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The death of partying in the USA

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Re: The death of partying in the USA

#141

Post by JohnTHaller »

sokoloff wrote: post #56
Apreche wrote: post #28

This article isn’t wrong, but it neglects to mention real estate, transportation, and lodging. A party needs a venue, and it needs guests. And the guests need a way to get to and from the venue. If they stay a long time, they need a place to sleep. People these days don’t own real estate. Wealthy people own it all. Normal people are renting apartments or portions of homes. It’s kind of hard to throw a big party witho…

> Normal people are renting apartments or portions of homes. About 2/3 of households in the US own the home they live in. Renting is the minority, not the majority.

For adults under 35, less than 38% own their own home and the rate is falling.

Also, it varies quite a lot by state. Over 3/4 of adults own their own home in West Virginia, but in New York it's a bit over 1/2.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#142

Post by phendrenad2 »

People are introverted and have no social skills thanks to smartphones. People have no shared interests in general, because there are so many niches. People have low self-esteem and body image issues. People are afraid that they'll get drunk and their behavior will be filmed and go viral. Previously available "soft" party drugs are too dangerous. People have no place to host a party, because they're all renters (not that it matters, the HOA has a strict no-smooth-jazz-music-after-3pm policy!)

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#143

Post by surgical_fire »

ryandrake wrote: post #24
lr4444lr wrote: post #6

The parental part bears special mention. My spouse and I find that we are overwhelmingly the ones calling to organize playdates rather than vice versa. I'd like to think it's not that my kids are poorly socialized or misbehave - they've always received glowing reports at school. I give my kids business cards with my phone number to pass out to their friends to give to their parents, and there is also a class list whe…

Often the kids like to play together, but the parents are the ones that are just... weird and asocial. I hate to bring agism into this, but there definitely seems to be a generational gap with the adults. Some of my kid's friends are raised by their parents, and others are (apparently) raised primarily by grandparents. When my kid wants to get together with friends whose (50-60 year old) grandparents bring them by, t…

I am probably that sort of parent. Truth is I dread socializing. I enjoy just hanging around with my family in the peace and quiet of my home. Not one to engage in small talk with neighbors, other parents, etc.

My daughter is still a baby, and I don't want her to become a shut-in because of my antisocial tendencies. So yeah, I will take her to the public playground, get her into the local sport activities, this sort of thing. But I would likely be the parent in the playground just sitting by himself while the daughter plays, maybe reading a book (I also hate social media in general, so no doomscrolling for me).

It's a difficult balance.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#144

Post by dg08 »

antonymoose wrote: post #74
ryandrake wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often the kids like to play together, but the parents are the ones that are just... weird and asocial. I hate to bring agism into this, but there definitely seems to be a generational gap with the adults. Some of my kid's friends are raised by their parents, and others are (apparently) raised primarily by grandparents. When my kid wants to get together with friends whose (50-60 year old) grandparents bring them by, t…

I’ll endorse this heavily. We bought into a nice suburban community. Good schools, low crime, the dream. No one knows any neighbors. Kids rarely play with one another intra-neighborhood despite a very healthy blend of age ranges. In fact, I’ve loosely associate with exactly one neighbor in the three years. We went out of our way to try and meet neighbors our first month. Most treated us as if we head too many heads o…

That’s tough. We also bought a house in a nice suburban community right outside of NYC and it’s been amazing. We know all the neighbors, exchange gifts during holidays, and a ton of kids come out for Halloween. What I really liked about the neighborhood when house hunting was seeing kids ride their bikes around on the streets unsupervised. I don’t know if it had any correlation, but the vibe felt right.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#145

Post by alamortsubite »

bombcar wrote: post #130
iamdelirium wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you thought maybe its your environment? I think the "nice suburban communities" have always been filled with antisocial people (as someone who grew it in them). People go to the suburbs for quiet and to be left alone. I barely knew anyone in the neighborhood when I was living with my parents in the suburbs. My friends were all from school and required a car to hang out. In contrast, now as an adult, I live in a…

It’s not a suburb/urban thing (though that could be correlated). It’s an area thing. I think the biggest thing that leads to it is age stratification in a neighborhood - when every family is in the exact same “place” something weird happens. But looking at a neighborhood on Halloween might be a great way to check.

While I don't deny there are pockets of abnormality like you suggest, having grown up on a dirt road in rural America and spent most of my adult life in cities, suburbia comes across as the antithesis of community. It was founded on the very promise of insularity. Obviously, that's not everyone's agenda, but it's beyond debate that its defining principle was segregation (followed by uniformity and convenience). I want to be sympathetic but I don't understand how people buy into it without accepting this. We've made some progress as a society, but having visited a lot of suburban neighborhoods all over the U.S., the remnants of the original mindset still come across loud and clear.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#147

Post by bombcar »

alamortsubite wrote: post #145
bombcar wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a suburb/urban thing (though that could be correlated). It’s an area thing. I think the biggest thing that leads to it is age stratification in a neighborhood - when every family is in the exact same “place” something weird happens. But looking at a neighborhood on Halloween might be a great way to check.

While I don't deny there are pockets of abnormality like you suggest, having grown up on a dirt road in rural America and spent most of my adult life in cities, suburbia comes across as the antithesis of community. It was founded on the very promise of insularity. Obviously, that's not everyone's agenda, but it's beyond debate that its defining principle was segregation (followed by uniformity and convenience). I wan…

I think a key component is that “suburb” has multiple meanings - and which one comes to mind when it’s mentioned depends on where you were raised/lived.

Some suburbs are the stereotypical miles and miles of identical homes with no sidewalks.

Others are actual older rural towns that have been consumed by the nearby metropolis - and these ones feel quite different.

There’s a kind of “suburb” that is usually quite lively - the rural suburb, often a pocket of relatively dense homes in a sea of wheat.

One of my indicators is lemonade stands. If they appear regularly, the area is alive.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#148

Post by rsynnott »

arp242 wrote: post #137
roadside_picnic wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for mentioning this! There's this weird, persistent meme that large corporations are buying up all the housing and nobody owns homes anymore, which is fundamentally not supported by the data. There are shifting trends in generational home ownership rates, but these are still just initial trends we're seeing. If you look at the data [0] owner occupied has gone down from the 2000s housing bubble, but in the g…

I don't know about the United States, but in (parts of) Europe it is the case. "Nobody owns homes any more" is an exaggeration of course, but things are not alright in the housing market, in part because private corporations are buying up quite a large percentage of the housing stock to rent. I think in Ireland it's about half. Like I said, I don't know about the US. It's a big place and you're probably taking too mu…

> "Nobody owns homes any more" is an exaggeration of course, but things are not alright in the housing market, in part because private corporations are buying up quite a large percentage of the housing stock to rent. I think in Ireland it's about half.

This is a _really_ popular meme, but it's not true. About 50% of new homes are bought by owner-occupiers, about 25% by local authorities and approved housing bodies (https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/local-authorit...), 10% pension funds and institutions (these are the 'private corporations' you refer to), and the remainder are small landlords, holiday homes etc etc.

I think sometimes people see "50% of new homes are bought by owner occupiers" and read it to mean "and thus the other 50% are bought by evil corporations" (people also tend to forget about the 'new' bit; second-hand homes are much more likely to be bought by owner-occupiers, as REITs and pension funds largely don't want to touch them, and nor do approved housing bodies; local authorities do sometimes buy individual second-hand homes, usually from private landlords), but really the bulk of the remainder is social housing.

The ridiculous rents are driven by the fact that we're just not building enough homes. Not that we're not building a lot; we have one of the highest per capital rates of homebuilding in the OECD, but there was a period of 7 or 8 years where we built almost nothing, and that's a really hard gap to bridge.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#149

Post by chkaloon »

The article mentions alcohol consumption by kids, but I think it doesn't emphasize enough the effect of efforts like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and strict DUI laws. Back in the 70s and 80s having a few drinks at a party, bar or friend's house was normal and part of the social lubrication. Even drinks during lunch was common where I worked. No more. You either need to have a designated driver, find a taxi (which doesn't exist in most rural areas), or just not drink. The first two are a pain, so people opt for the latter and that social inhibition hangs around, and folks go home early. Have to get up for work in the morning, you know.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#150

Post by pjc50 »

LeanderK wrote: post #41

Purely anecdotal, but I was recently reflecting at the current trend of people posting really extensive morning routines. Waking up, meditation, yoga, gym, shower, eating breakfast, meal-prepping,....having a whole day before your day starts. While they should impress you with their healthiness and discipline, I just thought how utterly lonely and sterile most of them look like. And you're completely done after work…

I don't believe those are real. People are simply posting that because it's the kind of post that gets likes. Influencer life is a mirage.
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