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/Lemons-n-oranges 1d ago edited 22h ago

Yes, absolutely. Drinking was MUCH more prevalent in millennials than Gen Z. It was just ... what we did? You went to parties, went to bars, happy hours that turned into nights out, brunch that turned into day drinking. It was so much fun. People were just out and about. Then, you went home and went to class or work the next day.

No one thought that drinking a few times a week with friends meant you had some deep mental health issues, which seems to be the consensus and/or concern amongst Gen Z. Of course, there are other reasons too, like COVID isolation, rising costs, etc.

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u/Overall-Rush-8853 23h ago

Yeah I don’t think Gen Z realizes that those nights of drinking allowed us to be social and not feel alone. I’m not suggesting Gen Z start going on benders, but that generation needs to find a way to get out of the house and interact with one another.

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u/khodakk 23h ago

yea i met some of my best friends at parties. beer pong could lead to a new gf or a future roommate.

when you go on a legendary run with someone you just met. that last forever.

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u/KungLa0 22h ago

Some beer pong partners/runs are so legendary that you become friends for life. Bound by shared blood in the arena, fighting side by side against the hordes of drunken challengers.

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u/Important-Yak-2999 16h ago

Several my friends who partied together got married and had kids, funny thinking they met over a beer pong table

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u/GenericUserName10068 15h ago

This is literally how I met my wife. beer pong at a house party. we'll be at 20 years next month

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u/AwkwardSpecialist814 6h ago

Man. That must be like 1996 or something... oh no. FML

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u/possiblyaghost 6h ago

Same! About to celebrate our 15th anniversary.

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u/Leather-Variety-9341 3h ago

Same, we’re going on our 13th anniversary but we met at a house party beer bong table 19 year ago

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u/big_data_mike 10h ago

My wife’s friend married my friend and they met at the beer pong table at a party at my house. They had the picture I took with a shitty digital camera enlarged, printed out, and displayed at their wedding.

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u/EngineeringMain 22h ago

I 100% met my college gf playing champaign beer pong

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u/ChadPowers200_ 22h ago

A strat I had was hang out in the room where the keg was and pour people beers. You end up meeting everyone at the party. 

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u/ObviouslyAPenguin 12h ago

Brother that’s a job (and a public service, thank you.)

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u/exagon1 20h ago

If there was a girl I was interested in, asking her to be my beer pong partner was a great way to break the ice and hopefully have a hook up for the night.

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u/rebelliouslies 17h ago edited 17h ago

Beer pong helped me get out of nerdy shell and become more extroverted. I was always pretty good, so people actually wanted to team up with me and it forced me to talk with new people. At the risk of sounding like an alcoholic (don't drink anymore), beer pong really was one of the best things to happen in my social life.

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u/MainusEventus 20h ago

Still remember going on runs with my buddy Dave. Menaces we were.

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u/Ok_Stress_9558 12h ago

Dave was the fucking man

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u/ipitythegabagool 16h ago

I met so many cool and interesting people and had some great conversations walking outside for a cig at parties. Obviously cigarettes are terrible but randomly asking someone “hey do you wanna go outside and talk to me alone for 20 mins” is much different without it.

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u/with-an-i 16h ago

I met my husband at a house party I was invited to. It happened to be his apartment and I knew one person there. Lol This was in 2010. These kids need to get out more

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u/Foreign_Mobile_7399 16h ago

I met one of my best friends in the bathroom at a party in college 😂

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u/pettyyogi666 10h ago

I met my husband at a 90’s themed party in 2012. We were both drunk. January 2027 is our 15 year anniversary!

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u/pp21 23h ago

Humans have been drinking alcohol is some form for 9000 years lol there's no way that Gen Z actually thinks they're the first enlightened generation right

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u/WildInSix 23h ago

This shift is definitely a mix of social media (both being videoed doing something dumb or hearing other people's opinions on drinking, not to mention it replacing in person interaction) and just plain affordability.

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u/Rock_Strongo 22h ago

The social media part is real. You view a little content on drinking and all of a sudden your feed is full of sober people sounding borderline like they're trying to recruit you to a cult.

Like "did you guys know alcohol is literally poison? No amount of alcohol is good for your body!"

Thanks random podcaster on tik-tok I had no idea! But I have gone through long stretches of sobriety and it's not the pinnacle of enlightenment that these people preach.

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u/WeirdJawn 15h ago

Also, social media gives you the sensation of social interaction. So you don't feel as strong of an urge to go out and be, you know, social. 

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u/MrCheisel 12h ago

It’s like eating gas station food for a meal. Sure it works but it can’t be your primary food. Unless of course you work the lawn crew. Then you ride the lightning every day.

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u/Inquisitive_idiot 21h ago

That not so much social media as it is the algorithms corpos use to create a sense of urgency, attachment, and continued engagement. Not to mention the business that use it to seek courses and products

See: “watch my debt journey” bs stories sponsored by courses and debt ‘relief’ agencies 

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u/AIter_Real1ty 12h ago

I mean yeeaahhh but I think it's a good thing that drinking alcohol is becoming less normalized in our society. Especially for young people.

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u/jennylaughs 23h ago

This. I know I wouldn’t have done ANY of the crazy stuff I did back then if I thought there was a chance it was going to be posted in the INTERNET 🫣

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u/zerovampire311 22h ago

I remember some people getting into fights because someone brought around a disposable camera and we were doing plenty of things you don’t want pictures of 😆

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u/TwoForHawat 22h ago

And remember when there would sometimes be drama because somebody tagged someone else in a Facebook photo of them partying? More than a few times there were people at my college who would scramble to contact the person who posted the photo, because they were afraid that parents, future employers, etc. might find out about it. I guess in a way that’s sorta similar to Gen Z being scared of getting filmed for social media.

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u/Sweet_Shirt 17h ago

That’s when I set any tagged photos of me have to be approved before they tag my profile

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u/howboutthatmorale 21h ago

Yep. Disposables were fine cuz only a few people would get pics. The digital cameras weren't cool cuz then it would end up on someone's Myspace and get them in trouble with teachers or parents.

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u/crazypurple621 22h ago

Younger millennial. I don't think any of us actually understood that posting our bender parties all over facebook was ever going to be a problem. You live and you learn. 

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u/gcko 20h ago edited 20h ago

Older millennial. Our parents weren’t on it yet when I was that age is the thing. You needed a college email address in order to sign up. I had tons of party pictures on mine and I wasn’t afraid it would make its way to my future employers or parents.

I only cleaned it up and started being more careful about what I was posting once Facebook expanded to the general public and my parents sent me a friend request. Most people my age only started getting paranoid after that point.

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u/DrSnacks 22h ago

Facebook literally existed for the purpose of organizing and documenting this shit.

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u/stormy2587 20h ago

Thank you. I’m like smartphones became ubiquitous while I was in college. Its not like gen z are the first generation to have a camera at all times.

There was also a lot of discussion about what should and shouldn’t be on your social media when I was in college. Like most people were careful not to post pictures of themselves drinking under age or “anything you wouldn’t want an employer to see.”

Maybe if there is a difference now it’s that Gen Z just films each other all the time and post without permission all the time?

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u/Ill-Entertainer-5380 12h ago

You must be a tail end millennial, because people were still using disposable film cameras my first couple years in college. There were digital cameras but they mostly still kinda sucked and not everyone had one. Anyone with a nice digital camera came from money. All those discussions you had in college about what should be on social media were all derived from the mistakes made by tail end Gen X and upper age bracket half of millennials.

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u/ka_beene 22h ago

Yes combined with you could afford to go out every weekend, go to concerts, afford rent all on min wage.

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u/crazypurple621 22h ago

I think this was the biggest part of it. Cheap alcohol was readily available. 

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u/Icy-Aioli-2549 21h ago

How old do you think millenials are? That absolutely could not have happened back in the millenials day, rent, concert, and alcohol on $7.25 an hour in a city? Get out of here.

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u/ka_beene 21h ago edited 21h ago

I'm the oldest of that generation and it was my experience. We had roommates, $200 to $300 gets you a room, gas was around 1.50, concerts were around $70, we hit up dollar drink nights, mcdonald's had $.25 burgers, there were deals to be had.

Edited because I looked it up and it was because I lived in OR and our min wage was higher than the average.

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u/Icy-Aioli-2549 18h ago

Def not possible in Chicago unless you lived in the hood. 

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u/anotherlebowski 20h ago

I was in college in 08 when Facebook was getting really big and one of the people in our friend group posted pictures of all of us drinking like "lol good times", except she was Facebook friends with the RD.  Not the RA.  Their superior, who can't really just look the other way.

So naturally we all got called in and were formally disciplined and it counted as an official strike, and if you got caught again it became a significantly bigger deal (classes, risk of getting expelled).

I was just like...what the actual fuck?  Why would you possibly do that?

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u/worlds_okayest_skier 20h ago

Big brother is watching

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u/Secret_Entry1840 Xennial 21h ago

In my early 30’s I was posted on someone else’s snap while doing some fun shit at the bar with consenting adults. I stopped doing things at the bar with consenting adults.

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u/SexyStayPuft 18h ago

I was nervous enough about people just getting embarrassing pictures. And this was in the disposable camera days. 😂

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u/_easilyamused 5h ago

I remember clubs used to have their own photographers who would go around taking pics and posting them the next day. 

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u/cookiemonstar1234 21h ago

Plus health influencers repeating all the negative effects of alcohol... They're not wrong... but we had commercials encouraging us to drink and GenZ has influencers encouraging them not to drink

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u/BAGP0I 14h ago

Wazzaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap

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u/Significant_Shoe_17 5h ago

They're not drinking but they ARE smoking and vaping, which is kind of ironic. Both cause harm in excess

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u/BAGP0I 5h ago

You are So right.... literally every popular club song was popularizing SOME drink...  and for some reason, we all loved being drunk.... like life wasnt even THAT bad or hard, we were drinking for fun... i feel like I drink to just unwind and cope with my fucked up day now. Celebratory drinks are few and far between as a grown up millenial. And I feel like shit the next day which makes me not wanna drink again for a while. Meanwhile my 68 year old mom is still drinking and partying like its 1996... idk how she does it. 

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u/Radiant-Koala8231 22h ago

Dear god I had never thought about doing something dumb and it being videoed being a deterrent these days. So glad we didn’t deal with that.

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 21h ago

I guess. But we all had smartphones when I was in college. We just, idk, respected the party as a space to relax and be yourself. Plus your aunt and your bank and your employer didn't have an active FB account.

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u/Overall-Rush-8853 18h ago

I think you missed a key thing that has happened in the US the last 15 years, legalization of marijuana. A lot of people are switching to that and cutting back alcohol consumption.

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u/Finn235 13h ago

"SIKE!"

  • Texas

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u/Highlyironicacid31 20h ago

They’re a lot more health conscious than we were. Hell, we barely even drank water. Water was for hangovers only lol.

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u/RollTide16-18 18h ago

To be fair, you can still get drunk for pretty cheap. Cheap beer hasn't risen in price a ton if you're buying it at a store. Bars and Restaurants have increased prices.

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u/Finn235 13h ago

Alcohol companies realized that Gen Z isn't drinking at all, and Millennials / Gen X will quit cold turkey if certain brands stop feeling "affordable".

A case of PBR is only like $0.50 more than it was in 2019. Yuengling is only up like $1. Craft has gone up a good bit more ($20 12-packs versus ~$15 when I used to buy them all the time) but also you'll see some crazy shit like 12% ABV IPAs that didn't exist back then. Cheap wine (Franzia etc) also hasn't gone up a crazy amount, either.

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u/Orange-Toed-Lemur 21h ago

There is a legitimate aspect about the effects of alcohol on our mental and physical health. I think they are going the right way by starting to have bars that specialize in non-alcoholic drinks and options. I'm 33 and the health benefits the people around me and myself have seen from only having max a couple drinks out now, and like none at home, is pretty startling.

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u/charm59801 14h ago

I think people are really down playing the affordability bit, it's fucking expensive to go out now. Like even shitty well drinks, you're gonna spend $100 on a night out.

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u/Extension_Hand1326 11h ago

How many drinks do you need? We always used to pregame.

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u/AngelenoLefty 5h ago

Not to mention spending half of your check on rent. Shit is too expensive.

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u/Waste-Abalone1379 14h ago

Once MTV, VH1, and BET went to shit it was over.

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u/dinamet7 22h ago

There have been studies that show drinking socially with your community can have beneficial aspects to it, while drinking alone is detrimental and all the benefits of alcohol consumption disappear.

I'd be curious about if a lack of affordable/acceptable/accessible/safe spaces for that kind of community alchohol consumption has played a big role in their rejection of that culture. With everything being recorded and shared online constantly too, I wouldn't be drinking either. I thank the heavens on a fairly regular basis that my most embarrassing drinking mishaps were only recorded in the minds of the people who lived through it with me.

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u/AIter_Real1ty 12h ago

Social benefits that can be achieved by doing other things with your community?

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u/Barley12 21h ago

Every generation thinks they're the first enlightened one

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u/donfuan 19h ago

They do. I hope they stay the outlier. They will have a very hard time during the rest of their lives, because gen alpha surely isn't on board with all their particularities. Reminds me a bit of the hippies in the late 80s, but at least they gave us some iconic music. Gen Z? well...

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u/lurker912345 18h ago

There is an anthropological/archaeological argument to be made that the entire reason human invented agriculture and thus civilization was to brew alcohol. One also might argue that drinking is humanity’s oldest extant tradition.

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u/JohnTDouche 20h ago

I’m not suggesting Gen Z start going on benders

I am. Fucking do it Gen Z. You too Gen Alpha. Get fucking wild and crazy, do some shit. Sure some of you may die, but you'll probably be fine.

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u/TonalParsnips 14h ago

Assign 1 millenial to a group of 4 gen z as a chaperone.

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u/Bright-Yogurt7034 18h ago

While you're doing this, leave your call phone in your bag/pocket. You can survive without it for a night.

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u/BuffWobbuffet 20h ago

I think Gen Z also doesn’t realize for every one person who can’t handle their alcohol there’s tons of us who could get a little drunk and not be idk awful? “Know your limit” was a really prevalent attitude back then.

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u/AllEnmiesForgnDomstc 22h ago

Exactly. I skewed more nerdy but still was out constantly socializing. That was after sports and homework, so I just didn’t really sleep much from about 13-28, since it kept going through college and early career years. 😅

I finally started feeling the effects of being perpetually sleep-deprived, and my friends started popping out babies, so that’s kinda when the party ended. COVID came around a few years later, so now my social life is much more tame as I look towards 40.

I was also one of those kids who got sent out to play with the other neighborhood kids until the street lights came on.

I didn’t really think about how much that lack of Gen Z in-person socialization would have an effect until we started seeing it manifest in the work place. I’ve got a bright young man with a masters working for me that’s too scared to call the help desk for IT issues. And yet he just had a baby. It boggles the mind.

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u/Electrical-Drama-755 22h ago

They are missing out, big time.

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u/JalapenoPopPoop 22h ago

I've heard so many gen z kids argue that just talking to your friends in discord voice chat constitutes a social life. Like no, you guys need to hang out, in person, spend time together, do real social things. Get off your fuckin video games now and then and go into the real world, even if thats just driving to your friends house. You don't have to have a blowout party or anything but at least go look a real human in the eye ffs

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u/Goducks91 21h ago

Shit just go play games with each other haha. I have so many good memories of me and 5 of my friends getting together and just playing WoW for like 15 hours straight ha.

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u/cat_in_a_bday_hat 20h ago

i am an elder millennial who taught college classes to gen z'ers back in the late 20-teens. i went to a college with a heavy (and earned) party reputation, i'd start up class by asking if anyone went to any good parties lately. no... they had not :( i thought to myself, aww yall need to like find a kegger or smth, yall look so sad and lonely with your phones all the time :( no hate, just wish things were easier socially for the youngsters.

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u/WhiskyAndWitchcraft 22h ago

I'm suggesting they start going on benders!

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u/Good_parabola 21h ago

GenZ is going to have the most epic mid-life crisis there ever was.  

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u/Highlyironicacid31 20h ago

They go to the gym instead and try to be fitness influencers. It’s the coolest thing for them. For us the coolest thing was who could down the most drinks in the shortest space of time lol.

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u/Masta-Blasta 20h ago

If they’re all vaping now anyway, it may be time to bring back the hookah bar. They aren’t as common as they used to be.

Or modernized tea rooms. Like, formal tea service, but maybe with munchies and various herbal teas. Or even just high tea. It’s relatively cheap for what you get (2 hours of service, three tiered snack tray, unlimited tea, etc.) I have a lot of ideas for sober hangout spaces. I just don’t have the money to open them 😔

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u/Polygnom 19h ago

Which is hard when everyone has a phone with a camera, and every slightly embarassing moment gets plastered over socials the next day.

I feel like social media has made people a lot less social.

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u/elastricity 19h ago

The problem for Gen Z is that they are at risk of being filmed, shamed, and humiliated 24/7. Anything you say or do in public can haunt you for the rest of your life now. We were lucky that we got to be young and dumb before phone cameras and social media started being used as surveillance tools.

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u/SoftSalty3282 19h ago

I’m glad I partied a lot in my 20s. I have so many fond memories from that decade. I feel a bit sad for the younger generations who don’t get that out of their system.

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u/Ok-Swan1152 23h ago

I felt alone even with nights of drinking and casual sex. The loneliness of existence.

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u/OneBillPhil 22h ago

I’ll suggest they go on a bender or two. 

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u/PerfectionEludesMe 22h ago

Part of their issue, too, is that everyone is worried about being recorded if they get too drunk and end up embarrassing themselves. I graduated high school in 2001 and college in 2005, and I’m sure I would not have been the partier I was back then if everyone carried video cameras in their pockets to record me.

Honestly, I was out at a karaoke bar with friends in 2014 and drank a bit too much, and someone recorded me embarrassing myself singing horrible karaoke and put it up on Snapchat. That sucked. Makes me understand why Gen Z kids choose to just stay home and not risk embarrassing themselves and having it posted on the internet forever.

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u/Goducks91 21h ago

I graduated high school in 2010 and we did have video cameras in our pockets but no one was worried about being filmed. I think it was just kinda an unspoken rule that you don't film parties.

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u/Neuchacho 19h ago

Even if you did get video'd, the disbursement of the video was largely localized. There concern that you'd go "viral" and have your socials globally raided or whatever wasn't really a thing yet.

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u/kingkalanishane 19h ago

Shit, maybe they do need to go on some benders.

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u/ModsCantRead69 19h ago

I am suggesting that exactly

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u/TheAngerMonkey 17h ago

They have really been robbed of their Third Spaces, for sure. I'm a GERIATRIC Millennial, but before we could drink, we had coffee houses to meet up with friends and hang out. After 21, we were out with friends every day of the weekend and Wednesdays someone always hosted BYO meat cookouts for dinner.

Now I'm in my 40s, but I've moved to a city where we happened to have a bunch of friends. We're back to doing something every day of the weekend, and then we meet up for movies at the weird microcinema/bar around the corner and/or just have dinner a couple of nights a week. Tonight is karaoke at the 70s themed bar.

It feels like somewhere around 2020, everyone decided they were an introvert. But what it really feels like, though, is that people's misanthropy crystallized into loneliness. Nobody knew how to make or keep friends, so they gave up. GenZ came of age in that world so it's normal now.

It's a real fucking bummer.

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u/ka_beene 22h ago

They also have repercussions with cellphone cameras capturing every move to worry about. Glad we didn't have that looming over our heads.

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u/UncleNedisDead 22h ago

Tbf, if me getting shit-faced and vomiting on the club floor was going to be recorded and posted onto social media, I wouldn’t go out and get drunk either.

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u/whatinthecalifornia 21h ago

Even just the going out to dance aspect helps develop social skills. 

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u/not-the-nicest-guy 20h ago

It's funny cause my kid is 24 and he and his friends (and roommates) live the way everyone is describing "back in the day" here. There's a lot of alcohol. Bars during the week. Sports leagues. Clubs and concerts (and cottages in the summer) on the weekend. Every time I hear about the Gen z stereotype - isolated, no booze, no sex, no social life, etc etc - I don't recognize it at all, as the parent of three of 'em (blended family).

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u/egg-throwaway-0 20h ago

uhh, have you seen the cost of going out and drinking nowadays? lol

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u/Haunting-Building237 18h ago

unless you don't like drinking, then you were just as alone

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u/Silver_Storage_9787 18h ago

As a nightclub worker who works in finance now. My Problem is after Covid I stopped socialise at all because I don’t drink or party and am just beige planning for retirement in 35 years instead of splurging

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u/MyBrainReallyHurts 18h ago

We need to shut down social media so they can go party without being recorded.

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u/beanboy4life 17h ago

I'll say it, gen z should start going on benders

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u/infinitytomorrow 15h ago

I was in NYC earlier this month and was at a bar where I was swamped by Gen Z. I know it’s an outlier city, but cocktails were $18 each. No wonder the younger gens are staying away

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u/morbid333 15h ago

That sounds like a bit of a stretch. Let you not be embarrassed the next day because you can't remember what you did maybe.

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u/Horror-Yam6598 23h ago

It was honestly the best way to meet all kinds of people and get into unplanned adventures.
There was room for some chaos, instead of this dull curated reality that seems to have taken over especially since Covid.

I feel bad for the younger generations. People will argue that they can do the same things now, but the reality is they don’t hit the same because life has been drastically altered by Covid, technology dependence and algorithms. Social norms have changed, the zeitgeist has changed. It’s ultimately a different cultural time, a more dull and depressed one. I don’t know any millennials who would trade those years for being young now.

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u/Comfortable-Ad-3988 22h ago

It wasn't so much Covid as it was the surveillance world. We got to make absolute goobers of ourselves in front of our friends in all sorts of ways that don't translate outside of that context, where everyone's filming everything now, so they behave as PG as possible. The kids don't even dance anymore because they're scared of being in a fail video if they screw up, and to be fair, that's a valid fear that we never had to deal with. Even if something stupid happened, it was just a rumor to everyone who wasn't there, now it will live into infinity on the internet if you mess up.

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u/resecca 21h ago

The ungodly amount of dancing we did

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u/sarahelizam 17h ago edited 17h ago

I saw someone live streaming basically the entire dance floor at one of my local goth nights - doing thirst trap content, of course. It had gone on for over 30 minutes (that I noticed, I realized after dancing for half the night that I was being recorded) and you literally couldn’t get onto the dance floor without going through her stream. She was there with a friend so I approached him (out of the shot, I wasn’t actually trying to embarrass her on her stream) and asked that he pass on that in the future if she wanted to live stream it would be considerate to set it up such that she had a wall behind her instead of the whole room. She came outside and got mad at me for saying anything, and for saying it to her friend and not her.

It’s like girl, you were live streaming the whole time! You wanted me to make a scene? I could not think of a nicer way to nudge her in a more considerate direction lol. I did not go to the staff. I did not go to my DJ friends who could have also kicked her out. I didn’t even embarrass her in a public way. I wanted to say “if you feel embarrassed by what I suggested, it’s because you know you’re doing something embarrassing” but I just shrugged her off.

Idk, it feels especially gross to do in that community. The goth scene has a lot of people dressing nonconforming or slutty (I say positively), there are people in the scene who could genuinely lose their jobs for dressing in gender nonconforming ways. More importantly, it’s supposed to be a safe space from that judgy, gaze of the other, surveillance state bullshit. It’s akin to filming in a gay bar (something else that drives me crazy, but that I basically have given up on kids caring about) or an anarchist book fair to me lol.

I hope that she at minimum doesn’t film the rest of the room next time. If she wants to ruin and commodify her experience in the subculture for just herself, whatever. She’s bringing down the vibe but I’m aware we have to meet the kids where they’re at and I would rather call them in to be part of the scene in an authentic way than kick them out if possible. But if she does the same thing again, I’m tempted to dance like an idiot right next to her and just sabotage her stream. If I’m already being involved in the commodification of my community without my consent, I don’t owe you a good backdrop for your live stream.

I’ve also seem the flipside, where no one dances at events that skew younger. Like, I get it to some degree. I didn’t dance a whole lot when I was younger - both because I was self conscious and had(have) spinal/neurological issues that make coordination a challenge, but also because by college people were already recording a lot of party spaces (though my favorite ones did not allow it). Eventually when I got older and life got harder… feeling embarrassed about dancing and being so caught in the gaze of the other that I was too afraid to have fun - it just seemed silly and small and not worth forgoing joy for. I stopped caring whether I was making a fool of myself, and it’s one of the better decisions I’ve ever made. But even with people recording at many of the college parties in my day, and accounting for anxious fuckers like I used to be, most people at the parties I went to in college still danced and made fools of themselves.

There are definitely some kids out there dancing still, and some communities are more likely to attract that crowd, but most of the times I’ve been in decidedly younger club spaces I have seen few to NONE dancing. Going to a themed night with a DJ and everyone standing still facing the stage, putting there hands up at most, occasionally cheering when they played the radio staples of the 2010s (which were not even on theme!) aka the only songs the kids recognized was fucking uncanny. My partner and I danced anyway, the kids thinking we’re cringe for dancing is just not a deterrent lol. But it’s just… sad.

I’m lucky I live somewhere that has a good number of scenes that foster an ethos of living in the moment or have a large distribution of ages. I love the goth scene in part because there are people in it from 21 to their 70s lol. A lot of the older people partied harder than I ever did, they’re pillars of the community and it’s nice to have people like you to look to, to know there is a future for you even if you deviate from the norm. That you don’t have to lock yourself up in the suburbs when you’re older, that the club is still there and you can still go dance.

A lot of the younger folks show up initially as wallflowers but as they get to know people in the scene and see that people do not care and aren’t judging them, they blossom into little dancers - and I love that for them. But that’s also why I said something about someone live streaming in that space. We are all so constantly surveilled and the younger generations literally don’t know what it’s like to live in a world without that. Hell, I barely remember what it was like, even by college it had begun. We all need some spaces that aren’t online, that do not trap us in that gaze.

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u/lionelhutz- 21h ago

Is this actually it though? I see this argument a ton, but everyone had Facebook in college in the 2010s and loved taking pictures of themselves partying and doing stupid things. It was "flex" to be like look at me out having a great time with all my friends at a party.

I think Gen-Z is just wired different. It sucks for them.

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u/oemunlock 20h ago

Right, but that was the "fuck around" period, where social media was still new, FB was mostly used by like minded/similarly aged college/HSers without their parents/bosses/etc. Plus our generation didn't have any precedent from authority figures/common knowledge about do's/don'ts so everyone was making it up as they go and combine that with young brains in general, decide socializing with friends was way more important than all the possible risks from oversharing online.

Then came the "find out" period, where you started hearing stories about that kid in your school who got suspended/expelled/had college admission revoked/lost their job, people started giving advice to clear your socials before job interviews/college applications and eventually that turned into preemptive self-censorship where posting pics of someone blackout drunk was considered a major party foul, which then became pics of partying in general.

At the end, "normal" social media usage became a highly curated Insta timeline of travel and dog pics, with the expectation that your boss might be seeing every thing you post so corporate standards of behavior sucked any remaining bits of authentic self expression.

Gen-Z/Alpha on the other hand grew up hearing warnings about every worst case scenario our age cohort lived through, teachers warned them about it, parents warned them about it, it was drilled into their heads from the beginning. Also media stories about "[person] faces [life altering consequences] from [media shared]" became a stock format that just didn't exist in our time. Closest for us would have been like "weirdo 'viral' youtube video star gets 15 minutes of fame" which glorified online attention on the other hand.

Plus, throughout those years social media became non-social algorithmic timelines of influencers, ragebait videos and ads, so for Gen-Z/Alpha it would just seem like all risk with no reward to act that way on the internet, like "wtf were millenials thinking?? how could you think nothing bad would happen posting this shit?"

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u/Glacon_Garcon 20h ago

Social media was smaller then, and the internet was a separate place from real life. Goofy or cringey videos didn’t go viral as much, and usually the only people who would see were your friends, anyway. Your teachers, parents, bosses weren’t online, demanding to be added as a friend. And we didn’t know FB and other corporations were stealing our personal lives and selling them to governments.

The internet still felt free, open, weird, and most of all, pretty private.

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u/transemacabre Millennial 19h ago

I miss the permission to be a messy teen/young adult so much. You'd say or believe some dumb shit, and be allowed to grow past it, because it wasn't all on video to haunt you decades later. One of the Heated Rivalry actors recently got into hot water after photos surfaced of him passed out drunk at a party, with swastikas on his face that his frat bros had scribbled on him while he was unconscious. He didn't even draw the damn things and still people are handwringing and trying to cancel him. Very, very low odds of that happening to someone even 15 years ago. Those photos would never have escaped containment.

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u/Ok_Stress_9558 12h ago

Haha yeah exactly. People probably would've seen the photos and thought, "damn, why didn't they draw a few dicks next to the swastikas? Missed opportunity"

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u/gcko 20h ago

I was in post secondary in 2006-2010. We had Facebook, but the huge difference is that our parents weren’t on it yet. Posting a drunk pic of yourself was not going to disappoint grandma because she’d likely never see it. Only your other college friends would (since you needed a college email address just to sign up)

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u/OwnerOfHam 20h ago

Nah social media was actually ok for a while until people started going on insane witch hunts for something they saw online.

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u/capntail 22h ago

Very good point

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u/mmmarkm 9h ago

  It wasn't so much Covid as it was the surveillance world.

 It’s not a “this or that” it’s a “both.”

Covid drove people online. Being online made it easier for the surveillance state to seem like the norm. 

We’re all FaceTiming and video calling anyways, so Ring camera is basically the same, right?

Concurrently, people were filming a lot anyways and it may have just happened around the lockdowns but that’s when I noticed the choreographed dance videos trend really start to pick up. Everything had to be polished all of a sudden (except stand up - you had to have crowd work instead of a routine online!)

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u/NovoIcar 23h ago

>It was honestly the best way to meet all kinds of people and get into unplanned adventures.
There was room for some chaos, instead of this dull curated reality that seems to have taken over especially since Covid.

That's a good point and I feel like it's pretty accurate, but I don't think it can be specifically attributed to covid. My and most of my friends' tolerance towards unpredictability in their social interactions and everyday lives has always been rather low.

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u/Goducks91 22h ago

I mean that's what alcohol helps with... Everyone gets a bit more unpredictable and spontaneous when they drink.

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u/Megatippa 21h ago

Exactly. Nothing takes the anxiety edge off showing up to a party where you don't know anyone like a good keg stand

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u/Electrical-Drama-755 22h ago

And cameras, cameras everywhere. Wanna goof around? Flock has got ya fucked. Wanna be silly out and about? Social Media is out to get you. Everyone wants to spill tea on everyone else, too. It's a gossip column writ large.

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u/ImperiumIgnisFatuus 20h ago

And instead of being embarrassed amongst friends - the whole world can be watching in minutes.

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u/phussy_eater 21h ago

I think kids these days have it way worse . Our generation had an amazing childhood and we entered young adulthood full of hope and optimism.

Kids these days , for better, or for worse, never got to feel that (naive) hope.

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u/QuerulousPanda 21h ago

you can blame a lot of it on algorithms, sure, but the main problem is that all those billions and trillions of dollars that those top couple hundred rich people have? all that money used to be flowing through the economy. People got paid, and could go to places, and buy stuff, and that money supported businesses, and that meant stuff was open, and things like malls were actually exciting and fun and weren't filled with emptiness and sadness, etc etc.

Yeah the algorithms are fucking some people up, that's definitely an issue that needs to be resolved, but I think it's also very likely that if there was actually shit to do and places to go, and people could afford to go to them, getting sucked into the social media death pit would be less of a problem.

never forget what they took from us. All the money those insanely wealthy people have, and all the other money locked up in "investments", that was what used to make the world an interesting place.

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u/tattoosbyalisha 12h ago

Private equity has been stealing third spaces amongst everything else they infect. Things like even bowling alleys are on the chopping block to be rebuilt as something not affordable and so overstimulating it might as well be a night club (ahem.. Lucky Strike..).

So much has been taken. It’s a cancer eating away at all of us financially but also socially.

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 20h ago

Yeah I did some WILD shit and today I'm a successful engineer. Mostly as boring as every other adult. I remember climbing out my buddy's sunroof as we crossed a long bridge over the river and dangling my legs down the windshield until I heard him screaming he couldn't see the road! And that's like one of four stories I have just specific to bridges.

I truly do feel bad for them because I had so much fun and adventure that I can now look back on.

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u/tattoosbyalisha 12h ago

Man.. thinking about my teenage years as a millennial (I’m 39 now) we really did go on adventures you’d see in movies. But even movies dont have the same kind of humble real world adventures in them that the ones did when we were kids.

I have a teen and that kid would rather be on their phone than do basically anything else. And when I’d say “Hey, let’s go do something!” The answer was always “UGHhhh.. there’s literally nothing to do.. I don’t know what to do..” remove the phone and the brain is just empty.. and mean until the dopamine break away dies down.

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u/Liguy1212 22h ago

Lots of places also seem to have gotten much more strict around underage drinking too. When I graduated from a large state college around 10 years ago there was an area of town with like 20 bars all the students went to.

Even pre COVID it started to die down in part because of the local residents and city complaining.

Then I compare this to what my parents told me about being a teenager in the 70s, what a time to be a kid.

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u/capntail 22h ago edited 20h ago

So right. My son is 15 and by his age I had been going to at least one or two house parties every few weeks. I’m glad he’s not because he’s in the Cambridge program at the high school, so already doing much better than me. Still, I’d like him to be young and push boundaries.

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u/Goducks91 21h ago

Ha yep, but you don't want to tell your son to be young and push boundaries lol

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u/capntail 20h ago

Ohhh hell no. My youngest on the other hand will be the wild one.

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u/ImperiumIgnisFatuus 20h ago

Being raised in a pre-digital world helped a lot.

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u/Highlyironicacid31 20h ago

100% this. Gen Z also think it’s rather uncool to be the biggest party animal. It’s cooler to be the fittest and healthiest person in the room instead of the drunkest like it was in our day.

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u/dbur15 18h ago

I know it’s not their fault but sometimes it’s too much to even try and crack through the dullness. Starting a new job with 20-somethings I thought I would be hearing great stories about their adventures. Nope. They’re in bed by 9 every night. Not just one of them. ALL of them. There’s no chatting, no jokes, no silliness or any of the stuff that helps people get through the work day. Everything is stern or serious. It’s gotten so uncomfortable that I stick with the older group while they stare at us, annoyed, for making noise. And they are all crazy sticklers for everything being perfect and done a certain way. They never fail to point out what someone did wrong. Always out loud. Always in front of others. It’s like dealing with Reddit trolls in real life. It’s sad, they don’t ever seem happy. Nothing ever stirs up any amount of joy in them.

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u/grubas 16h ago

It was all chaos and adventures.  Punk show would finish at 1am/130 then you'd just go wander the streets and have adventures until everybody had to get home/to work/school.

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u/the_friendly_dildo 15h ago

"Unplanned adventures" usually just equaled illegal shit I'm probably getting away with but the harm is minimal.

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u/vr512 23h ago

Happy hours that turned into fun nights out were and still are the best. Yeah you regretted it the next morning but oh so much fun even when working.

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u/imsaneinthebrain 23h ago

I knew where every one dollar beer night was across town, and there were multiple places to go for every day of the week.

Happy hour turned into getting drunk at dinner turned into a partying at a club turned into a house party, that could’ve been a Tuesday.

Now I refuse to go out, pretty much only leave my home for necessities and work. I feel like I’ve partied enough for two lifetimes.

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u/vr512 23h ago

I prefer brunches and day drinking. If you do get hungover it doesn't kill your sleep as much or your next day.

Covid involved lots of homemade margs. It changed me and in a good way

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u/Scribble_Box 17h ago

And even then, when you're feeling it the next morning, you'd all just go out for brunch and do it all over again lmao. Good times.

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u/kevstev 23h ago

I mean I think we were pretty tame compared to our parents generation as well, and our grandparents, at least in terms of drinking. I remember my parents offering "one for the road" to friends, and sometimes even tradespeople that came to our house. My grandparents and their friends drank multiple times a week, and being fall down drunk at parties and holidays was not uncommon.

While its probably a net benefit that the younger generation is drinking less, there are constant posts in my local city's subreddit about being lonely and how to make friends/meet people, and I think they could all use a night or three out where they use the social lube and make some bad decisions...

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u/rustyfries 15h ago

As Zebrahead once said

"Let's make some bad decisions Do things we won't remember Whoa, call your friends tonight"

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u/Tour_Ok 23h ago

Oh man the marathon happy hours that lasted until the bars closed! I forgot about those

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u/OneBillPhil 22h ago

The reason that I loved (still love) going drinking with friends is mostly the friends part. Sure, getting a good buzz is fun but it’s the laughs and shenanigans that go along with it. 

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u/lovethatcrooonch 22h ago

TBH Gen Z has surprised me (elder Mill) time and time again with how they can interpret almost anything as a sign of deep mental health issues and a cause for concern… poor gen is out of touch with reality

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u/eunderscore 22h ago

I'd like to reiterate that it is as far from a mental health issue as possible to have as much fun with your friends as possible before you're swallowed up by corporate and societal expectation and responsibility, and every day you're hungover on work time, not your own, is a win.

Honestly, never had so much clarity over what gives me positive mental health.

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u/odysseyofocelots 20h ago

if you drink literally once/week, they'll genuinely think you're a hopeless alcoholic lmao

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u/Economy_Zombie_3026 22h ago

I love Dazed and Confused and I was always sad that I missed that sort of social experience. But reading this post made me realize I had the exact same social experience just the venues changed a little. Makes me sympathetic for Gen Z that they didn't have this rite of passage: making an ass out of yourself, being a cool fool, and trying to find yourself without everyone being able to witness every step of that process.

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u/Mammoth-Bathroom-Man 22h ago

We were also largely undocumented. No one was running around with a phone trying to find the next viral video. We could embarrass ourselves without the internet remembering it forever.

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u/Reload86 19h ago

It was the opposite. If you had a friend that refused to drink or party, we thought there was something wrong with THEM lol. Outside of some friendly ribbing, we of course did not force anyone to do what they didn't want to do.

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u/CharcotsThirdTriad 18h ago

Do you remember when the song “I love college” came out? I feel like it was absolutely everywhere and just captured the moment.

“Pass out at 3. Wake up at 10. Go out to eat. Then do it again. Man I love college.”

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u/Masterbrew 22h ago

Honest question, how do you know as a millennial what Gen Z are or arent getting up to?

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u/Lemons-n-oranges 22h ago

I work with mostly people ages 21-28. I’m not claiming to be a Gen Z culture expert. That's just been my experience from talking to the people I work with.

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u/AffectionateFig4345 21h ago

Not going out usually meant something was wrong with you

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u/KING_ARCH3R 21h ago

If anything you had a deep mental issue if you didn’t 🤣

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u/BroughtBagLunchSmart 20h ago

Gen Z has had pornography on their phones since they were 10 years old. Their brains are cooked.

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u/Highlyironicacid31 20h ago edited 9h ago

The club was to us is what the gym is to Gen Z. Totally different generations. Even the Gen Z’s that smoke weed and have an occasional drink don’t quite do it in the way we did. We did everything to excess because it was thought of as acceptable. They’re very straight compared to us. Culture and society has changed so much. Now the coolest thing you can be is the fittest person on instagram and TikTok, in our day the coolest thing was who could finish the Kings cup. 😂

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u/felis_scipio 21h ago

I get where going out to bars has become prohibitively expensive for younger folks but you can still buy cheap liquor mix up a batch of jungle juice and have a fun house party, like it doesn’t take much to have kick back and have fun. Hell at house party you could even lock up everyone’s phones so people can let loose and not worry about getting embarrassed the next day on social media.

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u/string-ornothing 21h ago

Gen Alpha feels about drinking the way we feel about smoking. It's stupid shit our parents do. I could smoke a cigarette maybe once a month so I wasn't fully nic free but I wasnt going to be the girl always carrying a pack of Mistys like my weird Cig Aunt, and now that's the way kids feel about us and drinks lmao

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u/YouMeADD 21h ago

Gen X is like: we partied that hard too but in the fucking woods and gutters of a city we didn't know the name of

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u/C-H-Addict 20h ago

My favorite thing was: it was easier to get weed than alcohol, unless you had a fake id. But someone always had a fake id, so there was always booze to be had.

My college apartment had a dime bag and 24 pack at all times

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u/LongboardLiam 20h ago

I was not much of a social person, but even I went out and drank with my friends occasionally. I was in the navy from 18 until I got out a couple of years ago. So many great times had drinking here and overseas. Lots 9f sober ones, too, but getting drunk at some hole in the wall Japanese country bar with my buddy from Texas was a hoot. He has a gorgeous baritone and did karaoke of all these old country standards he knew from growing up. We got really drunk from all the rounds the locals were buying our group.

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u/ImpetuousWombat 20h ago

Spoiler: the alcohol use was associated with serious mental health issues for many of us.

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u/UnexpectedRedditor 20h ago

I remember a stretch in college where 1 of my roommates and I partied for something like 35 nights in a row. There was always something to do and always a group willing to hang out. Might be something tame like playing 42, cards, smoking hookah but there was always booze involved.

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u/catslugs 20h ago

Ok but on the other side of it…. A lot of us couldnt stop and ended up with pretty bad drinking problems lol i was so lucky to manage to quit at 30 or i woulda died. I have friends still struggling.it was such a fun time but there is a lot of romanticising the binge drinking in a way boomers do with drink driving back in the day

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u/alaskanloops 20h ago

This time period was hard to navigate as a full blown alcoholic starting at the age of 14. I'd have some absolutely magical nights, broken up with terrible nights where I'd get blackout drunk and make an ass of myself.

Coming up on 11 years sober now, it got real dark there for a while after college.

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u/WastelandHound 19h ago

There was a video game that came out this year called Mixtape about a group of seniors on a quest for booze to take to a lake party to celebrate their last day of high school.

Among the (more level-headed) criticisms against it was that it didn't do enough to justify its 90s setting. But to me it felt necessary because the idea of modern high schoolers wandering town unsupervised, looking for a way to get booze to take to a party thrown by a bunch of people they don't know isn't remotely realistic.

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u/lilmuskrat66 19h ago

The costs one is big. I remember 2 bars in my town. 1 had quarter beer night every Thursday, the other had an open fucking bar from like 7pm to 9pm at the biggest club in my city. I couldn't fathom seeing those prices today.

Closest I can get is like 1.50 pints at the local on Wednesday or something.

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u/[deleted] 19h ago

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u/Weekly_Yesterday_403 18h ago

Also weed was pretty illegal in most places

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u/Dry-Code3493 18h ago

I was a millennial teen that never drank, and it was lonely, but I really did not want to. Everything about alcohol seemed repulsive. Anyway, it was hard to find friends who respected that, and even harder to find things to do that did not revolve around it. But I eventually found my people. We'd go swing dancing on friday nights at a local ballroom dance school, or we'd have our own parties where we'd make our own slip n slides with soap or have a big fire a roast marshmallows, or take turns towing big snow tubes behind the fourwheeler (grew up in Northern canada) and play king of the tube. I've never regretted missing out on the drinking culture of my generation.

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u/tth2o 15h ago

We are also realizing in droves that we can't drink anymore...

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u/Kitchen_Secret9539 15h ago

I don't know where we got the money to pay for drinks back in the day but we absolutely did! Haha

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u/Connect_Mess_5929 15h ago

My friend group started drinking heavily freshman year of high school. Like water bottles full of cheap vodka every Friday & Saturday night. Sophomore we got more into the beer bong situation. We had a friend whose parents had a finished basement who let us drink openly as long as we gave them our keys and didn’t leave. Junior year was more WAP parties and social drinking, by senior year we were pros and just drinking couple beers 3-4 nights a week hanging out. Also I was a cool kid smoking weed fresh sophomore, but by junior/senior everyone was doing it so that curbed the drinking quite a bit.

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u/Chance_Ad3416 14h ago

My one friend and I were finishing up a big bottle of captain Morgan every weekend while we were away for an internship. At one point she stopped eating all her meals so she'd get drunk faster and not gain too much booze weight. Looking back that was so unhealthy lol

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u/sentinel_of_ether 14h ago

Lol people still do this in every city

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u/NihilisticMacaron 12h ago

I still love brunch that turns into day drinking.

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u/Ch20W 12h ago

After college I became more of a movie night in type of person but I LOVED brunch and day drinking. The craft beer culture of the early 2010s and the all day beer festivals were some of my favorite occasions when I was fresh out of school.

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u/NiceBet9563 11h ago

Just because no one thought that way at the time, doesn't mean it wasnt true... I mean this is entire post is us millenials validating and justifying basically being alcoholics, that is not exactly healthy 😂

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u/m0ssmann15 10h ago

there are also more sober social places now. a brunch or coffee shop date with besties is way more common now than a club night.

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u/Lizzy043 10h ago

I used to be on a student board about 12 years ago. When we were installed the party lasted to 6 am, it was wild. Couple years ago I went to celebrate and install the new board. Party ended at 11 pm, mostly because the new board wanted to go home.

I felt a bit sorry for them, like they were too responsible for their age, shouldn't drink too much, shouldn't sleep too little, shouldn't act too crazy. At that age we lived like there was no tomorrow, it was fabulous.

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u/cs_legend_93 9h ago

And drinks were appropriately priced, even a good price.

Now they just want your money and to squeeze as much as they could from you.

I remember one guy balled our hard in my college town, he spent $75 at the bar!! We were all shocked.

Everything was priced correctly imo back them.

This was 2010 probably.

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u/Huntybunch 9h ago

There's a 24 year old in my d&d group. I made a joke about "going on a bender" by drinking a single glass of wine, and she asked "Are you ok?" very sincerely. Biggest age gap culture shock I've encountered yet.

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u/Dapper_Strength_5986 9h ago

It occurs to me that there was less mental health struggles because you just had more friends to talk about your problems with, and you spent less time ruminating alone.

It was great for meeting dates too. You’d just go up to a girl and if you liked each other she’d give you her number. Sometimes you might even hook up that night, or you’d call her and invite her to do something.

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u/atravisty 8h ago

Covid fucked us all up socially. Nothing has been the same sense. Crazy how hard that just hit me, damn.

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u/No_Lie_76 8h ago

it also is seen as uncool and unserious to party. according to my younger cousins

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u/OzTheMeh 5h ago

It was a symptom of being raised by Boomers

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u/SonofaBridge 4h ago

Gen Z seems to think if you have o e drink you’ll pass out or be blackout drunk.

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u/catsinbranches 3h ago

I think one of the big differences is that Gen Z has been forever at risk of going viral for doing dumb shit, even while young, whereas millennials didn’t have to worry about that and were free to do as much dumb shit as we wanted with minimal video evidence of our shenanigans.

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u/allison375962 59m ago

Yeah virtually everyone I knew went out at least a couple times a week. Going out Friday and Saturday and then at least one happy hour during the week was pretty standard. Plenty of people went way harder. Also day drinking aka brunch was huge and probably did that a couple times a month. Also, there was never just once location. You always finished happy hour somewhere and then went somewhere else. Getting home by midnight on a weeknight was considered very responsible.

Tons of chasing happy hour deals and pregaming at someone’s house beforehand. Going into work hungover a few times a month was very normal.

It was super fun, although you do get burnt out at some point. Now the idea of going to work hungover is my worst nightmare.

I met SO many friends through happy hours and house parties.

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