Jesus Christ this hits home. We used to link 4 xbox, from the basement to the 2nd story. My parents, extatic that I was interacting with other people, would order bottomless pizza and soda, and kids WAY outside of my social tier would show up and be nice to me. Then, on Monday, I’d just go back to being the weirdo nerd again…
I’ve actually looked into this a little bit, and it seems that the best strategy is to have a lot of money. It doesn’t actually decrease the rent at all, and in fact makes it worse in the long run, but it keeps it from becoming a problem for YOU.