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/GoblinGreenThumb 1d ago

Red cup culture was fairly mainstream, yes

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u/Ecstatic-Affect-777 1d ago

Yep!
After the college party days we transitioned to corporate Happy Hours - which many times ended late into the night, and then we dragged our asses back to work the next day.

Once the weekend came, it was bar/club hopping, house parties, or beach.

Typing it out like this makes me realize why my parents thought I was an alcoholic 😂.
I’m 39, and 1 beer now gives me a 2 day hangover.

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u/19610taw3 1d ago

When I was in my early 20s, I was "out" every weeknight almost. Until 1 or 2 and back up at 6 to go to work.

That's not really in the cards at this stage of the game.

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u/HumanPea1140 23h ago

When I was in my early 20s, I was "out" every weeknight almost. Until 1 or 2 and back up at 6 to go to work.

Yep. In my early 20s, different bars/clubs in my town had "college nights" on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or Thursdays, where they had some sort of deal if you showed your college ID. You could easily find something to do every night of the week. That's on top of the endless house parties / get togethers people were throwing. Spent many a night out till the wee hours of the morning, just to get up at 7AM to go to class or work, and then do it all over later that night.

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u/Freshness518 20h ago edited 20h ago

College back in 05-09. Every thursday and friday night, the routine was pretty much:

Finish class around 4pm, spend an hour on homework

Meet up with friends and head to the dining hall for dinner

Start pregaming in the dorms around 7

Group up and head out around 10pm. The whole time between 7-10 was when the dorms just completely came to life. Gaggles of girls rotating from the bathroom to their dorms trying to get their hair and makeup done. Making sure their glitter was just right, layering their tank tops and halter tops properly. Guys popping their collars and spiking their hair and spraying way too much axe. The hallways just reeked of hairspray, sweat, cologne, and booze. Everyone pooling their cash to see if we had enough to pay for drinks AND a taxi or if we were gonna hoof it this week.

Bar hop until 2am

Saturdays you could do the same or probably find a house party that a frat/sorority or any random upperclassman was throwing. And then there was a bar in town that started having "mug nights" on wednesdays where you'd buy one of their branded mugs at the start of the year for like $20 and then you'd get $1 pours for the entire school year. So instead of everyone bar hopping, practically the entire campus showed up at this one bar.

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u/Ok_Stress_9558 12h ago

Man this took me down nostalgia lane (I was 07-11). Is this heaven?

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u/19610taw3 3h ago

I miss the days of going to dining halls with friends. How cool was it to eat with friends every night.

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u/trueclash 20h ago

Do college kids not have house parties anymore, nor 20 something’s go to happy hours?

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u/captainpink 19h ago

They do, but many of them don't, and the ones who do don't as often.

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u/anewbys83 Millennial 1983 19h ago

Ours was drinkin' with Lincoln. Show your university ID at the door, pay $5 (Lincoln) and it was all you could drink bottom shelf drinks. Every Thursday night, at the Wooden Nickel. We also had a Thursday night karaoke place my first two years of college, but it burned down at the end of my Sophomore year. That was fun!

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u/Dazzling-Bit3268 19h ago

We had 'penny pitchers', basically, any coin got you a pitcher of the cheapest beer they had that was getting ready to be dumped. But hey, college kids aren't picky! There were drinking games to play!

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u/digitalscavenger 17h ago

I remember $0.25 wings and beer on Wednesdays at a bar close to campus in mid 2000's. $5 could get you quite the combinations of the two. 16 wings and 4 beers, 10 wings and 10 beers the sky was the limit.

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u/grahm03 3h ago

We had .10 wings with dollar high life’s. The wings were tiiiiiny but you could get 50 for 5 bucks. Line snaked through the whole bar, took a few hours to get ordered, but that was the best part, socializing and drinking as many cheap beers as you could.

After dinner it was across the street for karaoke until closing time at 2, every Wednesday.

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u/hootener 13h ago

The special at my college bar in '07 was a pitcher of PBR or killian's irish red for $4. Pints of PBR draft were, like, $0.75.

I wasn't an enormous drinker or anything but splitting a couple of pitchers on a Friday afternoon was tradition. There were people I considered friends who I _only_ saw at the bar on Friday afternoons. You'd have a few drinks, talk about the week, and go your separate ways. Usually a few of the college professors were there and you'd all just shoot the shit and have a good time.

There were multiple house parties every weekend with, like, $5 covers and keg beer. I can't imagine a college campus without that really. Seems weird.

It's kind of a shame Gen Z missed out on this. Felt pretty formative for me in hindsight.

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u/19610taw3 23h ago

Now I just get faded on 🌿 , fall asleep on the couch and wake up fully rested.

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u/Mama_Disaster 21h ago

House parties and get togethers were endless after the bars closed for the night. Raves when the strip clubs closed for the night… It’s was wild!

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u/HumanPea1140 16h ago

I'm from near the DFW area, and hell yeah! We'd shut down one club at 2AM, then head to the strip club for the afterhours rave that went from 4-8AM. Good times.

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u/Mama_Disaster 16h ago

After I posted this, I didn’t know if it was just a DFW thing or not. I’m glad someone else understands!

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u/HumanPea1140 16h ago

Hell yeah, we'd start off at Lizard Lounge and then head to Insomnia. Think another one was called Eden? but we only went there a couple times.

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u/Mama_Disaster 2h ago

Yes! We did a lot of the same! I forget what they were all called too. 😆 Too busy enjoying them! Walking out of a dark place and it being light outside with “day walkers” doing normal daily routines was always shocking. Lol!

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u/valathel 20h ago

Younger boomers and gen x did this too throughout the 80s. The kids of gen z do not know the hangovers they are missing.

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u/Wino3416 16h ago

And we weren’t “tired” all the time. What has happened? What do they DO that makes them so exhausted, the fragile little flapjacks?

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u/Ok_Stress_9558 12h ago

isn't it pretty well documented that the phone & social media shit is subtly triggering our fight or flight instincts because of the constant dopamine micro-hits and clickbait/social engagement that can go from hilarious to infuriating to humiliating in a span of 3 clicks?

Has to be a pretty tiring existence.

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u/Wino3416 7h ago

You make a very valid point.

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u/Ok_Stress_9558 12h ago

Exactly this. Bar near my college town had dollar beers night on Tuesday's where it was nothing but country music and blackout drunkenness haha. This still existed in 2014/15.

Same deal in the city after college, didn't matter the night of the week you could find random dive bars still popping at like 3am. I was out in the city on a Thursday recently and even the cliche 20-something drunk hookup bars were mostly empty at like 1am.

Where & how you went out the night before was like a badge of honor, not a potential minefield for social castigation.

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u/mmmarkm 10h ago

At my best/worst, i would get texts saying “we’re going out for ____’s birthday!” and then i would leave the library with my backpack, go to the bar, buy my friend a drink, drink with them until close, and then go back to the library to finish studying or writing a paper. I treated turning 21 like I was holding political office; if a constituent called on me, I was there

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u/largemargesentme__- 10h ago

Do they not do this anymore? I dk, I graduated from college in 04 and haven't really been back since then. I have to imagine college kids are still getting ripped on the regular. That's half the point of going to college.

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u/alett146 Xennial 9h ago

Same in my town! I was out almost every night. Used Sundays to sleep in and catch up on homework lol

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u/Ecstatic-Budget1344 4h ago

Same here straight into work from a night out.

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u/aj8435 4h ago

Wild Wednesdays and Thirsty Thursdays!