Why DC loves to hate Partiful

If you’re under 50, you may have noticed that Partiful has quietly annexed the American social calendar over the past year or two. The event-planning app, founded by former Palantir employees, began as another Silicon Valley toy, but it didn’t stay regional for long. Its loud dashboard aesthetic spread quickly through the Bay Area and then achieved escape velocity in Washington, DC. I wouldn’t be surprised if the strong cultural current between tech and defense is what created near-perfect conditions for a social revival in nerd world.

While I understand a bit of snobbery over the aesthetics, I’ve been surprised by the constant performative disdain I’ve observed accompanying its rise. Everywhere I go, I hear people say they “hate” Partiful. I watch otherwise socially adept adults roll their eyes at the indignity of being invited to yet another birthday karaoke or themed dinner through an app, of all things, as if the rest of their lives aren’t already dictated by Outlook and Slack.

Receiving a Partiful link is akin to a minor social injury, a digital affront to imagined analog elegance. This is nothing more than user error, in my view. Partiful’s origins do give it an undeniable tinge of dorkiness, but only the constitutionally weak would let that get in the way of a good time.

Sure, the format is corny. The animated sparkles, the tie-dye backgrounds, the GIFs. But in a society where birth rates are in a nosedive, no one’s heard of sex before and social skills are degrading by the minute, I am more than happy to turn a blind eye to a few lurid colors and kitschy animations in service of prosocial behavior.

Infact, I’d go as far as to say that my social diary has never been busier thanks to the efficient plug-in between Partiful and my iPhone calendar. I know exactly when everything is happening and I am rarely at risk of double-booking myself, which is more than I can say for the pre-Partiful days when RSVPs were a veritable archaeological dig through texts, DMs and half-remembered conversations.

Indeed, it may be the only app that’s as effective at getting people to log off as it is at getting people to use it. For the socially blessed, perhaps the garishness of it all is a true burden – not all of us are well-connected enough to enjoy a constant whisper-network of parties, or handwritten calling cards from a generous host.

For the rest of us, the mere fact that someone went out of their way to invite you to something, even through a candy-colored interface, is hardly an indignity. If being invited to a party is the worst thing that has happened to you this month, I congratulate you on your charmed life.

The main complaint I hear beyond the superficial is that the app feels “too public.” The guest list is visible. The RSVPs are visible. People can see you were invited. They can see you RSVP’d “maybe” and then never updated your status. Knowing who is attending an event supposedly ruins the mystery of running into an exciting stranger or, more thrillingly, an unwelcome ex. But this transparency only offends those who relied on ambiguity to maintain their mystique. Some of us know how to withhold, wherever we go.

Another accusation: the app’s design encourages people to RSVP just to see who else is coming, which allegedly leads to inflated guest lists full of ambiguous spectators. While I’ll admit that this is gauche, it does reflect a fact of human nature. People have always wanted to know who will be at a party before deciding to attend. Partiful simply removed the need for back-channel interrogation and gossip-triangle logistics. Tacky as this may be, millennials have no right to be so snooty about it, given the fact that their long-forgotten Facebook events had the same feature.

If you read between the lines you’ll notice that DC in particular loves Partiful because it flattens status games while simultaneously revealing them. The everyday social life of the city, the informal gatherings of the civil servants and hard-drinking journalists, becomes a semi-public ledger of who’s hosting, who’s being invited and who’s orbiting which micro-scene.

In a city where professional life and social life blur, where a dinner can double as a networking event and a house party can function as a quasi-policy salon, this level of transparency is intoxicating. People here love data, for good or ill, and Partiful gives them plenty of it.

Partiful exploits Washington’s weakness for structure, but in my view, the exploitation is a net positive and benefits all stakeholders. It makes it easier for hosts to gather people, easier for newcomers to break in, and easier for the city’s chronically Type-A residents to remember that fun is a scheduling problem more than a metaphysical one. The app has created a small renaissance in casual hosting: backyard dinners, themed cocktail nights, going-away parties, last-minute potlucks.

I’ve been to five-person movie nights and 500-person galas because of it. It has lowered the barrier to entry for throwing something together. It has reminded people that to enjoy a party, you have to log off and actually attend it.

If some find this embarrassing, so be it. But it’s hard not to admire an app that has done more for community-building than a decade of think-tank happy hours. DC may scoff at Partiful, but it also cannot stop using it. And maybe that’s the clearest sign of all that the app is here to stay.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 8, 2025 World edition.