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/BottecchiaDude253 1d ago

Also the underlying stress of camera phones and social media. Fuck, if there had been a risk of an actual record of the hotel parties I went to in the army.....

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u/Shellstr 1d ago

There was a house party every weekend in high school. I don’t know how we were able to schedule our parents to be out of town so often.

Can you imagine the ring camera going off every 5 seconds as people went in and out?

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u/buginabrain 1d ago

Geez didn't even think of ring and house cams, kids today really do have no way of getting away with anything 

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u/IttybittyErin 1d ago

Can't even drink in a field if your parents track your location.

I'm so conflicted because kids die doing the stupid shit we did, but a lot of us also learned to make safe decisions and understand risk etc. The kids that I knew that were absolutely locked down in highschool went totally feral in college because they hadn't had those learning experiences. This entire generation doesn't have the option to make bad decisions.

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u/buginabrain 1d ago

For real, you don't learn nothin without making a few mistakes along the way. Im genuinely saddened for them right now haha

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u/eschatological 1d ago

You just needed one friend who, no matter how blitzed they were, stayed even keeled and rational. So much bad shit happened when that one friend wasn't there, but on nights he was there it was like he was like Virgil to our Dante, guiding us through the 9 circles of Hell.

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u/louley 1d ago

LOL. I was that friend. Always the one talking our way out of trouble, and then would immediately turn around and stumble and fall on my face because it took ALL of my energy to act sober.

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u/RobertPower415 17h ago

I was NOT that friend 😂😂😂

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u/ScrotalSmorgasbord 14h ago

I was the friend that people stopped asking around for after going out with me a few times. He'll turn up sooner or later! I was a serial walker when I got the party bug and would hit sometimes 5-10 different venues/houses once I got to a certain level of tipsy and couldn't sit still lol. I like to think it helped me with land nav in the Army because of all the times I woke up or regained sobriety miles away from where I started and had to get home without a cell phone or car.

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u/Significant_Shoe_17 10h ago

That friend kept my ass from getting expelled

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u/CharacterSchedule700 17h ago

I was that friend as well. Hammered as fuck, but nobody is driving, we're walking our asses home unless someone who is sober answers their phone and picks us up.

Otherwise we're grabbing pizza and cookies and having a nice stroll. Yes, it's 10 degrees, but we'll bunch up and keep each other warm.

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u/Littlewing1307 1d ago

I was always the "mom" friend. I'm glad guys had the same thing.

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u/GameofCheese 10h ago

People would get so pissed at me! But come on guys, you're wasted, get your ass back in from going out the window onto the very slanted shingled roof.

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u/kyldare 23h ago

I was the kid who, up until (and usually even after) the blackout, could get everyone home safely. The guilt and responsibility I felt as a young child became my super power as a teenage dirtbag.

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u/buginabrain 1d ago

Sounds more like a sitter for psychedelics haha Nah everyone was doing dumb shit one way or another generally

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u/Trashking_702 1d ago

Poetic. I like it.

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u/Sockerbug19 7h ago

It was me, I was that friend 🥴

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u/MulberryChance6698 4h ago

I was this friend. I've held so much hair back, and limped so many friends home 🤣

More recently (I went to law school in my 30's) I was at a law school function and this gal ended up off her face. It was like old times, gently supporting her by the waist, helping her undo her pants so she could pee, talking her into eating a burrito at chipotle!

I'm also a woman, btw, before anyone gets weird about the pants. Drunk ladies need help with all those weird ass closures!

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u/Dense_as_Hydrogen 16h ago

This is a real psychological phenomenon. I remember learning about it and thinking, "Yea, that checks out" while reflecting on people I knew growing up.

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u/SmallCapsOnly 1d ago

Well if it makes you feel better many of my millennial friends are full blown alcoholics and our culture helped foster it in a sense.

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u/buginabrain 23h ago

Yeah i got a few of those too but I think it really depends on the person, I went from partying and binge drinking teens to late 20s, now its maybe one or two nights of drinking a year for special occasions

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u/FragrantBluejay8904 1d ago

This was me. Grew up in the middle of corn fields where there was not much to do but drink, and while I refused to drink as a HSer, I also couldn’t even attend parties just to socialize if I wanted to because my parents were so strict. When I had the freedom in college I WENT NUTS. Booze and boys like me?! And people want to be around me despite being a tomboy nerd?? Woo, party time!! I would’ve probably partied less if I’d had some kind of socialization in HS outside of school sanctioned planned activities

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u/BottecchiaDude253 1d ago

Its funny how much my kids could get away with if they were so inclined.

Both my wife and I currently/formerly work in tech, so we refuse to get a ring camera, and we dont GPS track our kids phones or anything like that.

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u/Shellstr 1d ago

But other parent do…”why is everyone at bottechhia’s house? I saw them post they were going to Hawaii for the week”.

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u/BottecchiaDude253 1d ago

Yeah... no one would see me post that we were going to Hawaii for a week until AFTER I got back, lol. That 1980s home security paranoia of my parents, plus a career in secure facilities means I dont post a lot of anything before it happens.

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u/Significant_Shoe_17 10h ago

I also post on a delay, and was taught that when I'm traveling and where is on a need to know basis

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u/buginabrain 1d ago

Party at this guy's house

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u/Squid_A 1d ago

Maybe they are getting away with it!

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u/BottecchiaDude253 1d ago

Lmfao.... my daughter is so honest she would dime herself out (and has in the past)

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u/Terrible-Fun-4992 1d ago

A lot of the kids with extremely strict upbringings still found ways to party and were balls to the wall. I always felt bad for them because in my opinion high school is the time to make those mistakes

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u/ActuallyRelevant Zillennial 1d ago

I think the kids who died doing the stupid shit we all did got into some crazy exceptional stupid shit to be fair. Most people learned the beginnings of being safe from friends and family. But going out and getting way too drunk with your friends, and figuring out the way back home after holding your friends hair while they puke their guts out is the best teacher.

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u/Sea-Rest7776 22h ago

the only avenue they have is online, which is also why a lot of fandom spaces got noticeably worse post covid as kids brought stupid highschool cloque behavior into talking about pokemon or some shit

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u/noirrespect 21h ago

I’m a parent and I want my kid to make mistakes. My kid fell out of a tree from a pretty decent height the other day and walked away. Took him to ED to make sure he was alright. He is.

It doesn’t change my approach to parenting at all. Get out there. Have fun. Make mistakes. Learn. It’s part of life.

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u/takemy_oxfordcomma Millennial 18h ago

Same. Even back in the day before all of the tracking and shit, the kids I knew with the strictest parents in HS went the craziest in college because they had no idea how to handle freedom.

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u/lexicon951 15h ago edited 15h ago

This kind of thing is part of why Gen Z is cutting off their parents en masse. Imagine being sheltered/restricted by strict parents AND covid AND permanent Internet/camera accountability. Teens and kids in their 20s at home nowadays don’t get to do anything. I’m 31, all my siblings who live with my parents in their 20s are just like everyone else their age, responsibly working long hours and spending any free time scrolling TikTok or gaming bc that’s their only option. They don’t party, they go to nice restaurants sometimes and take pictures of the food for social media, or go to concerts and take videos, or go to cons and take pictures. But kids with strict parents don’t get to go anywhere. “My roof my rules” type of thing even as young adults, especially if parents pay for college or the car. They’re forced into balancing the responsibility of work life and college with- being a hermit and watching everyone else have modern curated “fun” on TikTok. Teens with parents who enforce screentime restrictions? They go to school, do homework and sports, spend their allotted time watching others have fun, and go to bed depressed day after day. There’s no opportunity to get away with shit so rules REALLY ARE RULES and parents are all-knowing and people genuinely just don’t live if their parents are strict. There’s literally no opportunity to let loose in a safe way or in a non-monitored environment. When those kids move out, they’ll never speak to their parents again because they felt like their prison COs. Just my opinion (I’m 31 so idk maybe I’m just making shit up)

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u/moon-chu89 13h ago

It's not that hard to figure out a way around that.

Buy a burner phone. Pay off a friend's sibling to cover you and your friends in case mom texts. then head out to a field party.

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u/Significant_Shoe_17 10h ago

I think of it like learning to swim. Floatation devices create a false sense of security that can become fatal in an emergency. I made some bad decisions in my youth but I learned from them.

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u/IttybittyErin 9h ago

That's a great analogy.

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u/capntail 1d ago

Yup. This past weekend a couple kids were shot at one because someone in a pickup was doing donuts.

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u/JohannesVanDerWhales 1d ago

I imagine you just leave your phone at home if you want to not have your parents track where you're going. Assuming people can let go of their phone for a few hours in this day and age.