I’m not sure why you’d reply to both parts. If your party was the latter sort, the other stuff does not apply The caller was an ass.
The first part was in reference to those college parties where no one really cares if a certain person shows up… most people are just there to get drunk and get laid, and it’s only the total number of people (and the gender ratio) that matters. The invitations typically aren’t personal; they just spread from friend to friend by word of mouth. And in that situation, I think the phone etiquette is a bit different, especially between friends: It becomes more like a shared understanding, as in “Yeah… this party ain’t that happening. Don’t bother.” If I threw a party like that and it wasn’t turning out the way I envisioned, why waste other people’s time? I’d expect them to extend me the same basic courtesy.
But, again, if people were SPECIFICALLY invited, that’s different.
It’s incredibly rude. So is asking who else is coming to an event when you receive an invitation, before responding one way or another (which I’ve noticed is more and more common). It implies that you don’t really care about spending time with the host, and are only interested if the other attendees are sufficiently interesting to bear attending the event. If I had my wits about me, I’d use Miss Manners’ technique of acting surprised and shocked and misunderstanding the question.
“I don’t understand, of course you should come over, that’s why I invited you. Of course there are people here. It’s a party.”
This is what I was thinking, actually. It’s not so much “Are the cool people there with lots of hot women, or is a nerdy sausage-fest?” as “If I don’t know anyone else there I’m going to have a miserable time and that’s not fair on the host or anyone else.”
There’s still a right way to ask that question (“Hey, have any of the guys from Marketing shown up yet?”) and a wrong way (as outlined in the OP), though…
If that’s really the case, then you show up, talk to the host for a few minutes, make small talk with a few people and give your regrets that you can’t stay the night.
Or you just stay home.
It is rude to ask if there is going to be anyone more there exciting than the host.
Most likely I’d just stay home, frankly, but then people say “Why don’t you come to my parties?” and there’s no nice way to say “because I don’t know anyone there and I don’t like going to parties full of people I don’t know.”
These people are trying to hedge their bets. It’s not a good thing to be TOO late to a party, but you want to be late enough so that when you arrive everyone can SEE you.
If they say “Is anyone there yet?” They are trying to figure out if there are enough people to show up and “be seen” by those people.
So you don’t want to be the last person to arrive but you want to arrive near the end of the invite list.
The caller was an ass.