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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

#541

Post by lurk2 »

starkparker wrote: post #508
Aurornis wrote: post #257

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…

Gen Z in particular is deathly afraid of having an earnest but unflattering moment captured in someone else's TikTok and distributed to the entire planet.

What are you basing that off of?

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#542

Post by floren »

fathomdeez wrote: post #490
98codes wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know this struggle, and the best I've been able to do is to push every time for limited scope. Let's just get pizzas instead of cooking 3 different mains and having a cheese plate, 4 bowls of chips, etc. Social media has really done a number on people (see also those omnipresent balloon arches)

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#543

Post by lurk2 »

98codes wrote: post #406
Aurornis wrote: post #257

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.

People deep cleaned their houses for parties long before social media and smartphones came along.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#544

Post by watwut »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #411
watwut wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being stay at home parent is extremely isolating. It is most lonely thing one can do. You spend ovwrwhelming majority of the day completely alone. No collegues to bump into you and talking with you. If the stay at home parent does not actively organizes meetups, they are completely alone until partner comes home ... after he talked with people at work.

Sounds like my wfh job

Kind of depends on how much you have to call with others. But yes, if you do not have calls and do not need to coordinate, wfh can end up being isolating too.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#545

Post by 9rx »

realo wrote: post #533
kenjackson wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Aaaahhh... You have "beach" ... with the "bonfires" option pack ... This is very nice urban furniture. Here we have "streets" and , occasionally, "public parks". Forget the "bonfires" option.

> Forget the "bonfires" option.

This right here is emblematic of the change in culture. When Gen X were young you weren't allowed to have bonfires (in most public places) either, but that never stopped anyone. Nowadays the kids are too afraid to do anything.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#546

Post by Apocryphon »

01100011 wrote: post #414
mtrovo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh that rings true and it's so depressive. But I think it has more to do with this notion that everything you do socially is awkward in some degree and could be seeing as bad or hurtful, smartphones didn't help us there with the chance of becoming the next national meme just a tiktok away. Also social interactions nowadays have become so "one of a kind" and disconnected from a general contract that sometimes it's har…

When I grew up back in the 80s there was a sense of more stability, I think. People didn't move around as much. American suburbs were more of a monoculture(for better and, mostly, for worse, but it was what it was). That stability and comfort let people be more at ease and more open to things. I think now there's a generally higher level of anxiety and it spills over into the need to plan every social interaction. Ev…

I wonder if it was the Great Recession that made all the difference.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#547

Post by watwut »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #407
watwut wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being stay at home parent is extremely isolating. It is most lonely thing one can do. You spend ovwrwhelming majority of the day completely alone. No collegues to bump into you and talking with you. If the stay at home parent does not actively organizes meetups, they are completely alone until partner comes home ... after he talked with people at work.

Thats another argument. The stay at home parent created a lot of the social parties.

Some did out of mental health necessity. Some did not and were profoundly lonely and unhappy (my case). And some did indeed ended up having that period to be super happy.

My point is that it is profoundly unsocial way of life for the parent at home. The party even twice a week do not really make up for being completely alone with nothing challenging to do whole day. You can easily end up loosing social skills and those parties end up unfulfilling.

If you go to work and then someone else organizes a party once in a while, it is cool effortless way to keep friends. But, if the stay at home person is extroverted, there is very little social about their lifestyle.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#548

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

philipkglass wrote: post #322
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No one knows any neighbors. Why would you know them? If this were 1965, you were going to live in that house the rest of your life, and they were going to live in that house the rest of their lives right next door and so it only made sense to get to know them. But today, both you and they are only here temporarily until it becomes time to move away in 4 years when you job-hop for that raise. Will you even live in th…

Americans are moving less frequently now than they were in 1965: Overall, when looking at both migration between U.S. states and within them, fewer Americans are moving each year. In 1948, the first year on record with the Census Bureau, more than 20 percent of the population moved in the past year. This had decreased to just 8.7 percent in 2022. While the share of Americans moving across state lines remained more st…

Perhaps fewer move. But they definitely perceive it differently, especially the younger demographics. There are fewer young people each year too, as our population ages, so I'm not sure your statistics are particularly relevant to the group we're talking about... unless you were under the impression that all the nonagenarians were party animals or something.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#549

Post by kergonath »

broost3r wrote: post #527
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.

check out this article (gift link) from yesterday about private equity in youth sports https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/business/youth-sports-pri... > For many families, the money they spend on sports is an investment in their child’s future. Roughly two in 10 youth sports parents think their child has the ability to play Division I college sports, and one in 10 thinks his or her child could reach the professional…

> one in 10 thinks his or her child could reach the professional ranks or the Olympics

That is properly insane. The delusion…

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#550

Post by 9rx »

frollogaston wrote: post #468
Gigachad wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s car dependence, but the impacts were delayed because people used to just drink and drive. Now that’s rightfully seen as unacceptable, but we are still left with car dependence. So people just don’t leave home now.

It was totally unacceptable to drink and drive in the 2000s, and the sharp decline didn't start until right after. You'd also find a similar decline in socializing among non-driving-age children.

It was totally unacceptable in the 2000s, but there still remained a lot of "...but I can probably get away with it". That has declined in the interim.
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