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The death of partying in the USA

derekthompson.org

611–620 of 756 posts

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#611
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest bias to watch out for is to assume what has happened in the past on the same trajectory. It wasn’t long ago when the experts were warning about over population.

I dare say that the housing crisis is driven by people needing housing, and the number of people alive being problematically high seems like it might be related to the problem of overpopulation. Food supply has kept up, but if housing has not, isn't that still a problem driven by overpopulation?

You seemed to have ignored my point entirely.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#612
As a zennial, there are a couple things that contribute: 1. No one has a car when you're younger unless your parents are well off. Most people I know didn't have access to a car until college. Makes it hard to get to parties when only 1 of your friends has a car that fills up instantly. 2. Most of your friends are online anyways. You're going to hang out with friends every night because they're on discord, waiting for you to get on and play your social game together. Why would you hang out in person if you can hang out online? You can't get to their house anyways. 3. Similarly to that, none of my friends live near each other anymore. We all moved to different cities for different reasons. So many people I've talked to are similar. It also makes it harder to find new friends, since everyone has their friends. They're just not near.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#613
post #543

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.

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

Only if they were rich or OCD. Plenty of parties were thrown with little prep when there weren't insta/tok/snaps showing off perfection 24/7.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#614
post #545
post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How much of that is because of the difference in how severely the legal/policing systems punish this kind of harmless activity now vs back then?

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#615
post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

When its snacks and BS while everyone gets hooked up and gets files off the local share to install SC2 for the nth time. It would take hours to get set up. Then more hours of play. We'd go for 10 to 12 hours sometimes, just to get things working.

If by SC2 you mean Star Craft 2, that's a bit too recent for me. We used to play Quake 2, Red Alert, Diablo 2.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#616
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you owned a house for the last 20 years, are now richer than ever due to that property appreciating. Only if you sell it, and move somewhere with a much lower cost of housing.

If there is a spare bedroom in your HCOL location, renting that out lets you get some incoming cash flow without having to move away to a LCOL location.

You don't get "rich" from renting out a spare bedroom.

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#617

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 have to wonder if what's happened in the U.S. is something akin to involution [0] where increased scarcity in what were stable middle class environments leads to seemingly endless and fruitless competition. You used to hear stories about how students at Palo Alto High School work like first year investment bankers, leading to high rates of suicide. Seems like that's ubiquitous now. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/…

Probably just look at Korea tbh

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#618
post #282

I was a teenager in high school around 2005 and living in the Midwest. There were lots of underage drinking and parties going on during that time. That being said, most of it was "cool parents" that allowed such behavior because we didn't own anything as teens. We would have rules like, if you're drinking there, you have to stay the night or call your parents to pick you up. I think it was just a different time; it s…

[deleted]

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#619

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.

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…

exactly that’s how I describe it as well, this world is highly manufactured. If you opt out you are mostly alone so this also serves as a kind of social circle

Re: The death of partying in the USA

#620

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…

Many commenters focusing on the ROI part of your comment but I totally agree with your premise based on my own experience as a young person.

How I would word it is younger people are generally less inclined to invest in (real/in-person?) social interaction. I suspect some bar for motivation or entertainment has changed so people don't socialise the same. Probably intertwined with rise in mental health issues too. Be less interested in socialising and it's no surprise the result is less socialising, in one form or another.

In my experience yeah people don't often reach out or reciprocate effectively when it comes to socialising. Or they stick to a very small group.

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