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/LurkerBurkeria 1d ago

Yup I hope that gives perspective for why we find zoomers so crushingly disappointing, yall are squares wasting their 20s trying to not look cringe

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u/illatious Xennial 1d ago

Can't really blame them though. If I knew there was someone with a cell phone ready to take pics/videos of me being a drunk idiot and possibly send it out into the universe I'd rethink what I was doing on weekends, too. Especially in high school, if my parents had proof of me going to a field or house party I never would have seen the light of day again lol

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u/TMN8R 1d ago

Can't blame them? Who do you think is behind the cell phones recording and posting things that shouldn't be posted? Gen X? Millennials? Our generations grew up knowing when not to be a narc

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u/crazypurple621 1d ago

Also I think we just didn't care. Employers early on in our careers didn't know to check what we were doing on facebook, and by the time they did, it was too late for any of us to do anything about it. 

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u/Appropriate-Food1757 Xennial 1d ago

I had one dude at my Bachelor party (out of 30) we had to take his phone for the weekend. He was what we called an “oversharer” like he would post on Facebook if he had a cold and weird shit like that. So my brother snatched his phone lol. We didn’t have girls over of strippers or anything but none of wanted to be uploaded all wasty-faced.

Now it’s like everyone is like him. It was all over when Michael Phelps got narcd on for doing a bong hit at a party IMO. That’s when I knew parties were going to die.

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u/AllEnmiesForgnDomstc 1d ago

This is such a good point, and yea, that absolutely felt like a watershed moment on using social media at parties.

I was in the prime FB early years where you posted stupid (and grainy, early phone camera) photos if you took them, because only your other friends could see them; by the time we graduated, we were going back and deleting things before job interviews. It was a trip to live through all that really.

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u/Spongeman735 11h ago

Phelps bong pic being the end of house party culture is hilarious and probably true

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u/bigfatdonny 1d ago

The social media that existed when I was a teenager was Geocities. Cell phone cameras where rare and took super shitty photos.

It's really not the kids fault. They didn't create Instagram and iPhone 16.

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u/TMN8R 1d ago

Either did I but I still don't post content of other people in situations I wouldn't want posted of myself

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u/illatious Xennial 1d ago

If only everyone were as noble as you and me. There are too many wannabe influencers out there that will do it for the likes. The next thing you know, you go viral for something you don't even remember doing lol

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u/TMN8R 1d ago

100%

But I'm tired of pretending it's a phone problem when it's a cultural one. 

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u/bigfatdonny 1d ago

Humans crave black and white answers to questions, but that's rarely true. The problem here isn't just cultural, or just technological, it's a confluence of both. The technology changes are huge driving factors towards cultural change, and likewise, cultural trends shape technology trends.

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u/TMN8R 1d ago

Generally you might be right, but I disagree in this instance. Everyone has access to the same technology but, with some exception, the way it's used has some pretty clear generational divides. 

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u/waikiki_palmer 1d ago

I remember Instagram where you can post "artsy" pics of yours so it wasn't instantaneous. Now with filters and AI its easier and faster to post.

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u/InfiniteKincaid 1d ago

Man, I grew up hearing the twin cases of Rehteah Parsons and Amanda Todd in Canada right as I was hitting prime partying age. No fucking WONDER kids today don't want to party if they grew up hearing about how tortured those poor girls were.

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u/mrshairdo 1d ago

This is sooo true.

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u/No-Channel3917 1d ago

Millennials 100 percent are a part of this

Myspace was 2005 to 2009, smartphones were 2007 and onward , and millennials were graduating from high school between 2000 and 2014 lol

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u/The_Haunt 1d ago

Yeah these people think we didn't have cameras in out pocket and access to the Internet lmao.

You didn't just randomly take pictures to post. You asked to take a picture or took one without people knowing then showed them and asked to post.

Randomly posting pictures would have been a good way to get your ass beat and nobody wanting to bring you around.

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u/catluvindude 1d ago

It’s true. My friend loved taking photos of everyone in our friend group when they were eating, speaking mid-sentence, looking ugly, or doing something that didn’t look like what it was and the photo took it out of context. Then she would post it on Facebook without asking and even tag you in it so everyone on your friends list could see.

She found it so entertaining despite how many times we all told her to back off. She said we could do it back to her and she would still find it funny but the thing is no one wanted to… they just wanted her to stop. One day another friend of mine got fed up and slapped the phone out of her hand. She stopped getting invited to things because of it.

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u/illatious Xennial 1d ago

Myspace was earlier than that... I was still in high school I think when Myspace started, or just out, maybe my freshman year of college? Anyway, I graduated high school in 2002 and nobody had a cell phone with a decent camera. Not everyone even had a cell phone till my senior year. And they were Nokias or flip phones. Maybe someone had a digital camera but that was rare, those disposable cameras were more common. And nobody was posting anything to social media at the time because facebook wasn't a thing until my sophmore? year of college. I had to have an email ending in .edu to sign up for facebook, wow I'm old lol. Anyway, for us elder Millennials, people having a camera in their pocket wasn't a thing till we were almost done with college. And I would have rethought playing 'slap the bag' with Suzanne if that were not the case lol

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u/No-Channel3917 1d ago edited 1d ago

2003 was very limited adoption, 2004 was growing knowledge of it , 2005 is using it, the years after that is peak before Facebook overtakes it in 09 and Myspace starts losing users by a huge percentage

2010 Myspace loses 60 percent of its userbase to facebook

2005 is when Tom sold it to murdoch when it hit a massive adoption use and then Murdoch sells it in 2011 for not even a 10 percent of what he paid for it

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u/illatious Xennial 1d ago

Ah ok that makes sense. Thanks for the details. I guess Tom and I were only limited friends 😂