If You Haven’t Tried This With Your Friends, You’re Missing Out on the Height of Human Socialization

Downtime You might need to get a little vulnerable for this one. By Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Dan Kois? Aug 24, 20262:00 PM Illustration by Tolga Akdoğan Welcome to Party Like It’s 1996, a six-week time-travel challenge to help you rediscover the lost art of hanging out. This is Challenge No. 3, but you can sign up here to get this series in your inbox from the beginning. [knock knock knock] Hey! I was just in the neighborhood. Whatcha up to? Last week in our continuing series, Party Like It’s 1996, I challenged you spend some time reaching out to friends and family using non-emoji-based technology. It seems like it made a real impact on many of you! Reader Taryn W. told me an amazing story about getting a phone call a few years ago from an old friend who was in one of those emergency situations that isn’t life-threatening but you are just stuck there with your phone and no one to talk to. Now they talk every week, spurred by the beautiful conversation they had on that crazy day. Karli B. reflected on why it felt rewarding to write out some heartfelt notes to her family last week: “As someone who doesn’t always have the words in a conversation, I know putting them down on paper so my loved ones have a tangible reminder of what they mean to me is invaluable.” Sofia R. is diabolically effective at getting people to write her back through the use of colorful, unusual stationery: “It tempts people into thinking what stationary they could be writing on and before you know it you’ve tricked your friends into becoming pen pals.” Sophie M. called up a bunch of friends last week and paid particular attention to what she did while she talked on the phone: “In the past when I’d talk on the phone I’d play online solitaire, but this week I just listened and talked the whole time with no other distractions.” What an interesting thing to think about! On the one hand, I agree with Sophie that it feels better to devote your attention to the person on the phone, not to some second screen. On the other hand, how many conversations did I have in the 1990s while watching television?! On the other other hand, often the person on the phone was watching TV too—usually the same thing as me. In general, it seemed like many of you had very meaningful experiences writing letters, sending postcards, drafting emails, and talking on the phone. I’m really glad! And those experiences will only deepen as people write you back, call you back, or respond to your kindness and openness with kindness and openness of their own. I sure loved getting all those emails from you telling me about your week! My millennial editor has told me she finds our upcoming challenge the most harrowing of all the tasks in this series. That’s because it requires participants to express a certain vulnerability that leaves one open to rejection, disappointment, or (worst of all) awkwardness. Here it is: Sometime in the next week you are going to ask a friend to come over. When your friend asks why you’re inviting them over—for a dinner party? To watch a movie? To tell them you have a wasting disease?—you’re going to tell them no … you just want to hang out. CHALLENGE NUMBER 3: HANGING OUT Call or text a friend and find a time for them to come over in the next few days. (The advanced version, of course, is to just stop by their house, but I’ll let you schedule this one.)Don’t prepare a meal or go shopping. Clean up as little as possible.When they arrive, sit down on the couch and talk.Play some music. Specifically, an entire album, start to finish. Feel free to let your guest choose. Do not let the algorithm choose your music.You could play a game! Board games, card games, and video games are all encouraged.If you get hungry, throw something together or order some food.Hang out for at least two hours. Why am I asking you to hang out with no particular purpose? Because hanging out is the apogee of human sociability! When hanging out, you are dropping all pretense that a get-together has a purpose. There is no hook for your invitation, no task you are accomplishing together, no project you need help with or CV you need to revise. Instead, when you are asking someone to come hang out, you are conveying a simple, radical message: I like you, and I just want to see you. I KNOW. The skin crawls. You cringe to imagine going that far out on a limb, expressing such abject sincerity. Yet I urge you to think about it from the opposite perspective: If someone you cared about told you, “I like you, and I just want to see you,” would you be offended? Upset? Annoyed? Of course not! You would be flattered and grateful to have confirmation that you are important in the life of this other human being. Your primordial caveman brain would be thrilled to be welcomed to their campfire. Agendaless, stress-free, inclusive, the hangout opens up one’s life and time to someone else and forges a closer bond than any other get-together. And it’s a vanishing art. “I’ve become an accidental witness to a growing crisis,” the cultural critic Sheila Liming writes in Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time. “People struggling to hang out, or else voicing concern and anxiety about how to hang out.” Everyone she knows finds it harder to spend unmediated time with friends. Her overscheduled, future-anxious college students don’t know how to chillax, and who can blame them? This is not a very chillaxing world we live in. But it’s worth pushing through your discomfort and finding your way to the good hang. In my friend group here in the suburbs, we gather at someone’s house every few weekends for a drink, usually organized at the last minute via a couple of texts. It took us a while to get there, though; for years our acquaintanceships revolved around dinner parties, concerts, and movies—all fun nights out, to be sure. But during the pandemic, those other options evaporated, and the only way to be together was to sit, rigorously separated by space, around an outdoor firepit. Music playing, flames roaring, cocktails pouring—that was when our true friendship was cemented. “I just want to hang out,” you’ll tell your friend. But oh, god, what if they demand further explanation? Well, here: If your friend is nervous about your invitation, I give you permission to say, just this once, “I’m doing this weekly challenge. I’ll tell you all about it when you get here.” When the hangout’s done, I want to hear all about it. Was it awkward, was it illuminating, was it funny? What was the best story you heard? What album did you play? And more broadly: What are you starting to learn about yourself and your habits from this project? Have any of these experiments really hit home with you? How might you try to replicate these results in your everyday life? Email me at 1996@slate.com and let me know. Until next week—Dan P.S. Now it’s my turn to invite you: If you’ll be in New York City on Sept. 17, come hang out in person! I’m joining a bunch of other Slatesters at Bearded Lady in Prospect Heights from 6 to 9 p.m. There’ll be a ’90s playlist, themed cocktails, and a stack of games straight out of my teenage rec room. The first 30 people to come tell me something interesting will get a free drink on Slate. The hang is free to attend, but let us know if you’re coming so we can get a rough head count. Register here. No flaking!!!! P.P.S. After you’ve completed this week’s challenge, we’ve got the perfect way to keep the good times rolling. We’ve released 1996 editions of every Slate game, built to accompany our six-week experiment in hanging out. Click here to play exclusive editions of the Slate Quiz, Slate Crossword, Pears, and SoundBites, available to Plus members only. If you’re not already a Plus member, join now to get six months of Plus for $19.96. You’ll get even more Party Like It’s 1996 perks, and unlock unlimited reading and ad-free podcasts. Relationships Friendship Party Like It’s 1996