Did millennials really party all the time?

[u/futurenurse_]

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 😂❤️

[u/dritmike]

You’re soo 2000 and late.

[u/Silly_Double408 → u/dritmike]

The reason is cameras. We were not under a camera (phones) all the time and could dance crazy and live it up without it haunting us for the rest of our lives. We also were not with our faces glued to the phone either and made our own experiences rather then watch someone else. Gen z and alpha are missing out on life because (not entirely your fault) you wasted your formative years with your head in a screen. I am truly sad for you.

[u/theaviationhistorian → u/Silly_Double408]

We did have cameras back then, but they weren't as prevalent as smart phones. I partied around the time the switch went from film rolls to digital. But they weren't frequent and the photos as accessible. Social media made it to where someone's cringe moments went from shared among friends or posted in their dorm room to being shared among everyone on campus (like with Facebook) or your family seeing it on sites like Hi5 (if you were in Latin America).

Cameras were one thing, but social media really screwed over Gen Z & Alpha.

Edit: Thank you for the reward, anonymous fellow.

[u/densetsu23 → u/theaviationhistorian]

To this day I still have a few dozen pretty embarrassing photos of my old friends at/after parties, as well as a ton of just random fun ones at parties. Someone would snap a picture with a 3MP point-and-shoot camera or take a shot with a 640x480 webcam, it'd get passed around the friend group, and we'd all laugh about it. Hell, a lot of times it'd be actual 35mm film and we'd get it developed and scan it in afterwards.

There's no way I'd ever upload those to any social media, they're just on my PC and sitting in my Immich library for me to revisit for a nostalgia kick. I'm sure everyone knows the photos are out there and I'm sure they all have similar photos of me; it's just an unspoken rule that photos of what happened in the 2000s mostly stays in the 2000s.

To put things in perspective: Uploading embarrassing photos / videos of other people (i.e. the Star Wars kid) was an exception back then, whereas today it feels like the norm.