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

491–500 of 756 posts

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#491

Post by [deleted] »

watwut wrote: post #165
asdff wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#492

Post by frollogaston »

weinzierl wrote: post #358
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, and over-scheduling/over-protection." I honestly believe social media, smart phones, and over-scheduling/over-protection does a lot less damage to the current generation than partying did to my generation. I can recommend the 1995 Larry Clark movie "kids" for a more balanced view how parties often looked like and whic…

The article title mentions partying, but there's a chart that's just about going out with 2+ friends. That's a terrible thing to lose. I was a kid in the 2000s, and the vast majority of socializing was just harmless fun, not the extreme.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#493

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

lapcat wrote: post #485
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fair 'nuff.

I wasn't even aware that they don't have them, anymore.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#494

Post by pinkmuffinere »

millipede wrote: post #455

I've been throwing moderately large parties the past 2 years (12-40 people) and the lack of partying is definitely noticeable. Most people don't reciprocate, making it disheartening to keep doing it. I wanted to build friendships out of it, and hopefully get invited to more parties myself, but so far it hasn't happened. It's a decent amount of set up (cleaning, buying food, coordinating), and a lot of clean up after…

If you happen to live in San Diego, I'll happily invite you to my parties! They generally involve board games, making a fire, having dinner, watching a movie, or going to the beach. Alcohol optional. Not super wild, but always a good time for me :)

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#495

Post by pavon »

generalenvelope wrote: post #53

It feels ridiculous not to mention car dependence and the things that enabled it: restrictive zoning, parking minimums, the car lobby. In the last 50 years, the US has bulldozed dense, mixed used housing that enabled community and tight knit neighborhoods. More economically/socially viable housing (read: an apartment on top of a business) has literally been banned in much of the US. Ensuring that there's a large plot…

But that hasn't changed much between the 80s and now. It was bad then and it is bad now. So I don't see it being a significant factor for change in socialization on that timescale.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#496

Post by bell-cot »

HPsquared wrote: post #462
bell-cot wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'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%...

Do sports help in a bleak future world? I think if people really believed that, they'd focus more on the kid's practical skills.

From a number of "what people did, trying to get their kid into Harvard"-themed articles in the past few years, I think it's a pretty common belief that awesome athletic extracurriculars are a secret sauce.

Though I suspect that lizard-brain emotions play a bigger role. Both self-medication attempts to get success by proxy, and also visually demonstrating (to themselves and their peer parents) that their kid is a Success Story at something.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#497

Post by konart »

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…

As a millennial - I'm also amazed by these parties. Some of my peers had this kind of experience, but for me this is something from parallel universe.

Mostly because I never really understood the fun part.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#498

Post by asdff »

Roguelazer wrote: post #188
asdff wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sprawl of suburbia isn't so much outside the top 5-10ish cities. Even "growing" places like Columbus OH in the midwest, you can go from cornfield to cornfield across the built environment in probably 25 miles and about as many minutes on the freeway network that is entirely uncongested since it is so overbuilt for the population (unlike in those top 5 places where it may be underbuilt). By and large that is how t…

I mean, ~90M people live in one of the top 10 metro areas, which is about ¼ of the country. Not sure that I'd necessarily call that an "exception".

So 75% lives outside of it. Yeah I'd say the majority lives this way and to live otherwise is an exception for the remaining 25%. And even within those top 10 some are more like what I describe. There are definitely parts of those metros where the "mile a minute" travel estimation from uncongested highways applies. Certainly true for philadelphia outside the ~50sq miles of the gridded central city. Places like Houston average home is only like 250k pretty much at parity with midwest prices.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#499

Post by ashdksnndck »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #458
millipede wrote: post #455

I've been throwing moderately large parties the past 2 years (12-40 people) and the lack of partying is definitely noticeable. Most people don't reciprocate, making it disheartening to keep doing it. I wanted to build friendships out of it, and hopefully get invited to more parties myself, but so far it hasn't happened. It's a decent amount of set up (cleaning, buying food, coordinating), and a lot of clean up after…

going to a party is less intimidating (particularly effort-wise) than hosting one maybe co-host one with somebody who you think might enjoy hosting but is reticent to try

Also if you just want to make your own parties easier to host, you can ask the guest list if anyone will volunteer to help with specific tasks or supplies.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#500

Post by danans »

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…

> the fact that kids today can't even recognize "basic teen parties" and question whether they are some sort of made up fantasy

While I agree there is a technology-driven loneliness epidemic, what is so sacred about those "basic teen parties"?

People from any time before the 70s wouldn't recognize them either. Also, they were fictional caricatures written for movies, not real life, where teen parties were considerably less interesting.

Post reply on HN