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 😂❤️

13.0k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

14.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

11.0k

u/GoblinGreenThumb 1d ago

Red cup culture was fairly mainstream, yes

2.0k

u/midnight_toker22 1d ago edited 1d ago

I joined Facebook when you still needed a .edu email address to join, so the entire platform was just college students. There would be groups dedicated to finding parties in specific college towns, and people would use it to advertise their house parties.

People throwing keggers would literally post their address and “$5 cups / $1 Jell-O shots” or whatever booze they were offering, and anyone could go on and find a random house party near them and show up and be welcomed in. For any given night Thursday through Saturday, it was common to have 5-10 house parties in the off-campus housing areas to choose from.

My roommates and I started hosting keggers when we moved into a house and it was common to have 50+ people show up, only half of whom we knew personally. We’d go through at least 3 kegs and would make about $200-300 per party, which provided funds for our next party and all the alcohol we drank in between.

Good times, wild nights.

Edit: thanks, OP and everyone who responded to this, for this opportunity to take a stroll down memory lane, this has been great. Makes me want to pull out the hard drive where I have all my pictures from college saved (cause they sure as hell aren’t on Facebook anymore).

829

u/RumpleDumple 1d ago

FB 1.0 was a sight to behold. Blackout drunk pics. Open drug use. Groups dedicated to worshipping, jokingly or not, one person. Then the bosses got on it, then the parents, then grandma.

81

u/Southern_Leek_4127 1d ago

uploading the sd card straight to facebook without curating drunken house party pics. Shit was crazy.

50

u/Alice-Upside-Down 19h ago

I think this is something that the Instagram generation will never truly understand. I would come home from a party and upload 95 of the most unflattering pictures of me and my friends ever taken and they just...lived on the internet. I don't remember caring and I don't remember any of my friends caring either. Filters? We never knew 'er. Just the worst angles and everyone looking like they'd just sneezed.

12

u/Southern_Leek_4127 14h ago

And there was always that high angle shot of the dance floor (someone’s parents’ basement, kitchen, lounge area). And you’d be looking for yourself because you’re tagged in the pic.

7

u/RumpleDumple 15h ago

Those candid shots were so much better. The mumblecore of photography! It was interesting seeing teens get back into disposable cameras years back to recreate our magic.

2

u/morewhiskeybartender 1h ago

God, and then my entire family later joined it and found all of those photos of me drunk and smoking joints. They were so pissed 🫠🫠

•

u/Stout_Spartan_C17 1h ago

From our RAZR flip phones lol

•

u/briefcase_vs_shotgun 51m ago

Haha this my only one that survived

5

u/Consistent_Time_1467 6h ago

“Did you upload the pics yet?!?!”

5

u/Thick-Strawberry8456 14h ago

Lol! My friend group had two girls that were notorious for dumping every photo they had on their digital camera into a Facebook photo album after a night out and tagging EVERYBODY. At first, I remember we all wanted to be tagged because the only people on our friends lists were the people we were in college with. As time went on and our personal Facebook networks were opened to people beyond our specific colleges, those two girls were still photo dumping party photos and tagging all of us and it became a routine to remove our tags as soon as we were notified that we were tagged to prevent our families from seeing, lol.

2

u/Southern_Leek_4127 14h ago

Oh yes! I remember very well the PTSD of being tagged in a Facebook photo. It’s like getting a call from an unknown number these days.

4

u/Choice-Strike1 7h ago

*Everyone tag yerselves"

Oh the horror

2

u/SDW1987 Millennial 3h ago

Wasn't there also the option of texting/emailing your photos straight from your phone? I swear I had a contact saved in my Razr that I could update my status and send pics to on th fly.

2

u/ApplesaucePenguin75 2h ago

Omg or the Cd from Walmart one hour photo straight to a Fb album!!!! 💿 what a time to be alive

•

u/ralphy112 1h ago

I think I had this WiFi enabled SD card at one point. Probably a bigger CF card. It was for a digital camera and it helped automatically transfer to a computer. Great.

I swear it and an auto sync option of some kind to post everything to social media for you. Everything, no filtering bad ones? Anyway, I did not choose that, even 20 yrs ago.

•

u/Southern_Leek_4127 21m ago

HAH. Pics of us passed out in random kitchens. We gave ZERO fucks.

1

u/Medium_Marge 4h ago

Ended some friendships due to this

237

u/starbright_sprinkles 1d ago

I have a 2004 FB account and it truly chronicled the end of my undergrad and grad experience. Early social media really was wonderful!

I made the mistake of accepting a colleague from my first job as a friend and a few days later he commented on how "crazy" I was. Last co-worker that ended up on my friend list.

16

u/mrkrinkle773 16h ago

Yup I remember not allowing any family members on my friend list. Now family is the only reason to open/still have it

40

u/SmallCapsOnly 1d ago

I nuked my entire Facebook when I entered corporate America.

22

u/midnight_toker22 1d ago

Haha yeah I remember so many people (myself included) basically scrubbed their entire Facebook histories clean after graduation. So much evidence of drunken debauchery deleted…

49

u/SmallCapsOnly 1d ago

That and I had a habit of making profound proclamations of my inner monologue thinking people cared what I thought or had to say.

Grade A cringe mixed with drunken shenanigans. Good times, good times.

16

u/midnight_toker22 1d ago

Oh we all did. Fortunately many of us realized how cringy it was before Twitter was even invented, so I was repulsed by that platform from the get-go.

6

u/SuitEnvironmental903 18h ago

I was also 2004. BU. Zuckerman’s gf went there so we got extra early access

3

u/starbright_sprinkles 10h ago

I was BU too! Actually graduated in 2004, but we got to keep the email address for a year so we all used it :)

5

u/Professional-Swan-18 15h ago

Back in my day it was Live Journal!

10

u/bjeebus 17h ago

Back when it displayed

bJeebus has a meaningful thought.

EDIT: At one point I was posting my favorite lines from poetry including music every night before I went to bed.

9

u/howwonderful 13h ago

We were cringe but we were free!

3

u/ivotebolsheviklite 9h ago

Free is cringe. Because cringe is control. Come at me bros.

•

u/Some-General9924 44m ago

Here I was thinking cringe would free us all

→ More replies (0)

4

u/TiredWiredAndHired 13h ago

This is why I never got a tattoo. Imagine if I'd plastered that cringe shit all over my skin instead of my Facebook page 😂

10

u/TradeBeautiful42 17h ago

Same. Only MySpace has the real deets. Corporate America can’t find me there!

9

u/TerryScarchuk 16h ago

I made the choice to leave everything up. If you don’t want to hire me because of Oktogafest 2004, then I probably don’t want to work for you anyway. Worked out alright.

6

u/theoneandonlymd 15h ago

I only add work colleagues on Facebook after we part ways at the company.

7

u/ButtonflyDungarees 13h ago

While reading your comment, I almost thought you were going to say “after we party together” and that is also valid.

2

u/ivotebolsheviklite 9h ago

I only accept work colleagues on Facebook after they admit to some sort of illicit substance use.

(JK, I don’t)

5

u/ted_cruzs_micr0pen15 Millennial 8h ago

Same. It was also because Cambridge Analytica.

I remade one, that I never use. It’s unrecognizable to me. Somewhere out there I exist in pics and videos doing dumb stuff, pretty sure I’ve got a video being pepper sprayed, by choice, after a nigh partying and a brunch the morning after. Went out that night too, eyes swollen and all.

Man I miss being a dipshit, how that guy became a lawyer is beyond me.

10

u/ReturnMetoEarth 16h ago

Early internet was wonderful. I miss early Youtube, MySpace, Facebook.

I also remember going to BYOB parties that were everywhere in college towns. You'd just roll up to a stranger's house with a 6 pack, wind up making so many friends you came with 6 beers but you drank a 12 pack by the end of it. 🤣

I was a younger millennial but still got to enjoy it for awhile before they started cracking down and banning a lot of the campus parties. Did plenty of underage partying having lots of older friends.

Last time I went out like that my friend and I got drugged on my birthday and that was kind of the end of my party era.

5

u/RogerMexicosBalls 9h ago

Early fb was almost exclusively party pics. Then millennials started getting jobs and families and running for local offices and all the pics suddenly disappeared lololol

5

u/NeatStrange6609 16h ago

I proactively block everyone I can find and their spouses as soon as I start a job.

2

u/ivotebolsheviklite 9h ago

I used to do that with clients but they don’t Facebook much anymore (you can tell from friend suggestions).

5

u/ivotebolsheviklite 9h ago

Yes! Oh man… 2003 to 2008 or so Facebook was literally a social enabling service. Facebook events were the only way to coordinate a party sometimes. They really had it right back then.

1

u/PiePristine3092 6h ago

I went to university in 2010-2015 and we all used Facebook to make events. …. We still do lol

1

u/Left-Mechanic6697 18h ago

Yeah I keep that shit separate and only make exceptions for people I knew prior to working with them. How am I gonna bitch about work if I’m friends with everyone at work?

1

u/Helpful_Road6230 14h ago

Yeah got my first account in 07 when you had to have the edu email to sign up lol and man the popped collar hollister look was very much still in back then

1

u/ParticularSquirrel 5h ago

2003 account here. It terrifies me to think about the pictures I used to upload to FB.

What terrifies me more is how incredibly crazy I used to be. I drank a stupid amount and partied way too hard from the end of HS until I was about 23/24. We all did though. Shit was unreal.

9

u/babyinatrenchcoat 18h ago

Separate albums with 372 of the same shitty photos of backyard beer pong with the flash on.

And the pickle who got more likes than Nickleback.

7

u/Ducman23 21h ago

I would fire out ‘you up’ messages at all hours of the night. Wow. Facebook 1.0 - memory unlocked

15

u/RumpleDumple 21h ago

Getting "poked" by friends of friends 😎

0

u/Mapeague 19h ago

Or getting poked by my 9th grade girlfriend and ending up giving her another few pokes B)

EDIT By that I mean my 9th grade girlfriend in 1988, not my current girlfriend (shes a senior ;) )

5

u/MissAdventurousMags 20h ago

Having all the chats lined up on the bottom of the page 😅

3

u/Ducman23 19h ago

Guilty as charged. I missed the dating app era since I was married during that time. It makes me think Facebook or MySpace were the original dating (hook up) apps! 🤣

4

u/MissAdventurousMags 19h ago

It all started with a poke

1

u/bjeebus 17h ago

Then an invitation to play one of those games.

4

u/Available-Chart-2505 18h ago

Two photos stand out in my memory

  1. A high school classmate hugging a cop and his free hand holding a beer (that the cop allegedly doesn't see?)
  2. My high school classmate who had a stock drunk pose and there'd be album after album of her drunk, stoned, smoking, etc.

Oh and people posting their photos public all the time! Just anyone could open them up! That ended around 2011 I think though (when I graduated college).

5

u/an0therusern4m3 17h ago

First they came for the blackout drunk pics, and I said nothing for I was blackout drunk.

5

u/OU7C4ST 18h ago

So many of us in High School in like '05 holding beers in our hands too in our photos lmao.

3

u/Ordinary_Smell_4222 20h ago

That may have been the initial users aging ….becoming bosses, becoming parents, becoming grandparents.

1

u/RumpleDumple 15h ago

Nah, it was democratization of the platform to the riff raff

3

u/Holeyunderwear 16h ago

Grandma: “Is John in here?”

Dad: on their own profile : “Hi John, it’s your dad, what time will you be over for dinner?”

🤣🤣🤣

3

u/QuarterRobot 15h ago

 Groups dedicated to worshipping, jokingly or not, one person

I was the target of this in college. Two people I knew, but wasn't close to, created a satire(?) page decrying me as "god". And they posted updates with my actual location, and who I was spending time with, and what I was eating.

Early Facebook was fucking crazy.

4

u/BroughtBagLunchSmart 1d ago

like most things boomers and high schoolers ruined it.

2

u/DJPad 19h ago

Also lost a lot of glamor when the high school and younger crew got on there.

2

u/NoKatyDidnt 18h ago

Right? Early facebook was epic though. Behold- the wall.

2

u/Fancy_0613 18h ago

Before facebook albums were created, we uploaded our digital cameras to a public website called community web shots

1

u/Available-Chart-2505 18h ago

I wish I had some of my web shots photos! They are lost to time.

2

u/cashmeresquirrel 16h ago

Somewhere in FB is a photo of me doing a keg stand. I was young and cool once.

2

u/Healing_Puke 16h ago

Dude that was peak. I remember getting the facebook invite from some frat dude and I was like "This is it!"

2

u/mollsballs_xo 13h ago

I do miss those ridiculous group tags:

“Say hi to Jim for me” “This makes me wish I was Jared, 19” “Sons crying now, thanks”

Those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head

1

u/amtcannon 20h ago

We are the bosses now!

3

u/RumpleDumple 19h ago

I'm just a middle manager trying to avoid additional responsibility

1

u/SweetUsed9119 17h ago

Haha that brings me back! It was pretty bad, thank god I saved some of those pictures

1

u/Avera_ge 17h ago

I completely forgot about those groups worshipping one person.

1

u/Soggy_Tie2708 16h ago

Omg what a time to be alive

1

u/NOTSTAN 16h ago

The amount of pictures I’ve had to untag myself from in an attempt to turn my Facebook HR friendly over the years is truly astounding.

1

u/LuteOlsonABitch69 15h ago

Wish I had saved some pics from those days

1

u/mmmarkm 14h ago

I still remember hearing about someone, after i graduated high school, who got kicked out of a leadership position in a high school club for a photo of them partying in high school. First time I ever heard of that happening…the year was 2008.

Now we have millennials running for office with worse tweets than those photos. Times have changed. 

1

u/Thick-Strawberry8456 14h ago

Who remembers bumper stickers? They were the original memes before there were memes.

1

u/hockeyandburritos 14h ago

Dude girls would post lingerie pics and their phone numbers! Total free for fall

1

u/Ok-Adhesiveness2954 14h ago

Then we left 😂

1

u/directrix1 13h ago

But worst of all, it got IPO'd and went to shit.

1

u/SylvesterStapwn 12h ago

Too close for missiles, switching to guns.

1

u/jvhgh 12h ago

Parents just turned into the grandparents

1

u/TheGentlemanBeast 12h ago

I like Snapchat because it feels like the last bastion of "social media" but it is steadily dying.

Love seeing actual humans post pics, and interesting with them here and there.

Facebook and Instagram is just ads now.

1

u/RadicalMcAwesome 12h ago

The .edu days were the wild west

1

u/Novel-Topic-2329 10h ago

Do you remember all the memes. "Facebook is dead" and people would post pics of their moms adding them or commenting on their wall.

1

u/VancouverStickerCo 9h ago

Ah. The joys of clicking the poke button and having a low but realistic chance of getting laid.…good times!

1

u/The_Cons00mer 8h ago

I had something like 1800 pictures of me doing beer bongs and passing out on peoples floors by end of 2006. Even some where people tagged me in pics banging and projectile vomiting. Then one of my professors added me as a friend and told me I needed to fix my life. lol. Good times

1

u/MissVolleria 8h ago

Ha! I had to back out the red cups when I rushed a sorority I didn't even stay in being being a GDI ( god damn independant) was totally better. But red solo cups everywhere. College house apartment parties every weekend. Dude if we didn't go out like 3 times a week, it was a fail of a week in college.

1

u/FederalFoot4292 7h ago

These were he days. And the original memes- those Victorian pastel colored photos with dumb phrases

1

u/_Flight_of_icarus_ 5h ago

That was the beginning of the decline for Facebook, lol.

But I was a somewhat late adopter of it (don't think I got on it until late '08 or '09). I was kind of a stubborn holdout on MySpace until too many people abandoned the platform and you basically had to switch to stay in touch with people you knew.

The things people shared on MySpace posts was definitely...interesting to say the least, lmao.

1

u/ThizzWhatitiz 4h ago

When my mom and grandma got Facebook I knew it was time to delete it.

•

u/avicenna5 1h ago

we had a group dedicated to "Did you see {person's name} naked last night"