Do people really ask friends to pay for their parties?

I just finished reading an article on CNN about individuals who send out invites to their friends for a party without asking them to pay for any of it and then expecting the friends to go dutch when the bill comes. For a second I felt like I was reading a bad chain letter forwarded to me by a distant cousin; I almost went to Snopes to check and see if this was really happening to people. Are there still people who are either this aloof or this self centered out there that they would send out an invitation to dinner and not indicate on the invite that the attendees should expect to split the entire bill?

Don't get me wrong, if I am invited to a dinner party out on the town I have no problem footing my bill. I'll avoid high priced alcohol and stick to something from the middle range of the menu. When a host informs everyone at the end of the night that they should just split the bill 8 ways and I have to subsidize everyone else's filet mignon and alcohol induced stupor then that is a different beast entirely. Maybe it's just living in a relatively small Midwest town that I don't run into this, or possibly I just don't have the tolerance to put up with anyone who would pull this kind of stunt long enough to get a dinner invite!