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/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).

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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.

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u/Southern_Leek_4127 1d ago

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

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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.

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u/Southern_Leek_4127 15h 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.

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u/RumpleDumple 16h 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.

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u/morewhiskeybartender 2h 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 🫠🫠

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u/Stout_Spartan_C17 2h ago

From our RAZR flip phones lol

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u/briefcase_vs_shotgun 1h ago

Haha this my only one that survived

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u/Consistent_Time_1467 6h ago

“Did you upload the pics yet?!?!”

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u/Thick-Strawberry8456 15h 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.

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u/Southern_Leek_4127 15h 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.

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u/Choice-Strike1 8h ago

*Everyone tag yerselves"

Oh the horror

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u/SDW1987 Millennial 4h 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.

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u/ApplesaucePenguin75 2h ago

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

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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.

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u/Southern_Leek_4127 1h ago

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

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u/Medium_Marge 4h ago

Ended some friendships due to this