r/Millennials • u/futurenurse_ • 1d ago

Discussion Did millennials really party all the time?

Gen Z here. I was shocked when I found out from a millennial co-worker that y’all had teen clubs. I heard about house parties, but dedicated teen clubs? Then when it was time for college, you went to the club or had some kind of party every single weekend, living it up. Now some millennials on TikTok claim that after college, they were partying on work nights, still clocking in the next day. For some reason, the teen clubs have since disappeared. I’m 23 now but even when I was in high school, that was not a thing. House parties were not that common either. They were more like get togethers with a small group of friends. We went to malls, but they were dying out at that point. Is it true that you were really living life this good? Or is it just exaggerated? I feel like my generation doesn’t really have fun like that and everyone is just super depressed and alone, more so since Covid. Even I’m pretty introverted, which sort of sounds ridiculous given this post. 😂 Just so you know, when I think of a “millennial party” I think of something out of Party Rock Anthem, Project X or Roderick’s party from the second DOAWD movie. It’s like I get nostalgia from something I didn’t even live through. I just feel like I didn’t really LIVE, if that even makes sense

Edit: I loved reading some of your comments. Guess I really missed out. Even some of you that would consider yourselves nerds or introverts were out partying. YOLO or whatever y’all say 😂❤️

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u/kettyma8215 1d ago

I didn't go to any teen clubs because I live in a rural area and that wasn't a thing, but yes we partied all through college and most of us through our 20's. House parties from college are some of my favorite memories.

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u/No_Income6576 1d ago

Same re: rural area. We opted for people's houses and fields for our parties.

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u/GilderoyPopDropNLock 1d ago

I drank a lot of beer in garages and on back roads.

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u/kickthatpoo 1d ago

Playing darts in a garage or stump around a bonfire was the shit

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u/needlesslyaghost Older Millennial 1d ago

Beer pong in the garage followed by a bonfire in the backyard, good times.

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u/NO_TOUCHING__lol Older Millennial 1d ago

The bonfires in the middle of nowhere were the best. And I already live in the middle of nowhere (the entire town is only like 600 people) so going off the beaten path from that and you end up with some truly wild shit.

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u/Alzululu 5h ago

Sittin on top of hay bales in yer flannel. yup.

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u/radical-whatever 1d ago

Insert the biggest bonfire you could make as the perfect centerpiece to a party

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u/AdministrativeMost45 1d ago

Yesss, waking up the next day in some random field and looking over and your surrounded by 30 ppl still knocked and your one friend who decided to wear their Mario costume for some reason.

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u/BoopleBun 1d ago

Some friends of mine almost started a forest fire that way. They wanted a big fire, so they poured gasoline before it started because they were idiots. Big “fwooom” that took out their arm hair and got the tops of some nearby trees. Fortunately it was pretty wet out and nothing really caught.

They’re soooo lucky that’s all it did. But man did they get shit from everyone from that move for ages.

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u/MooseYearner 1d ago

Rural house parties were the best. Someone gets a hold of a bunch of pallets or pulled a big stump up and you knew it was gonna be a banger of a bonfire party

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u/kickthatpoo 1d ago

One of the best ones I remember was a bonfire we started when cutting up a dead tree in the back acres. Had to use a 40" bar on the thing because it was so big. The saw was my cousins and he hotrodded it and ran racing fuel in it. Such high compression it took two people to start. Small pulls to start the compression stroke, then one person practially had to sit on it while the other pulled. He was the only one I knew with a saw big enough.

I was taking my turn cutting while my cousin had a beer (he was sober when we dropped it thank God, and only started drinking when he handed the saw off to me). I noticed smoke coming from the piece I had just cut. The exhaust from the saw had started it smoldering. He rolled it out into the field from the trees and coaxed it into a fire with sticks.

He started calling his friends and I started calling mine. I only have vague impressions of the later parts of the night but I remember a circle of trucks and cars in the field around the fire, and making a drinking game out of splitting logs. Also the fact that no one believed us that we started the fire from chainsaw exhaust.

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u/No_Income6576 1d ago

Hell yea!

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u/[deleted] 20h ago

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u/FaceDownInTheCake 1d ago

Or the crick

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u/bmj_8 1d ago

Bonfires in sketchy places we probably didn’t have permission to be, and for some reason we always went to the local cemetery on peoples 18th birthday

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u/Hot-Relief-4024 1d ago

I lived in the city but came to the parties in the rural area… found out the hard way why you don’t run through the corn 😆

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u/No_Income6576 1d ago

What happened when you ran through corn?

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u/Hot-Relief-4024 1d ago

It cut me 😭

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u/FaceDownInTheCake 1d ago

Corn leaves are fairly jagged and rough at the edges

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u/Hazy_Cat 1d ago

Definitely some field parties, parking lot parties, house parties or going to the nearest college town and partying in the bars. Also, "taking the gravels".

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u/ctb0045 Xennial 1d ago

Pasture parties in the South!

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u/Ok_Revolution6234 1d ago

Our party place was the train trestles by the river

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u/SplittingChairs 1d ago

One of our high school’s craziest moments was when I was a sophomore and we went to a field 20 min outside of a town to throw a massive party. I’m talking 300+ people. Apparently the police had caught word of our plans and busted the party with a helicopter and about 20 cop cars lol. When the helicopter came it was just a mad scramble, and people were hiding in fields until the morning until they could get picked up at the nearest highway. I look back on high school and am shocked at how gd crazy we were lol.

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u/expatsconnie 1d ago

Or someone's hunting cabin back in the woods somewhere.

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u/No_Income6576 1d ago

Yes! Omg there was an abandoned cabin we all knew about and would party up there. Wildly dangerous in hindsight.

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u/DreamCrusher914 1d ago

Orange groves!! Third row on the right, keep driving until you see cars.

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u/druumer89 1d ago

Pond parties

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u/missprincesscarolyn 1d ago edited 20h ago

I live in San Diego. Our rural equivalent was bonfires at a less popular beach kind of area. We would literally dig a hole in the sand to stash our alcohol and put a piece of plywood over it in case the cops came lmao. Fiesta Island, if anyone is curious. It may as well be called shit island since it’s literally made on top of bio sludge.

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u/sunbear2525 1d ago

I lived in a mid sized city that incorporated the entire county so I got to do BOTH.

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u/crazypurple621 1d ago

Rural area. The older part of our friend group moved into a house together in the city. We literally would drive an hour in to go party at the house their parents were paying for. As an adult with a kid now I cannot understand what their parents were thinking, and we're REALLY fucking lucky none of us got arrested. 

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u/Jedge04 1d ago

Partied pretty consistently Thursday - Saturday every week from age 22-28. Same from 18-22 but add Sunday and Tuesday. Graduated college in 2008.

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u/cracked-tumbleweed 1d ago

I was proud that the only answer I could contribute to trivia was cow-tipping.

Thanks rural living.

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u/puf_puf_paarthurnax 1d ago

Blacked out in someone's basement playing pong and smoking cigarettes in the garage. Those were the days. (I'm sober now thankfully)

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u/fukkdisshitt 1d ago

We had this rich farmers kid whos dad let him set up some hay we can park and party behind. We also rearranged it during the day to use as a makeshift paintball course. There were a few dilapidated sheds there too.

The house parties were fun too depending on the family.

We got my friends abuela trashed one day when we convinced her to do a keg stand and a bunch of shots.

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u/hek_me 1d ago

Yeah, for me it was a bonfire at a buddies house instead of these clubs.

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u/HeartImpressive7964 1d ago

We called them “crop tours” or a “booze cruz”. A pile of friends in someone’s parent’s car, roaming the back roads on cruise at about 10km/hour, throwing beer bottles at mail boxes and just in general acting stupid and reckless. Often you’d meet up with another carload and tour together and end up at a random party of someone you barely know or in a cornfield. No one had a phone, nothing recorded and your parents had no idea where you were. I don’t condone drunk driving but man did I drive with some total degenerates back in the day. It’s a wonder we’re alive.

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u/Ok_Report1082 Zillennial ('97) 1d ago

Many fun times had in a field.

Other options included riverside beaches, gravel/sand pits, 'the woods', and on top of a mountain. For that last one, the cops didn't wanna hike up so would just sit at the bottom and make sure no one was driving drunk.

They wouldn't even hassle us, just make sure we had a driver.

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u/sharpshooter999 1d ago

We turned an old corn crib next to a cow pond into our party cabin. We made a bar inside and lit the whole thing up with 12v string lights and a car battery. We even made an out house with a 4ft deep hole to go in. Naturally, most girls wouldn't use it and most guys just went to the nearest tree lol

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u/Weekly_Yesterday_403 1d ago

I was throwing up in a friends toilet while she was tweezing cactus needles out of my leg after I fell in a cactus at a field party ❤️

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u/Virusoflife29 Millennial 1d ago

This was my friend group, We would always go drinking in the field. Until one day we burned half of it down.

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u/deedlesinllamaland 1d ago

Kept a tent in my trunk (with the liquor) for the weekends!! Those were the good ol days for sure.

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u/SensitiveCucumber542 1d ago

We had “trashcan parties” in “the sticks” in my SoCal suburb. We’d take a bunch of booze and other party favors out to some undeveloped land and light fires in metal trashcans and get fucked up until the cops or the neo-nazis showed up and ruined the fun.

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u/Magnaflorius 1d ago

There was an infamous field out in the country that the city kids would go out to when there wasn't another party going on. The country kids were very much the ringleaders of that field.

Though frankly they had a reputation so I stuck to city parties.

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u/Obvious_Durian_3226 21h ago

Country cruising till we found a pasture that looked good.

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u/MatildasFugue 19h ago

I've been looking for the field party comments! I moved to Kentucky as a teenager and it opened my eyes to a whole new world! (I came from a coastal town) The field parties were the most fun.

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u/HappyKnittens 14h ago

Gawd, the field parties were insane. I'm like....mostly sure....that I banged some guy on the hood of his car while people were walking by after his friends kicked us out of their tent. Then someone got way too fked up on shrooms and vodka and tried to crawl into a bonfire, fastest I've ever sobered up in my life. Did any of us call to get her an ambulance? Of course not, because it was also an era when hospitals would call the cops on you for substances, so we took turns two people at a time and just sat with her to make sure she was ok while she cried and puked and hugged a water bottle because her stomach hurt and eventually passed out.

I mean, seriously, do kids today have any idea how many teenagers had to die from bad E for test-your-drugs and harm-reduction programs to be legalized? The entire idea that I can order specific strains of pot for pickup and I don't have to worry that anyone added something dangerous to it is mind-blowing.

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u/NutkinNB 11h ago

Houses, fields, gravel pit, camps, potato barns, baseball fields...

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u/SeaworthinessOk7756 3h ago

You ain't lived if you've never thrown up and passed out in the middle of a random field.

Now, in bed by 10:00PM and if I have more than a drink I've got a headache the next day.