A friend of mine was once invited to a potluck dinner where the theme was “pink food”. He fumbled the bag from the off, deciding two hours before the party to bring jelly, which was of course not set by the time he had to leave, and a tub of Neapolitan ice-cream, which is, famously, only one-third pink. But his real mistake, the reason I remember this incident 10 years later, was what happened the morning after the meal. The hosts answered the door to find my friend standing there, asking whether he could have whatever remained of the Neapolitan ice-cream back.
Few would deny – and in fairness to my friend he doesn’t deny it either – that this was a huge faux pas. If someone invites you over and asks you to bring a dish, you don’t get to retrieve that dish from their freezer the next day and transport it across town, rapidly melting, back to your own home. But in the years since the Neapolitan Affair, social norms about splitting costs between friends have become both more and less complicated. These were the days before Monzo, before Revolut, and before the kingpin of shared expenses admin: the Splitwise app. Now that summer is here and holidays with friends are finally back on the cards, the social politics of Splitwise are back too.
