Have you ever heard from a friend out of the blue, who opens with a “Hey, how are you?” before getting to the real reason they’re messaging: They’re coming to town and would like a place to stay.
You might privately grumble, depending on how busy you are, and then either politely decline or make room for them. But is it rude that the visitor asked at all?
That’s the question at the core of a debate set off by Bridget Rose, 25, when she posted a video on TikTok last month that has since ricocheted across sites including X and Instagram. “If I just ask them that, that’s rude,” Bridget Rose, who lives in Philadelphia, said in the video. It has since been viewed over 2.8 million times. She used the example of a person coming to New York City for Harry Styles’s residency at Madison Square Garden, and said that guests should at the very least treat their hosts to a gift, coffee or meal to say thank you.
“Your friend who lives in New York apartment is not your free hotel,” said Bridget Rose, who asked to be identified by only her first and middle name because she feared being doxxed after facing online harassment.
In nearly 25,000 comments on her video and on threads across social media, people debated her take, with many strongly criticizing her point of view.
What began as an argument over the etiquette of asking friends for a place to stay has become a broader referendum on a shift from community toward individualism, and on what friends owe one another.
“I want to live in a world where people are interdependent, vulnerable and can ask for what they want without shame,” Irving Molefe, 32, who lives in Atlanta and commented on the video, said in an interview. “They’re your friends!”
Others said that moochers could take it too far. “Asking to stay is extremely rude unless you are very close to the person or have previously been invited,” said Sara Jane Ho, an etiquette expert and the host of the Netflix show “Mind Your Manners.”
In an interview, Bridget Rose said that she had been posting on behalf of friends living in New York who she said had complained about being inundated with requests from acquaintances. She later clarified that she thought there was nothing wrong with sending a polite request to stay with a close friend and expressing gratitude, but that she was merely underscoring the fact that many people take such generosity for granted.
“Connect with them because you want to see them,” Bridget Rose said. “I think hosting someone is a chance to make someone feel loved and valued and takes a lot of work, and that’s why I wouldn’t expect it from someone without an invitation.”
The internet has a particular appetite for these kinds of social quandaries. Debates about whether to send an Uber for a first date, ask for a plus one at a wedding or like each of a friend’s Instagram posts have all inspired heated reactions online. This one, perhaps underscored by generational differences in friendship, seemed to especially hit a nerve.
Many critics said that, as young people are lonelier, having friends crash for a few nights was more than worthwhile.
Sierra Nicole Muñiz, 31, who lives in McAllen, Texas, and also commented on the video, said that sacrificing convenience was a basic part of closeness and friendship. Growing up in a Latino family, she said in an interview, taught her to put in extra effort for her community. “We will always set out fresh pillowcases and blankets, and welcome them with love and open arms,” she said.
Similarly, Molefe grew up watching his mother host friends and remembered a tradition of people offering one another places to stay, then returning the favor when they could.
William K. Rawlins, a professor and the author of “The Compass of Friendship: Narratives, Identities and Dialogues,” describes friendship as a “private morality,” a set of expectations that friends negotiate with one another.
There seems to be agreement, even among angry commenters, that very distant acquaintances should exercise discretion when asking to stay and that close friends have more leeway.
Myka Meier, founder of Beaumont Etiquette, takes a situational approach. Whether the request is appropriate, she said, “really comes down to the relationship you have with that person.” In cities like New York, where apartments are small, “hosting someone overnight can be a much bigger ask than people realize,” she said. Anyone making the request should give the friend an easy out. For example, Meier said, the requester could say something like, “I wanted to see if this was a possibility but completely understand if not, as I’m looking at a few options.”
For Eric Klinenberg, a professor of social science at New York University, hosting friends is a fundamental social gesture. “Opening your home to travelers has always been one of the great acts of human generosity and sociality,” he wrote in an email.
Klinenberg suspected that Bridget Rose’s video struck a nerve among people in expensive cities. But he cautioned against reading too much into the reaction. “Until I see real evidence that there’s a trend toward closing the door to friends and family who need a couch or a futon, I’m not going to panic,” he said.
There is, however, some evidence of a decline in how often Americans invite people to their homes. A recent Data for Progress survey of 1,098 U.S. adults found that the share of Americans who said they had entertained people at home had fallen by 21 percentage points since 1995.
Molefe, despite disagreeing with Bridget Rose, was uncomfortable with the ire directed at her. Even if expectations around hospitality are changing, he said, publicly shaming someone for seeing things differently is unlikely to bridge the divide. “I worry that publicly ridiculing her or anyone who holds that perspective does more harm than good in a lot of ways,” he said.
As Rawlins noted, the expectations that friends establish among themselves are not immune to the outside world. They can be challenged by “emerging cultural images of how friends should treat each other” that, he said, “may contradict or undermine how they have tried to treat each other.”
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