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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

#421

Post by conductr »

1shooner wrote: post #388
germinalphrase wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a HS teacher for about a decade. The demands on kids and families around youth sports (especially private/club leagues) is out of control. I had students, 14/15-years-old, going to their school team practice then club team practice, not getting home until past 9 pm every night. Families from three states away would enroll their kids in my school half of the year to play on the hockey team (staying with local sp…

>The demands on kids and families I'd like to understand this more. Families like this that I know talk about it as though it's as unavoidable as their mortgage, but functionally isn't this entirely self-imposed? Is it a lack of vision for an alternative? Are whole families succumbing to peer pressure? I don't relate to it.

My son is starting 1st grade this fall, has been at same school since he was 3 and it goes through high school so, these are and will be his peers and it starts as major FOMO/it's the main way kids socialize outside of school hours. Good way to burn off their energies, etc. But it's also, they're young, we want to expose them to everything, they can find their "thing", etc. He does tons of non-Athletic stuff too (STEM, art, music, etc). So we've been playing soccer, baseball, flag football, basketball, lacrosse, swimming, etc. the last few years. It's getting to the point where some kids dropped a few sports based on disinterest or parent's inability to keep the schedule. We have one kid so really no excuses for us, but some people with multiple kids doing this is a scheduling nightmare. Anyways, what's already started to happen is we've brought in hired coaches. In no time, they'll be club/select league aged and people will faction off to do that. When it does, it will feel like gravity/inertia to do the same. Once you do, if you skip a beat, your kid is basically giving up the sport. They can't just join the baseball team in middle school, they won't make the cut against kids that have been playing non-stop since they were It is their entire friend group and becomes their identity. It would be hard to intentionally tell my son "you're not playing sports anymore". He may come to that conclusion on his own or coaches may cut him at some point; that's life. But, for those that stay active in it, the inertia of it is strong.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#422

Post by insane_dreamer »

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…

> inherently biased toward Gen Z people who are chronically online and deep into social media

most of the Gen Z people I know fit this description

is there really a significant Gen Z cohort that isn't "chronically online and deep into social media"?

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#423

Post by bpt3 »

dylan604 wrote: post #256
shlant wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> affected by the corporate buying of single family homes > after corps, we have foreign buyers also coming in with cash offers As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, these are memes that are not actually backed by data - commonly perpetuated by groups that blame most issues on billionaires/corporations/investment firms.

So you're insinuating that the specific example of a house sitting empty owned by a foreign buyer is made up? In my neighborhood specifically, there are homes being bought not by single families but specifically buy management companies so they can then rent the property. To deny this happens is just as much of a stick your head in the sand meme as what you are accusing me of.

No one is denying that it ever happens. It happens in so few numbers that it has no impact on the overall real estate market.

That's why your anecdote is meaningless and can be dismissed immediately.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#424

Post by conductr »

lapcat wrote: post #410
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…

> 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. Wouldn't Gen X responses on those threads also be inherently biased toward Gen X people who are chronically online and deep into social media?

Maybe but they had a pre-internet life to reference and this topic is specifically discussing it

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#425

Post by api »

potato3732842 wrote: post #418
parineum wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Starting in the late 1990s... How old were you then? People have a tendency to remember some time period when everything was carefree and you didn't have to worry about how much stuff cost and all this new, great stuff was happening. And then you find out they were 12 and the time where they think all that went downhill was when they were 20.

The general feeling of "things were better and looking more upward in the 90s" is pretty common across generations. 9/11 was kind of the 21st century's market crash of '29

The US still has not recovered from 9/11. IMHO the terrorists won. They got quite a bit of what they wanted.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#426

Post by VLM »

Three issues that are important but nobody wants to discuss (why?):

Inflation in the cost of law enforcement. As an X-er I received some truly epic paint-peeling flame-throwing "angry dad-style" lectures from cops and one time I got caught and my parents were called and I paid a municipal citation (not a misdemeanor or felony) equivalent to thirteen hours of minimum wage labor (essentially, one teenage afterschool weekly paycheck...). Now a days it would be kinder if the cops just shot the kid, as they will lose their license semi-permanently which means no job and no programmed activities and no sports, forbidden from joining the military (note the GI Bill paid for my college), lose their security clearance if they are already in the .mil, expelled from college / retract admission, suspended from school, that means no college diploma, no diploma as a job ticket to get one of the very few remaining "good jobs" etc. Seems a little inflated of a punishment over "a couple beers" People like discussing the inflation rate of real estate, lack of inflation in wages, but they should discuss inflation in the punishment for having a few drinks. A general cultural trend toward absolutism where everything thats permitted is mandatory and everything thats not permitted has no limit to the resulting punishment to prevent it. Toe the line precisely, or suffer the full weight of the law, and the line does not include partying, so you'd be crazy to do that.

"In the old days" the cultural expectation was everyone works 9-5. No one is allowed that anymore, they either work 24x7 as servants on call to their feudalistic owner, or have weird hours and gig economy jobs. Most people cannot "drop by after work around 6 for a beer". Can you drink at work? I can't. Can you go to work drunk? I can't. Some people, maybe most people, are not allowed to ever be "not at work". You're not even allowed to sleep if your boss feels like texting you; you surely can't get drunk at a friends house without getting fired. Don't worry that beer (or ten) will only cost you a one year job search to get a new job. When everyone is under house arrest by their employer, nobody parties.

There's a long tradition in the USA of trashing a proper name and the following generation abandons it while doing the same thing under a new name. Every generation before gen-x loved going to malls, then a long indoctrination campaign to use security forces and police to "keep those annoying teenage kids out of malls" started in the 1980s, and here I am in the 2020s and I STILL will not go to the mall because of heavy handed security, and my generation and younger is killing the malls because malls hate me because I was once a teen that hung out at the mall a lifetime ago. So, WRT parties, post "Animal House" movie era, a party means vandalism, drunk driving accidents, police arrests, visiting the ER for alcohol (or other) intoxication, etc. The marketing has been successful and my generation and younger no longer "attend parties". We "hike at the park" or "tailgate at the (kids?) sport event" or "hang out at the festival" or "board game night" doing EXACTLY what we did when people partied, but for marketing reasons we never party anymore, its a "tailgate" sporting event. This makes the article pretty weak sauce, an entire article about doing search and replace in a word processor for "party" and "board game night" is not a significant lifestyle change.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#427

Post by basisword »

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.

Getting drunk and making bad decisions (within reason) is:

a) fun

b) how you learn

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#428

Post by DidYaWipe »

hnpolicestate wrote: post #82
DidYaWipe wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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…

[dead]

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#429

Post by vitaflo »

1shooner wrote: post #388
germinalphrase wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a HS teacher for about a decade. The demands on kids and families around youth sports (especially private/club leagues) is out of control. I had students, 14/15-years-old, going to their school team practice then club team practice, not getting home until past 9 pm every night. Families from three states away would enroll their kids in my school half of the year to play on the hockey team (staying with local sp…

>The demands on kids and families I'd like to understand this more. Families like this that I know talk about it as though it's as unavoidable as their mortgage, but functionally isn't this entirely self-imposed? Is it a lack of vision for an alternative? Are whole families succumbing to peer pressure? I don't relate to it.

From talking to many parents they want to give them activities so their kids aren’t bored or sitting inside on their phones all day. Sports is one of those things and lets them also be with other kids.

The problem is kids being bored can be a good thing but they are never allowed to be. When I was a kid the internet didn’t even exist let alone cell phones and the only rule was “be home before sundown”. Kids now have way too many distractions and structure and are never given the ability to explore their own world on their own. It’s been manufactured for them.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#430

Post by bell-cot »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #404
1shooner wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The demands on kids and families I'd like to understand this more. Families like this that I know talk about it as though it's as unavoidable as their mortgage, but functionally isn't this entirely self-imposed? Is it a lack of vision for an alternative? Are whole families succumbing to peer pressure? I don't relate to it.

Narcissist parents competing with other narcissist parents to be the best parents in the universe. Social media caters to their twisted world view where everyone is living a polished life of perfection so why not them and their perfect high-success family.

's/narcissist/desperately insecure/', perhaps? To a lot of Americans, the future really doesn't look so good if you fall out of the top 10%...1%...0.1%...
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