Ella Katz   Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, the moment we have all been waiting for has finally arrived: MORE THAN TWO PEOPLE ON ONE FACETIME CALL! Yes, dreams really do come true. With the invention and rage over the new social media video chatting application, House Party, we no longer have to FaceTime one friend on our laptop and the other on our phone or install the horrendous, cringe-worthy software, Google Hangouts— bleh! House party has been all that anybody has been talking about in the past month— the new Soulcycle, DAB, or Juju on that Beat, if you will, but better. I mean c’mon, what could be better than being on FaceTime with eight people that you don’t usually talk to at 7 p.m. on a Wednesday? Now, that’s what I call Lit! When I heard my friends gushing over the app, I knew I had to get it. But as soon as I downloaded it, and the white and red wanna-be-solo-cup was added to my home screen, I encountered a few problems. First of all, I began receiving all of these notifications (saying they irked me is a vast understatement). I would be sending a text or posting on my finsta and then, out of nowhere, half of my screen would be covered with a white and red banner with black letters that read something like, “Your Friend, Andy Coleman is in the House” or, even worse, “House is in the House” (insert emoji). Like thank you so much for telling me that House is in the House— I was dying to know! So that was annoying. Secondly, I haven’t just house partied with my normal circle of friends— more like the whole city of Chicago. Try friends of friends of friends of friends of friends— yeah, like those kids that you used to play AYSO soccer with or the kids you did Menomonee activities with in the 4th grade and never thought you would see again—those friends. So if you couldn’t already tell, House Party is a bit disorganized, to say the least. When you open the app and see who is chatting, or “In the House,” you can just click a bright blue button that says Join and there you have it, you’re face to face with well, you fill in the blank on that one. My next problem with it? The connection is sub, sub, sub, par. Every call I have made on House Party has had connection issues. I have had problems with hearing the other person on my call, seeing them, frozen screens. You name it, I’ve faced it. And with our busy schedules, who possibly has time for bad connection when trying to fit in a quick “house party” between writing an english essay and studying for math? No one. House Party is also another primary source for procrastination, something none of us Latin students need another source for in our busy lives. As Junior Alex Rickett puts it, “There are some great things about House Party and some not so great things about House Party. Some of the pros include getting to have an 8-way FaceTime with your usual circle of friends but also with people you usually wouldn’t talk to. I have even met a lot of new people on the app, which is always fun. However, House Party makes it very easy to procrastinate, which we already more than have enough of. Not to mention the fact that there are way too many notifications.” Many Latin students would have to agree with Alex, that we already have too many things wasting our precious time, that we don’t need another useless app like House Party in our busy, homework-filled lives. But as a matter of fact, the app is not nearly as popular as it was a month ago, so you and I no longer have to worry about another source of procrastination. I guess we should have seen this coming, like anything else at Latin, the trends only trend for so long until they are forgotten and overlooked. From Stan Smiths to cheering on our beloved  “rodents,” the school goes through phases, where the trend, whatever it may be, is well, everything before it quickly turns into a nothing. House Party was definitely one of those “everythings.” But now? A plain, run of the mill nothing. ]]>