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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

#351

Post by AStonesThrow »

Auracle wrote: post #341
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'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…

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Re: The death of partying in the USA

#352

Post by orangecat »

efields wrote: post #238
MisterTea wrote: post #220

Parties were where you went to meet random strangers, get intoxicated, and maybe get laid. None of this is exciting anymore. People are less motivated to go out. We have other forms of socialization. I blame a lot of the de-socialization on our constantly connected society. Since everyone is in contact with each other 24/7 via social media the idea of meeting random people is less exciting. The 24/7 news cycle also i…

This feels right. More than anything, it's the function of the Internet.

I'd argue that it's specifically the combination of social media and smartphones. 2000s era "social networks" of AIM and forums were fine; you had to actually be at your computer so it wasn't an all-consuming activity for most people.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#353

Post by DebtDeflation »

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…

Hold up. GenX'er here, graduated college in the mid 90s. Are you telling me that college keg parties in the basements of off-campus housing is no longer a thing?

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#354

Post by torginus »

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…

I'm not quite sure if smartphones are still all that popular. With the rise of WFH, (and for Gen-Z, having a Covid lockdown college experience), most people are on actual computers and are sitting at home.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#355

Post by DoneWithAllThat »

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 just absolute total nonsense. Normal people do own real estate. Lots of people rented back then and do now. Friends were “far away” back then too, they took their cars, bummed rides, took buses, whatever. Where do they sleep? Where do you think they slept back then? The floor, the couch, the lawn, or they didn’t sleep at all and just went home in the morning.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#356

Post by Exoristos »

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…

A lot of Millennial parents are -- paranoid. We have had neighbors exclaim that they don't want their children saying hi to us or they'll learn to talk to "strangers". Or a neighbor whose little boy played with my daughters for months, but when they moved the mother scowlingly rejected the idea of playdates because part of her goal in getting a bigger house was -- to put it in my words -- insulating him from other children. These tend to be the same parents who micromanage their children in other ways, like very limited diets and excessive summertime clothing, so, again, it seems like some form of paranoia.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#357

Post by rurp »

echelon wrote: post #231
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

Phones are the reason. Everyone gets quick and lazy dopamine from phones. Why bother with anything else? Think about how much time goes into phones. Who has time to plan? Who has time to coordinate? Phones are probably why the birth rate is declining too. You don't even need a house to party. You can use a pavilion at a park, go out in the woods like the rednecks I grew up around did, party at the trailer park. Homes…

The Smartphone Theory of Everything probably doesn't explain all of the recent social changes, nothing is that simple, but it sure does correlate really well with all kind of trends since they became widespread. Casual socializing, partying, friendships, drinking, and sex all began to plummet around the same time, while loneliness and depression increased.

Anecdotally is makes a lot of sense as well. Most of the people I know, including myself, spend an awful lot of time on their phones and the internet in general. All of those hours have to come at the expense of other activities.

When I was in my 20s I spent an unusual amount of time (for the era) alone on my computer, but since most people were still quite social it was easy to hop into various activities. Now that nearly everyone is spending a bunch of time alone on their phone the real life social networks have begun to fray.

Some of the changes are for the better (ie. fewer teen pregnancies) but I think these trends are quite bad overall, without a clear solution. It's probably not a coincidence that political polarization and extremism has also increased during this time. Banning smart phones in schools seems like a step in the right direction, albeit a tiny one. Hopefully we can come up with more.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#358

Post by weinzierl »

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 which negative side effects they could have. Real life was not like in "American Pie" at all and that is where I guess Gen Z is getting their impression from.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#359

Post by danjc »

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…

One aspect to consider is that the vast proportion of content in automated feeds isn't even sincere - it's just engagement farming.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#360

Post by ssutch3 »

preachermon wrote: post #347
tlogan wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

as a socially marginalized kid in those days, I ended up banding together with other sm kids and we had our own parties.

We called em LAN parties
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