Don't Mention It: Party Edition

The end of the year usually means parties, whether you’re living off of free food at the graduation shindigs of your entire senior class or just celebrating the beginning of summer around a bonfire or barbecue with friends. And as Spiderman reminds us, with great parties comes great responsibility, namely the responsibility to avoid hijacking the proceedings by bringing up things that will start fights or otherwise cause the wheels of pleasant socialization to come to a grinding halt (Rule #1 is never to speak in extended metaphors).

Naturally, the guidelines for discussions at parties are a bit different than those that apply in general life. Your friends might be really into American Idol or talking about Coinstar machines, for example. But we’ve all had the experience of killing a conversation with an unintentionally disturbing anecdote or a long-winded story with no punch line. For the sake of all tomorrow’s parties, let’s figure out what to avoid. We’ll get the ball rolling:

Politics – Angry people make bad party guests. They don’t dance, they don’t laugh at your jokes, and they put everyone else on edge. As such it’s a good idea to avoid the things that make people angry. (This is also a good reason to limit the caffeine intake of certain partygoers.)

A really, really long joke – “…so then the 65^th acrobat looks up and says—wait. No, go back. Actually, the 64^th person was a sea captain, right. And they had to ask the 37^th person—who was a genie—for three wishes. Did I remember to mention that?”

Anything that requires very specialized knowledge – This is the hardest to avoid, and from the Hills superfans in the kitchen to the guy standing by the stereo and lecturing everybody about the Dismemberment Plan, everyone is guilty. Of course if you’re at a party of ornithologists, you should feel free to discuss the mating habits of the emperor penguin, but in other circumstances people might think that you’re just trying to flirt. Badly.

Religion – Like politics but extra uncomfortable.

The beginning of work/next school year – With the whole summer stretched out ahead, few people want to spend time contemplating their return to the daily grind.

Almost anything that happens on or inside a computer – Facebook, MySpace, and World of Warcraft will one day have devoured us all, but until then we should all keep pretending that we can go without thinking about them for more than 30 seconds at a time. This means no passing along “Newsfeed” gossip, no viral videos, and no talking about the advantages offered by playing a Gnomish Engineer (unless you’re at a LAN party).