Modern Manners Expert: Leave laptop closed at dinner

The experts (on manners) seem to have a compromise. Thomas P. Farley, editor of Town & Country magazine’s anthology Modern Manners: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Social Graces, tells the Observer that while one shouldn't get out the laptop to show the latest viral video, that “people should feel free to describe what they saw on YouTube. Put it into words" (ie: "Well you see there's this chipmunk...wait no it's a prairie dog, and it's just sort of...being dramatic.")

Dana Luria, 27, an internship coordinator who lives with her husband, a doctor, on what she calls the “Upper Upper Upper East Side,” said that at her dinner parties, it’s become all YouTube, all the time. “There was definitely the Obama Girl at two or three different dinner parties,” Ms. Luria said. “And then that presidential dinner when Colbert made fun of the president. You know, silly political stuff. I don’t have a job where I’m sitting at a computer all day, so I’ve never seen most of it. But my husband reads Chowhound and Gothamist and all that; he’s always finding things online and showing them to our friends. And then they show him stuff. It becomes sort of a one-upping thing.”