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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

#191

Post by Tainnor »

libertine wrote: post #161
pantalaimon wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People travel to Berlin to go party in clubs, not for home parties.

Partying in someone's apartment is a thing in probably every reasonably sized city in Europe, not just Berlin. Although you should probably alert your neighbours.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#193

Post by micromacrofoot »

jcranmer wrote: post #175
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…

> People these days don’t own real estate. Wealthy people own it all. Normal people are renting apartments or portions of homes. If you look at a graph of home ownership in the US by cohort at various points in time (see, e.g., https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/08/homeownership... ), while the rates are somewhat lower, between the highest point and the lowest point the difference is at worst 10 percentage p…

> This sentiment strikes me a lot more as people in their 20's complaining that they're poor because they don't have the financial resources of someone in their 40's, despite having more resources than the latter did at their age.

Home prices have doubled over the past 20 years, twice the rate of income increases

This isn't just "complaining"

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#194

Post by bapak »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #11

My grandma was the head of the local Air Force wives' club. Their house was always stocked like a full bar and at least several people stopped by for a visit just about every day. They knew at least 10 of their neighbors well, and some former neighbors too. Find me community like this anywhere in America these days. Immigrant communities perhaps? Most Americans these days won't interact with their neighbors unless it…

Social networks have moved online and have been drowned in ads and TikTok dances. No time for in-person meetups unless you're going to that fancy instagrammable place to take pictures of yourself.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#195

Post by booleanbetrayal »

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…

Every family is dual income now, so every family needs to find something to do with their kids once school lets out. Growing up in the 80's most families around were single income and kept kids at home over the summers. As a result, kids ruled the neighborhoods, bouncing around between houses all day, where there could be some reasonable expectation of peripheral oversight. Now, everyone is min-maxing camp schedule to ensure there is child oversight during working hours, and the neighborhoods are empty.

We decided to break from the trend and return our kids to more of a free-range kid paradigm, risking the disruption to our working schedules, this year. It sounds good in theory, but you are left with the realities of every other child friend being wrapped in camp schedules, as well. It took a lot of proactive discussions with other parents to convince them to keep their kids at home and accessible. But you're still left with the dual income problem, so you find yourself hiring a sitter to oversee and shuttle.

The result is an improvement over the 100% booked compartmentalized camp situation, but without the same level of independence that I experienced and have come to credit with really advancing my own personal development as a child.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#196

Post by Aerbil313 »

pjc50 wrote: post #150
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.

No, it's real. I have AuDHD and very strictly defined routines are how I manage to function day-to-day. It's not a productivity hack or how I'll be a billionaire in 5 years though, like scrollheads often promote. It's just how my brain works. A small fraction of those influencers might also be neurodivergent and sincerely posting what works for them.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#197

Post by MisterTea »

0_____0 wrote: post #182
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #158

Let's be honest. A lot of previous partying was made possible by lots and lots and lots of drinking and driving. That of course still goes on today, but nearly at the levels of the past.

People were drinking and driving in 1800s New England?

I am sure there were plenty of sauced stage coach drivers and horsemen.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#198

Post by aksss »

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…

You need a home to party? News to my younger self. Parties in crowded shitty apartments, outdoors, or even in cars were the norm when we were young.

This complaint - we don’t have nice houses so we can’t party - is unintentionally emblematic of the root issue in misaligned expectations and excuses for realigned priorities. Nobody Inknew when young had houses either.

Look, it’s not obviously bad to me that young people party less. Blame gaming, blame some resurgent conservative cultural values, blame the internet or even laziness. Maybe the youth today just have better things to do, and that okay. Binge drinking, drugs, and stupid decisions aren’t necessary good investments in time, and many, many, friends from back in the day didn’t survive it. Like less kids smoking cigarettes, maybe this is a good thing (for them and all of us).

But it’s ridiculous to try and turn this behavioral trend into some manifesto on housing inequality. Give me a break.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#199

Post by bluGill »

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.

At 18% interest which happened in the 70s your yearly payments would have been 14468.02 or 36% of your income. A couple years ago you could get 3% rates and so your payment on that house would be 40473.98 or 40% of your income, not much difference (and likely the house is larger). At todays 6% interest the payment is 57556.85 or 57% of your income and so not affordable, but this is a very recent thing.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#200

Post by yesfitz »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #163
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.

US suburbs have very much changed!

The median new home size skyrocketed in the '80s.[1]

Many of the post-war suburbs were planned communities built with schools, churches, grocery stores, and other necessities within walking distance.[2] Compare that to developments today (and since the '90s), that are all housing, lack sidewalks, and require a car to get to necessities.

Serendipity doesn't happen when everyone's in cars. You don't pull over to invite an acquaintance over for a beer or offer to watch their kids.

1: https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/average-home-size/#smal...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levitt_%26_Sons#Construction_o...

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