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The death of partying in the USA

derekthompson.org

481–490 of 756 posts

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can't buy on the west coast for a quarter million. A house big enough to start a family will likely start at a half million, and in some communities will come with hefty tax burdens.

Sure, but you can certainly afford a house on the West Coast with an income of $250k.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#482
post #466
post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> 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 now, yes, but not 20+ years ago when they were younger and going out and partying.

I don't understand the point you're trying to make?

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#483
I see this cultural shift resulting from multiple contributing factors: 1. The increasingly litigious environment that is the US. Where people are becoming more risk-averse out of fear of being liable for whatever. 2. The fact that anything you did, be it something great or a faux pas, social or otherwise, was much more ephemeral. At best it would be captured in people’s memories for a couple of weeks or the occasional cell phone pic that was inevitably lost with the hardware. More recently, everything you do is recorded, indexed, and preserved with accompanying text, photos, and video - _forever_ - thanks to social media and the internet.

Also, agreeing with other posts, the onus of “sports culture” for kids (and families) in k-12 schools these days is absolutely unbelievable.

edit: Also, finding out the following Monday (in school) that a “party” to which you weren’t invited occurred over the weekend was unpleasant. Witnessing a middle-school-aged kid discover a “party” to which they weren’t invited in real-time as it is streaming live on social media is absolutely heart-breaking.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#484

Does anyone know why "Hours spent in childcare" started skyrocketing in the 1990s? Here is the graph from the article: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!2g7_!,w_1456,c_limit...

It does seem like there's something wrong with that data; I find it somewhat implausible that the average parent was only caring for their child for 1.7 hours a day in 1985; even if you assume that all of the tween and teens were free-range and only got an hour or two of parenting a day, little kids have always required nonstop attention to make sure that they're not actively dying. Although... the infant mortality r…

I was born in '83 and I'd say this mostly describes my upbringing. We were left to our own devices the vast majority of the time. By the time I hit my teens, most days I'd barely see my parents at all. At some point you've got kids raising other kids as the parents are absent.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#485

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…

The old "boomer" parties were even wilder. Some girl's parents would leave for the weekend, and she'd quietly invite a friend or two over. Somehow, word would get out, and 400 people would show up, with multiple kegs, and the place would get trashed.

That's not a boomer thing. It more or less happened to me too.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#486
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Socially marginalized kids were partying too. The only difference was, we weren’t invited to the “cool” parties. These days, there’s definitely a lot less partying overall.

Me and my nerd friends had LAN parties in somebody's garage etc. I really miss those sometimes.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#487

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…

No. The “new generation” now knows what the outcasts and the undesirables of the “old generation” felt like. The more I speak to the younger crowd the more parallels I find which just means the “default” shifted towards a society of people who don’t know a different way, but are unaware of what goes on around them. The undesirables of the old knew, but couldn’t do anything about it. It’s like people who are bewildere…

I knew the Diddy party charges wouldn’t stick because the aggrieved persons descriptions sound like commonly held parties in Los Angeles with quite a lot of consent involved (and courts aren't able to parse more nuanced aspects of consent, so people are left with a reliance on mutual cooperation)

this detail isn’t as important to people as wondering if I’ve gone to an LA sex party and whatever preconception they have of that and now me

Just like those bankers, and this thread, there is always a party

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. However, I worked as a photographer for about 10 years (quit about 2 years ago) and high school senior photos were one of my specialties, so I got to know a lot of teenagers. Overscheduling is, I think, the biggest issue. Most of the teens I worked with had something going on almost every night, to the point where rescheduling due to rain or heat was an absolute nightmare. Sports were the biggest offende…

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 recent NCAA changes vis a vis roster limits is only making this worse. Want to be a collegiate athlete? You better be ELITE. Walk-ons are a thing of the past. As such, kids with those dreams (or overly involved parents) are pouring their lives into their sport(s).

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#489

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 think this article was way overdone, based on what I see with my teenage kids. They don't go to any "parties", but during the summer they are at the beach around 4x per week with bonfires at night. Almost 1/3 of their class (at a somewhat small school) is there. And with Snapchat they know where everyone is. It's typical on a Friday school night they are scanning their map to see, "this group is at the mall. this g…

Its definitely more efficient than riding on your bike or later a car, hoping someone was home

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 without a big home, a yard, a big kitchen, etc. Small apartments are for small get-togethers that probably don’t register as parties. This is baffling to me. Most of the parties I went to in high school, college, and my 20s were in people's tiny apartm…

Good insights -- people now have to have their party look good for their social feeds: insta, tiktok, whatever. I'm forever thankful that I never had to even think about that, and even if people were taking pictures, nobody gave a damn about the background.

I go through this with my wife for every party we throw. She wants the house cleaned, table set, food spread ready, seasonal cocktails mixed, furniture moved around, decorations just so, etc.

I’m like here’s a giant thing of ice cold booze have fun.

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