Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The death of partying in the USA

derekthompson.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 756 posts

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#271

Post by generalizations »

Aurornis wrote: post #252
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #249

This was a post on the GenX subreddit (from a Gen Zer) from just a couple days ago asking about if parties as portrayed in late 90s/early 00s "teen movies" were actually a real thing: https://www.reddit.com/r/GenX/comments/1lu102v/were_parties_... The responses from the Gen Xers were a mix of bewilderment and sadness, stuff like "What do you mean parties like this, it's just a normal teenage party!? I feel so ancient…

> It's really sad to me how we have completely fucked a lot of youth with social media, smart phones, You have to be careful with Gen Z threads like this on Reddit and Twitter. They are inherently biased toward Gen Z people who are chronically online and deep into social media. If you spend time with kids in the real world, you learn very rapidly that most of them aren't on platforms like Reddit and Twitter. Of those…

That should also be true of the Gen Xers replying though. So I think that effectively cancels out.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#272

Post by os2warpman »

biker142541 wrote: post #179
os2warpman wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People these days don’t own real estate. The home ownership rate has been 64%, plus or minus about 1%, for the last 45 years. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSAHORUSQ156S

Perhaps, but what about the median age of buyers? That tells a more complete story here https://www.axios.com/2024/11/04/home-buyer-age-older

The median age of buyers has increased from 31 in 2004 to 38 in 2024.

The median age of the population of the United States has increased from 35.3 in 2000 to 38.8 in 2020. (hmmmmm)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_the_Uni...

As the population pyramid of the US, which is already a "population Empire State Building", further morphs into a "Population Baseball Diamond", I expect the median age of all buyers to increase and the percentage of owners by age group in the younger cohorts to decrease.

Additionally, as the median age increases, because older people tend to have more money, I expect home prices to continue to increase.

Honestly, I expect home prices to spike by 2035-2040 as the current crop of 50–60-year-olds reach retirement realizing that their only real prospect of not starving to death in retirement is the main (and often only) asset: their home.

That will further stress younger folks, but people don't seem to care and anyone who expresses concern is denigrated as a communist so what is to be done?

Regardless, with the homeownership rate for "under 35" fluctuating between ~41% in 1982 and ~37% in 2024 "nobody owns shit no mo" is still false.

https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#273

Post by miriam_catira »

parpfish wrote: post #128
taeric wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened is that everything turned into playdates? When we were kids, the general direction was GTFO, and don't be late for dinner. Who did you go play with? Whoever was at the park. When you got older, you hopefully had access to the skating rink. Or maybe a bowling alley. Before that, kickball at the park. Pretty much every day. Maybe see if you can over shoot the swing again.

Im convinced that car seat rules have played a big role in shaping child socialization. When was a kid, you were done with your car seat by elementary school so one parent could offer to carpool a minivan full of kids to/from an event. But now that some kids need their car seat into middle school carpools are gone and every kid needs their parent to pick them up. It requires way more planning and parental involvement

This. This is definitely part of the problem. I can't even offer to take my kid & his friends anywhere, other than walk to the park after they're deposited at my house, because every one of them needs a car seat.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#274

Post by TheAmazingRace »

BirAdam wrote: post #227
Gigachad wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To some extent but there are differences. You have housing stability, a fixed price going forward, the ability to renovate most of the internals, and the ability to affix things to the walls without worrying about marks when you have to move out.

Well… mostly fixed price. Property taxes go up every single year, and are now the largest single payment I make every year.

This is a detail conveniently left out by home owners justifying their purchase, especially if they overpaid and have a higher interest rate on their mortgage on top of it. With a mortgage, the amount you pay is the expected floor you'll encounter, whereas with rent, the amount you pay is the maximum you'll deal with, at least for the duration of the lease agreement.

Renting honestly can be a better deal, especially if you have the discipline to stick excess money in the market consistently. In fact, your returns are likely better than just using a house as a forced savings account. In my neck of the woods, we have seen rental inversion too.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#275

Post by snozolli »

yubblegum wrote: post #258
Aurornis wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's really sad to me how we have completely fucked a lot of youth with social media, smart phones, You have to be careful with Gen Z threads like this on Reddit and Twitter. They are inherently biased toward Gen Z people who are chronically online and deep into social media. If you spend time with kids in the real world, you learn very rapidly that most of them aren't on platforms like Reddit and Twitter. Of those…

Basically, the kids who were socially marginalized in the prenetworks era also did not get to see the parties the socially active kids were having, and would have wondered at it all. It would have certainly been also 'a new experience' for them! Except back then they didn't have a place like reddit to go to and wonder out loud.

I never went to parties like this. I wasn't socially marginalized, I just wasn't one of the popular kids. Popularity at my school was closely tied with wealth and family status. A relatively tiny group of people lived this sort of life.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#276

Post by mindslight »

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…

This is such weird reasoning. When you're young and throwing parties where you're implicitly inviting a whole lot of people who you don't know, they will be bringing random chaos and you want to appear judgement proof and have it be someone else's property getting accelerated wear and tear. By the time you own a house with a yard, you're only inviting people you already know, with maybe one layer of transitive trust. Perhaps this focus on owning a house as the first step to doing anything points to the real problem though?

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#277

Post by SoftTalker »

Bradlinc wrote: post #124

I’ve stopped hosting as many dinner parties because accommodating diverse food preferences has become increasingly challenging. It’s a smaller factor compared to many mentioned in the article, but I thought it was worth adding.

And not just preference but allergies. I'm not sure why but it seems like the number and prevalence of food allergies has really gone up since the 1980s/1990s. Back then you didn't really worry much about food allergies when you were thinking about foods to serve at a party.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#278

Post by tlogan »

breakyerself wrote: post #264
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #249

This was a post on the GenX subreddit (from a Gen Zer) from just a couple days ago asking about if parties as portrayed in late 90s/early 00s "teen movies" were actually a real thing: https://www.reddit.com/r/GenX/comments/1lu102v/were_parties_... The responses from the Gen Xers were a mix of bewilderment and sadness, stuff like "What do you mean parties like this, it's just a normal teenage party!? I feel so ancient…

I mean normal teen parties when I was a teenager were places for teens to get blackout drunk and make bad decisions. I empathize with your position somewhat, but it wasn't all good.

Not all parties were like that. Or at least I was never invited to those. We geeks stuck to LAN parties, got drunk, and played games. Since there were no girls around, we managed to avoid making any bad decisions :)

But we did party way more than kids today.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#279

Post by tayo42 »

chkaloon wrote: post #149

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 do…

0.08 allows for a few drinks

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#280

Post by Aurornis »

generalizations wrote: post #271
Aurornis wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's really sad to me how we have completely fucked a lot of youth with social media, smart phones, You have to be careful with Gen Z threads like this on Reddit and Twitter. They are inherently biased toward Gen Z people who are chronically online and deep into social media. If you spend time with kids in the real world, you learn very rapidly that most of them aren't on platforms like Reddit and Twitter. Of those…

That should also be true of the Gen Xers replying though. So I think that effectively cancels out.

No, the legacy social media platforms are more popular with older generations.

Facebook is the canonical example of a social media platform that arrived after Gen X was young, but it now heavily used by Gen X while nearly completely shunned by Gen Z, with millenials somewhere in the middle.

Reddit and even Twitter are legacy social media platforms for Gen Z, especially younger Gen Z. The very oldest Gen Z people would have been too young to even use the internet when Reddit was launched.

Post reply on HN