This is only a "Bay Area party" in an extremely small bubble of tech workers with insufferable personalities. It says more about the author than about the region.

The bay is a diverse place with all kinds of communities and parties. Definitely no shortage of house music and ketamine for those that are interested. Or metal and biker bars if you prefer. Smoke a spliff outside the craft brewery, drink tall cans at the street fair, hang a piñata in the park for your kids, etc.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. This is a very specific, really small subgroup of people that Scott Alexander (blog author) hangs out with. This particular subgroup is hyper-centered around the Bay Area (Oakland/Berkeley, specifically), but the Bay Area is not centered around these people.

>Not sure why you're being downvoted.

The unnecessary swipe of calling them insufferable. Use of deliberately obscure terms as an additional reason.

Well, having been to these parties too, I would find that word descriptive and accurate.

To each their own. I find typical parties with music and dancing and substance abuse boring (I'd take the ketamine, though, thanks). I would love to talk AI alignment on a party, particularly because people capable of holding a conversation on this topic can, in my experience, talk about many other things that don't boil down to sex, parties, $dayjob and regurgitating political memes from the news.

Oh don’t be so serious, it’s a playful article, I was being playful too.

And the parties I go to are…well, they have some novelty outside of sex and memes.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm485RMuEIj/

Plenty of sex, though!

In my experience it's a lot less interesting than this. It's more like your typical party scene except everyone does drugs and is into polyamory or some non-traditional sexual practice.

I swear, literally every time I set foot in SF city limits someone offers me drugs... usually harder ones than I'd prefer. No, I don't want coke and some ADHD meds FFS. And no, we're not going to fuck. Married, thanks. I miss SF being about weed and psychedelics. God damn I can't wait to leave the Bay Area...

I must radiate "normie" energy because my experience is nothing like this. SF is just a nice city with good amenities, and where not knowing anything about the local sports team is completely normal.

You're just upset that your party scene isn't deep enough for someone to write a parody of.

Depends on who you know and where specifically you are. I have been to house parties in Mountain View that resonate with this. And loads of parties (mostly SF/Oakland) that had music and K. And the occasional crypto douche.

Occasional crypto douche? I’ve got to be more selective about the parties I’m attending. It’s closer to 33% crypto for me.

You’re in a weird tech bubble. Bay IME is very diverse but also very Scene-ey. Well worth it to break out and diversify. I wish I had when I was there, I ended up moving cross country and making more intentional decisions about my starting set of friends here.

There’s no alpha left in house music and ketamine.

based, imagine mentioning these as something cool in 2023, hello boomer

Those are solidly gen-X to older millennial, not boomer.

…well, as the kids probably don’t say, “seen”.

Very much an older millennial.

The “boomer” memes aren’t meant to be taken literally. “Ackshually”-ing them is about as boomer as it gets.

Unless the Risk Management Guy is visiting from Chicago that clearly didn’t take place in the bay

It's one of those ironic Meme shirts sold on Etsy. Same dude sells Lehman Bros Risk Management (2008) shirts.

Ok that went over my head. Then definitively bay area

There is any kind of party you would want to go to here, except for maybe like, Ozarks style river hooliganism.