The Pooping On The Floor Party

my halloween party where i asked everyone to poop on the floor

Many parties I throw are themed and intensive, but I’ve been busy, so when Halloween came around I didn’t want to do anything crazy. I knew attendees would expect me do to something weird. “Just a normal halloween party,” I wrote in the invite description. “Nothing crazy. No surprises.”

But, staring at the ‘no surprises’ line, I figured it sounded like we were trying to say there would be a surprise. Damnit. I guess we need to make a surprise then?

So I started semi-desperately brainstorming with my cohosts about what weird thing we could do. I suggested “Idk, how about we cut the power in the middle of the party and something weird happens.” One cohost said “Someone poops on the floor. It’s a poop whodunit” I was like “oh god, no.”

“I bet [redacted] would do it,” said Ronny. “She’d definitely do it. I’m gonna call her.” He called her, put her on speakerphone, and asked her to shit on our floor.

She was like “What the fuck, you guys are disgusting. Do not do that. People will not like it.” Ronny was shocked. “I totally thought she would poop on the floor.”

The surprise was fascinating. Her poop refusal felt like a sudden insight into her personality in a way we didn’t expect. Was the poop request actually a powerful tool of understanding?

I wondered how many of our friends we were drastically overestimating, and I proposed that we actually call everyone to ask if they would poop on our floor for the party. And thus the idea was born.

In the days/weeks beforehand, we sat down and churned out calls and texts to ~45 attendees:

Responses varied, but were mostly polite, restrained ‘uh, no thank you.’

I was surprised to find that nobody seemed that shocked we were asking them to poop on their floor. Only a single person suspected it was a prank or something more elaborate; everybody else just accepted that we were in fact this weird.

Everyone asked about logistics; we clarified that no, you didn’t have to poop live. You could poop beforehand, freeze it, bring it to the party, thaw it for the duration, and then when the lights turn out, just discreetly dump it on the floor and keep walking. We did clarify that yes, people would eventually know it was you. We told them that we envisioned people trying to figure out who it was by looking at the size, makeup, and smell of the poop.

One attendee was Henry, who is a minor. We had a few heated debates over whether I should ask him to poop on the floor, but I ultimately decided I really did not want there to be a twitter DM record of the conversation. We reserved an honorable mention for him, regretful that society is constructed in such a minor-excluding way.

Things started to get tense nearer to the party. Despite us asking people to keep it secret, a few small pockets of people started to emerge where they realized all of them had been asked to make a turd deposit. I figured they would simply assume that we were having a hard time finding someone who would shit on the floor, so had been forced to ask a lot of people.

But this was the least of our problems. A handful of people had told us yes to pooping (weirdly, all of them were very enthusiastic about it. There were no reluctant yesses). I told them ‘cool, thanks, wait for us to confirm that we actually need your turd’ - but some of them got ahead of themselves and decided to freeze their turds anyway. On a few different days I woke up to texts like

we brought this upon ourselves. and them, I guess

Anyway: Halloween came, people showed up in cliche, basic outfits. We played cliche halloween music like Thriller. I told people there would definitely not be a surprise happening at 9:30.

But finally the time came; at 9:30 we cut the lights. But instead of poop, we powered on the projector, and delivered a slideshow that began with:

and included such quotes as

Two people used the phrase ‘party pooper’, only one said the word ‘poopitrator’, and a whole five people used some variant on the phrase “I’m honored that you would ask me.”

The full data spread is here:

I bought little poop plushies and handed them out to the winners, as much as you can apply that term to people with poop in their freezer.

The collection of people who said ‘yes’ was surprising to me. Most people I thought would say yes, said no, and most of the people who said yes were dark horses, quiet and unassuming, a brave hand rising out of the shadows. I only successfully predicted two of the poop volunteers, one of them being my sister.

If I had to guess one commonality between most of the surprise-yesses, I’d say most seem pretty low neuroticism. Relaxed, quiet-ish, chill, cheerful.

I don’t know why we did this. I think people liked it. But it was the most fun I’ve ever had preparing for an event. There’s something nice about emergently following the fun; the party idea was not generated from scratch, but rather from a series of leaning into small jokes. You go “what if we actually did x,” and then you actually do x, and then in doing so you learn pretty fascinating stuff that helps inform your next actions. Do not plan, simply DO. You must be like a plant. You do not decide in advance what the shape of your final vine will look like, you just follow rules: you shoot off leaves at random, and when one of the leaves gets a little light you just shoot off more leaves in that direction. You follow the delight in the moment. You do not try too hard. You must become enlightened. Only then may you be able to throw a party where you ask all your friends to poop on the floor and then record data about it and then do a powerpoint presentation.

photo credit Misha