful jokes of the past and many other life experiences, I've been going through a period of transformation, thinking as hard as I can about forgiveness while forgiving others and asking for forgiveness.
As I said to andrewl as well (and to anyone in this thread!), this thread is at its core really about making new friends as adults (weekly/monthly events being one way to do so), and I'd love to meet you and talk about this issue, how times have changed in 20 years, and anything. You can reach me at morgan@westegg.com or you can schedule a zoom here: https://westegg.com/metaphysical-beer-29-min/