What separates a good Airbnb host from an average host probably means something different to each traveler. Some guests expect their host to provide an all-inclusive experience rather than just a clean towel; that could mean that the landlord, say, bakes cakes and offers wonderful activities for those who share their space for a while. However, that friendly impulse can also be considered off-putting to some guests—a fundamental misrepresentation that extends beyond the intended rental areas.
This misunderstanding of proper boundaries, a more and more common occurrence in modern life, revived another idiocy. Saturday Night Live sketch from last night’s episode. Airbnb’s “master host,” Bob (played by the show’s host, Jack Black), wouldn’t let young travelers rent his house alone, and in doing so played through the mud of social expectations in the digital age. Bob’s view of himself as a socialite with his houseguests did not seem to appeal to travelers. To them, Bob just happened to hold the keys to the front door.
The sketch started with a group of friends traveling together on spring break arriving at their beach Airbnb. As they settled in, the owner of the lodge, Bob, arrived with a plate of fresh croissants in hand. The way he made his presence known seemed designed to be a sign of early warning to the guests, who clearly expected to have the place to themselves: He said “Knock knock” but didn’t wait for a response before entering the house anyway. After giving each other pleasure, he left the guests there. But instead of leaving the room, he entered the room and looked at his friends from afar.
Bob’s excuses for staying around began to slip into nonsense; he seemed to hope his friends would invite him to join the festivities. Meanwhile, the travelers just wanted him to leave so they could finally start their journey. They believed that Bob went too far in his desire to “understand what it’s like to hang out with a good group of young people,” as he put it. Even when the tenants asked him to leave the house, Bob refused. When it became clear that Bob was more cheerful than the rest of the holiday, the sketch began to attract a more modern thing: the struggle to agree on what constitutes comity, especially in an era that has seen an increase in social isolation and the ease of alienation.
The pattern used a rug pull pattern to set this base. At first, the house looked great – too big, maybe. Visitors read the homemade cakes not as a kind or harmless sign but as a suspicious sign, even suggesting that something sinister was going on; why should a stranger be nice lest he ask for something in return? The spring breakers’ frustration with Bob’s presence grew as their ploy to ask him for privacy failed; Bob responded by going into another closet, ready to come back from the right time. Even the calls to ask Bob to leave became more polite, he doubled down, later reaching the point of applying moisturizer all over his body and his wife (played by Melissa McCarthy, making a cameo) so that they could not turn the knob to leave the house.
The disconnect between what Bob expected from his guests and what they expected from him is a familiar experience to those who have been on either side of an unequal interaction, and that unpleasant shift is fully reflected at the end of the sketch. By playing on the discomfort of the tenants and the ignorance of their host alike with comedy, the sketch emphasized the modern mismatch of social desire. In particular, the group that stayed at his home was made up of young people who probably grew up with the internet, smart phones, and several other platforms that have changed the meaning of spending time with people. While technology has opened up seemingly permanent connections and access to everyone’s lives, many of today’s resources have also reduced people’s ability to connect directly with other human beings in real life. The result is a culture that frequently frames acts of friendship as threats to the status quo, rather than inviting interaction.
Even the sketch seemed to interpret Bob’s own sincere approach to Airbnb hosting—which, in some mundane ways, didn’t seem so different from how one would treat a friend who dropped by for a few days—as unreliable. The kicker came when Bob’s constant reading of the room finally cost him his paying customers. They humbly agreed that the hosts could join them for half an hour—no more. A happy Bob then immediately confirmed the guests’ initial concerns about his intentions: He asked the group to smile for surveillance cameras that he would connect to the entire room. Sometimes, boundaries exist for a reason.
