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The death of partying in the USA

derekthompson.org

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Re: The death of partying in the USA

#161

Post by libertine »

pantalaimon wrote: post #155
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…

I'm not convinced. I live in Berlin and everyone is living in a flat, yet I've had my fair share of home parties, even in small two room apartments where half the party spilled out to the stairwell.

I don't think Berlin is a good example because partying is kind of part of the city subculture.

People travel there literally to party.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#162

Post by rsynnott »

circlefavshape wrote: post #157
rsynnott wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 (…

Interesting! Would love to see a reference for your percentages

Up to 2023 in a slightly dodgy graphical representation here: https://housingireland.ie/composition-of-purchasers-of-new-h... (note that y axis is number of sales, but labels are percentage of sales!)

If sufficiently masochistic you can also wrestle it out of the CSO's horrible website for 2024, I think.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#163

Post by JKCalhoun »

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…

US suburbs have not changed. I grew up in US suburbs (in the 70's and early 80's) and there was partying.

My own personal theory? Music sucks now, ha ha.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#164

Post by pjc50 »

atonse wrote: post #90
hnpolicestate wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You correctly blame corporate buy up of real estate as a problem but nobody ever cites upper income new immigrants as a problem. Where I live the only people purchasing $600k - $1 million residential properties are newly arrived Chinese, Eastern European, South Asian and Arab immigrants. Makes for a very angry native population who are being pushed out of the places they were born for new arrivals. We'll never be abl…

Are you claiming that they’re already well to do (by American standards) when they arrive? I can’t count a single immigrant in my network that was rich by American standards (which makes them filthy rich by most other nations standards) and then chose to move here. Sure my sample size is probably 30 families (across a dozen countries) but that’s not nothing. Every single one built their net worth here. Meaning that o…

> immigrant in my network

These people are too rich to talk to you.

https://www.benhams.com/news/london-property-market/foreign-...

"almost 27% of the total London properties sold in Q1 2024 were acquired by foreign buyers, recording a 3% YoY rise."

Note that "foreign buyer" and "immigrant" aren't precisely the same thing; you can buy property in the UK without having to be resident.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#165

Post by watwut »

asdff wrote: post #121
conception wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some good answers but also American parents are stretched thin but also perhaps want to be a larger part of their kids lives? During the week I get maybe 10-30 minutes of quality time with them outside of the routine of weekly life. Maybe? So if I want to do something with my children and have a relationship with them, the weekends are all I have. Aaaand of course,quality of life in America is generally in decline an…

It is kind of paradoxical because kids would like the opposite honestly. I love my parents, they are great people, but knowing myself as a kid if I was asked if I wanted to spend saturday with my friends or with my parents, I'd pick my friends every single time no hesitation. You don't laugh like you do with your friends with anyone else. You don't get into shenanigans. You don't have to worry about "behavior" or any…

In my experience, kids want to be with parents. They want to do their own thing when they become pre-teens. But kids up to 8-9 years do genuinely like their parents.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#166

Post by pjc50 »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #142

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…

> People are afraid that they'll get drunk and their behavior will be filmed and go viral.

I think this is an underappreciated "phones killed socialization" angle. People used to post partying pics on social media. Then employers started going through social media to screen candidates. Facial recognition and automatic tagging means that it's not sufficient to not post party photos to your own social media, you need to make sure they aren't posted anywhere.

Which is a deterrent to partying as a concept once you start thinking in terms of "will this be bad for my social credit if an informant reports me to the employability police by posting me drunk?"

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#167

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

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…

>No one knows any neighbors.

Why would you know them? If this were 1965, you were going to live in that house the rest of your life, and they were going to live in that house the rest of their lives right next door and so it only made sense to get to know them. But today, both you and they are only here temporarily until it becomes time to move away in 4 years when you job-hop for that raise. Will you even live in the same state afterwards? Maybe at the next place you'll settle down and stay long enough to put forth the effort, but for now you're as much a migrant as any Dust Bowl Okie.

Even just 6 or 7 years ago younger coworkers were adamant that renting was the way to go, because they didn't want to be tied down to a house that they'd have to sell in a hurry when they inevitably moved away for a new job.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#168

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

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…

> I think in Ireland it's about half.

It's about 1/3rd AFAIR.

I do agree that Ireland has experienced a massive change in house prices from 15 years ago, but 15 years ago was the bottom of a bust after the boom so potentially not the right comparison point.

I do mostly agree with your points, and it's really bad but it's important to contextualise some of those points.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#169

Post by cwoolfe »

lawlessone wrote: post #7

Partying is more expensive than watching TV or playing games.

It is if you are hosting; but if you are going to the party...hey, it's free food! I think a systematic analysis would show that it would be cheaper for all of us on the whole to share food at parties since it is cheaper to buy in bulk.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#170

Post by selectodude »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #156
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…

One important data point is that houses have become much more expensive compared to income in the last decades. When I lived in CA, my plumber neighbor told me he bought his house in the 70s for 80000 on a salary of 40000. Today he would probably pay 800000 for the same house but make maybe 100000 or a little more. It's definitely harder to buy a house these days.

$40,000 in 1975 is over a quarter million 2025 dollars.
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