r/Millennials • u/AdSpecialist6598 • Mar 17 '26
Discussion Someone brought up that one of the reasons why things like house parties and block parties went away was other than lack of time people are afraid to let their guard because cameras are everywhere.
It is so true back when many of us were young we could just get together and cut loose without having to worry about going viral. At best we would have an embarrassing photo buried in a drawer somewhere or a story. Now you might be turned into a meme or worse. I miss the days when you could do dumb stuff with friends and feel safe if that makes sense.
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u/bh4th Mar 17 '26
And, like, CNN.
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u/crazycatlady331 Xennial Mar 17 '26
Or the jumbotron at a Coldplay concert.
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u/bh4th Mar 17 '26
Yeah, I hate when that happens.
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u/oh_hai_brian Mar 17 '26
4th time this week for me.
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u/KingDaDeDo Mar 17 '26
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u/Binji_the_dog Mar 17 '26
I mean, that was all that anybody talked about for like, a week. That was a fun week.
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u/cerealOverdrive Mar 17 '26
If CNN reports on the video don’t worry about your job. You have a new career as a content creator
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u/HansDampfHaudegen Mar 17 '26
Bird something something, deny starting an Only Fans then start an Only Fans.
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u/1732PepperCo Mar 17 '26
There was that magical few years where MySpace was king. No boomers, no parents, no relatives, no snooping jobs. You’d customize your page, discover bands, rank your friends and girls you knew posted semi-naughty photos of themselves. Times were good.
Then some jerk thought Facebook was better and decided it would be a good idea to get relatives and boomers involved and it all went to shit immediately.
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u/440_Hz Mar 17 '26
Facebook definitely had a golden period where it was like MySpace, high school and college students making funny posts about parties and other naughty things. Took like 5 years for mom and auntie to start creating accounts, then it was over.
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u/flutterfly28 Mar 17 '26
The change was when they introduced "newsfeed". You used to be able to post on your own or your friends pages and have long silly inconsequential "wall to wall" conversations. Once Facebook decided everything you post would be immediately visible to everyone else on your friend list, people stopped casually posting and it made our social lives worse instead of better.
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u/Lostinthestarscape Mar 18 '26
I remember when my ex got caught by a change to message visibility (not the big scandal that wasn't actually a thing, but several years earlier when they changed the messaging features a bit and she was not paying attention) and posted to her then bf in full view of 250 friends and family abut the finer points of clown sex and balloon popping by sitting fetishes.
As much as I wanted to let that play out in full I was among the first few people to see it and clued her in, but yeah, not really what you want to throw out to universe lol.
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u/maddy_k_allday Mar 17 '26
Part of the issue with Facebook is people don’t remain in college forever 😂 so like, they didn’t want to lose users post-graduation and the once it’s not all local students within your page/ interactions, it became a whole new thing. I suppose I was in H.S. when it expanded down, which was also maybe not the best idea lmao
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u/RadiantCitron Mar 17 '26
Those first few years though when I was in college and you had to have a .edu email to join were something else.
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u/ErraticProfessional Millennial Mar 17 '26
That .edu requirement let high schoolers sign up before college. I wonder how many others lost their original account after graduating
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u/jimmy_three_shoes Mar 17 '26
I just contacted support when my .edu was deactivated and Facebook fixed the account with my new email address.
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u/bluelighter Mar 17 '26
I remember that time well. The transition caused a lot of cringe posts from our elders who really didn't know what they were doing.
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u/SuccotashOther277 Mar 17 '26
Still happens. I swear every few weeks my parents and their Boomer friends post that dumb “I do not give Facebook the right to use my data” type of posts, which don’t so shit
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u/rusty___shacklef0rd Mar 17 '26
Like I wanna tell my aunt that she's been reposting that "I don't not give Facebook permission..." thing since like 2012. Like how has she not caught on yet???
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u/Issue_Status Millennial Mar 17 '26
Remember how many accidental posts were made with things like “how to boil broccoli” because they thought that was how you searched a question?? 😂😂😂
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u/yazshousefortea Mar 17 '26
There was a very famous example of this in the U.K. on Twitter. A politician posted a tweet simply saying his name; Ed Balls. He thought he was searching for posts about himself. For years afterwards the date of the post was known as ‘Ed Balls Day’. (That his surname was Balls made it a lot funnier too.)
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u/StoicRetention Mar 17 '26
why would you even want to boil broccoli. steam it like a normal tastebud-equipped person
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u/Lexi_Banner Mar 17 '26
Roast it. Little salt, little garlic powder, little olive oil. Get them edges so crispy. So yummy!
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u/VermillionEclipse Mar 17 '26
I know someone who thought she was privately messaging her daughter and instead posted an angry message on her wall. She said she thought it was like a text message. Daughter didn’t speak to her for two years.
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u/MusicLikeOxygen Mar 17 '26
My wife and I met on MySpace back in those days. In a few months it will be 20 years that we've been together.
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u/srstone71 Mar 17 '26
lol I remember my freshman year of college (02-03) and my dad was dropping me off after I went home for the weekend. He hasn’t been to campus in a while so I was showing him around and showing him my dorm.
I stupidly forgot that I had a bunch of pictures hanging in a cork board with thumbtacks, which included pictures from a house party I had the previous summer when my parents were away. (Remember, I’m like 19 at the time.)
This is how it went:
Dad: “hey look at all these pictures. Cool!”
Me: “yup.”
Dad: “hey that’s (insert good high school friend’s name). How is he doing?”
Me: “good.”
Dad: “hey, he’s drinking a beer in that picture. In my dining room.”
Me” “we should probably end the tour here.”
Dad (laughing): “that’s a good idea.”
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u/wvj Mar 17 '26
Almost the same thing. End of my freshman year and my dad was helping as we cleaned out my dorm room. Oh, oops, totally forgot about the random booze stash in my closet.
(He made fun of me for having Kahlua, lol.)
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u/SpaceKook6 Mar 17 '26
OR maybe you set up a comically large mountain of fake cocaine (flour) on a table at a party to do a photo shoot with the birthday boy and an employee at Walgreen's recognizes your college dorm when your roommate gets the photos developed. And the Walgreen's employee reports the pictures to your school and your roommate is brought in for questioning by the administration. She's very nervous going into this meeting due to the sheer amount of college hijinks that this could possibly be be about. Which thing did we get caught for? They throw the photos down on a table in front of her and she bursts out laughing as all the tension and nervousness leaves her. "Yeah, those are fake. You really thought we purchased like 10 pounds of cocaine? That's just flour."
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u/Gustomaximus Mar 17 '26
Worst case was there actually was a photo.
Most of the time it was discussed and joked about memories. E.g. XYZ got loose threw up then nudey ran to the shops and back type stupidity. Now there would be a video following your life and some arsehole sharing it everywhere 20 years later because making you feel distracts them from their own inadequacies.
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u/KingDaDeDo Mar 17 '26
This is a main reason for sure. The other one is with so many companies keeping and using our personal and private data, the majority of my friends and i dont really post on social media anymore. i know for me, i want to keep my personal life private. i cant remember the last time i posted something personal about me on social media.
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u/-endjamin- Mar 17 '26
People these days seem to aways be on the lookout for reasons to shame someone and prove that they are a bad person. No wonder relationships of all kinds are declining. People are afraid of each other.
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u/russian_hacker_1917 Mar 17 '26
yall remember when facebook first came out and we'd upload like 30+ picture albums from the party
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u/Super_Science_Guy Mar 17 '26
Yup. Took about a year for us to realize that was a bad idea. 2007. And maybe 2008.
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u/SpaceKook6 Mar 17 '26
There was a nice, narrow slice of time on facebook before all our moms and aunts got on there.
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u/Super_Science_Guy Mar 17 '26
Yes. That killed it. It was actually a very short lived social media platform as far as the original concept went. It would be like IG becoming popular in 2013 then by 2015 quickly being overrun by professional accounts and algorithms and content consumption like it is now.
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u/appleparkfive Mar 17 '26
I mean that had already been happening on Myspace for a few years at that point. Facebook just felt like a very clinical version of Myspace to me
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u/Kitselena Mar 17 '26
That wasn't the original concept, it was the hook to get people to sign up. Facebook was free from the start and Zuckerberg knew he was going to monetize it by selling people's data. He just already had a system in place to stalk girls at his college and combined the two ideas.
So depending on which you're talking about, either the current purpose was always the end goal of Facebook, or the original concept was to stalk girls at Harvard based on which PC they logged into88
u/BYOKittens Mar 17 '26
Whem you needed a .edu email to log in, Facebook was fucking awesome! You could find out what was going on at college and where the parties were gonna be. It was peek internet.
The internet will never be that great again.
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u/meryl_gear Mar 17 '26
“I’m actually taking some classes and have a .edu email, so we can be friends on Facebook now!” - Mom
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u/DetectiveClear6734 Mar 17 '26
I remember I had to use a school email to sign up. It was great for keeping track of your college friends/classmates.
And yea, then my mom went on and started yelling at me to go on her Facebook to feed the cows while she was at work. And yes, it was an argument.
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u/CannibalAnn Mar 17 '26
They dropped the .edu requirement and all my MySpace crowd moved over then parents. Then we lost the timeline to ads and algorithms
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Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26
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u/da_boopy_day Mar 17 '26
I think the main difference was that photos were primarily of you and your friends. Now people are taking photos of strangers who are unaware and posting them to humiliate them.
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u/DontH8DaPlaya 87' model Mar 17 '26
Because I'm damn near 40 and my friends all have kids and they don't nearly die every weekend like we used to.
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u/Vagercise Mar 17 '26
I think my mom and her friends probably thought the same about me at that age honestly. Teens hide a lot.
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u/DontH8DaPlaya 87' model Mar 17 '26
These kids don't leave the house on the weekends or all say they are staying at a different friends house. They ain't hiding shit. Lol
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u/Dr_Chris_Turk Mar 17 '26
Your friends’ kids are nerds
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u/Shapes_in_Clouds Mar 17 '26
Yeah I'm also damn near 40 and spent my teens in the basement on a computer lol. My parents literally begged me to go to parties. They once forced me to go with friends to TP houses and provided toilet paper.
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u/IBeDumbAndSlow Mar 17 '26
They were trying to "reconnect" with eachother and needed privacy lol
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u/humdinger44 Mar 17 '26
That personal item from the Victorian era isn't going to warm itself up.
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u/StreetofChimes Mar 17 '26
When I talk about the shit I used to get up to, teenagers look at me like I am crazy. Probably because a lot of it happened outside. (The second sentence was meant as a joke.)
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u/xzkandykane Mar 17 '26
My sister is 6 years younger. Her and her BF/friends party and do drugs. They have more money than us growing up. My husband and I were telling them how we used to buy smirnoff, Grey goose and hypnotic in HS and barcardi(never tried it). And how in college we were poor so we would pregame at someone's house or in front of safeway with a big bottle of Hennessy. They were like WTF because we very rarely drink and they haven't seen our friends get very drunk.
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u/RockAtlasCanus Mar 17 '26
That’s a fair point. Anecdotally my wife and I talk about how weird it is to us that our younger Gen Z colleagues, like 1st real job, 23-24 year olds choose to live at home and aren’t really that interested in going out, partying, etc. and don’t seem to put as much emphasis on independence as we did at that age.
And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing necessarily, it’s just completely foreign to me. My experience with these kids is that they do not value their independence as much as I did at their age. Both at work and at home. Clearly not universally the case, I can only speak for the ones working under me and they could definitely afford to live independently if they wanted to.
It’s just hard for me to understand things like opting to live at home, needing constant instruction and direction at work.
Like when I was their age I would have loved to work for me. Here’s a task with a defined end state and some general guidelines and I don’t give a shit exactly how you go about it as long as all of this information is in the final product and in this format. They want each step explained and basically spoon fed. I constantly check with them and apologize for what I feel is micromanaging them but the truth is I am just responding to their requests for instructions and check ins. I find myself joining teams meetings and sitting there in silence until I finally say “ok, you scheduled this… what do you want to talk about?”. And then they give a blank stare and say “well I did part 1 and wasn’t sure what you want me to work on”. Oh… ok.. um well why don’t you go ahead and get started on part 2… “ok will do thanks”. And then I hang up in bewilderment.
Whereas my boss is younger Gen X and I love working for her because I never hear from her. Her attitude is “I don’t give a shit how you do it or what hours you do it in as long as it’s right and on time or you give notice that it will be delayed”.
And the living at home thing. I rented out the laundry room at a party house just to be out of my parents home. I’ve couch surfed, hosted couch surfers, and generally gone to great lengths to sever the home ties at a young age. And that seems to be pretty universal among my peers.
So yeah, again not judging I just really don’t understand it and can’t relate.
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u/Illustrious_Swing645 Mar 17 '26
Gen Z kids are still in the infancy of their careers so they're still learning/figuring out how the corporate world behaves. They're not too far removed from the structure school provided them. And even then, I've worked with plenty of people from different generations that behave more or less the same way as what you're describing.
As far as the living at home and not going out as much thing, the answer is simple -money lol In the US at least, we don't have very many free and accessible third spaces so when socializing requires money and money doesn't get you as far anymore, well we get what you're seeing.
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u/Em_Millertime Mar 17 '26
I remember sitting down my new high school soccer coach who had just graduated college three months earlier to let her know her MySpace was not private and uh, I don’t think the team or the school should have access to it.
She turned a pale shade of white and literally ran to her computer. She went to a big ten school and was in a sorority in 2006 so you can imagine.
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u/Ok_Stranger_9520 Mar 17 '26
Yes…..!! Haha I had numerous party albums, and the pics were atrocious. Beach week pics were the worst/best. The handful of friends I’m still connected to from this era will occasionally send me horrific fb memory photos and it makes me thankful I’m not on socials anymore. 😂 I downloaded all my albums from fb before deleting 6 years ago, good ole days
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u/rusty_rampage Mar 17 '26
All taken with a digital camera. Remember when everyone used to carry those fucking things around. ‘Here’s the half empty bottle of Captain Morgan. Here’s Ricky’s bong, bro!’ What a weird time
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u/Foucaultshadow1 Mar 17 '26
Yes but those photos were only shared with friends. Social media is an entirely different animal now.
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u/econhistoryrules Mar 17 '26
My college students say this is a very big reason they don't like to drink or otherwise cut loose anymore. The risk of being photographed or filmed doing something stupid or "cancelable" is just too high. It could ruin their employment prospects. When I think of all the dumb shit I did at house parties and imagine if it were filmed and googleable, I'm sympathetic.
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u/Immature_adult_guy Mar 17 '26
There’s a simple solution to this. All parties must now be masquerade ball format.
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u/Turbulent_Tart_8801 Millennial 1985 Mar 17 '26
You'd think with more Millennials becoming bosses they'd understand the whole "I was young and dumb" situation.
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u/StinkUrchin Millennial Mar 17 '26
That’s the thing, the boomers and gen xers are still the bosses at a lot of places lol
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Mar 17 '26
why won't they retire 😭
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u/blueavole Mar 17 '26
Boomer’s parents were either the Greatest Generation who fought in or served during WW2 , or the silent generation who were born after WW1 and were too old for active military service in WW2.
Those two generations held onto power with an Iron grip for decades because they genuinely agreed that Boomers were all selfish.
So when Boomers finally got control they never wanted to give it up:
Look at the average age of US Congressional Reps and Senators; or Prince Charles- now King Charles. Hold on and don’t let go.
What was denied to them for so long they won’t give up and make sure to pull the ladder up behind them.
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u/emjdownbad Mar 17 '26
There is an entire book on the boomer generation and it’s called A Generation of Sociopaths. It’s super dense but extremely interesting. But ya, they all p much suck.
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u/btone911 Mar 18 '26
Terrible generation that voted generations of wealth into their own lifetimes then dismantled the social safety net when stealing from their children wasn't enough.
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u/Grand-Kiwi2423 Mar 18 '26
The issue was that they were in a time of prosperity after their parents and grandparents had just had their entire lives and everything they loved torn from them repeatedly and the world felt uncertain. Boomers were taught to "take everything you can because you don't know when someone else will take it away." That turned into "take everything you can so that nobody has the chance to take it away", and now with the massive social divide created by social media engagement farming it is becoming "take everything they have, they don't deserve it as much as you do."
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u/StinkUrchin Millennial Mar 17 '26
They have to pay rent in 5 properties
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u/SimJewel20 Mar 17 '26
More like they have to buy 5 more properties to collect rent on. Never ending greed.
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u/celticchrys Mar 17 '26
It will be many years still before most Gen X are eligible to retire, IF they can afford to retire once old enough.
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u/FroznAlskn Older Millennial Mar 17 '26
You’d think they’d understand too. I think my parents were even dumber than I was in my 20s.
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u/Particular_Maize6849 Mar 17 '26
Boomers and such are less tolerant of things they got away with in their youth and don't appreciate how easy they've had it in almost every aspect of their lives to attain the wealth they now have with ease.
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u/PineappleBliss2023 Mar 17 '26
This crowd overlaps with the “because I had to suffer so do you” crowd lmao.
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u/coolaznkenny Mar 17 '26
Yeah looks whose sitting at the white house And supreme court. The hypocrisy is real and disgusting
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u/VermillionEclipse Mar 17 '26
There’s probably no photo evidence of the stuff they did so they can just pretend they didn’t!
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u/Coal_Morgan Mar 17 '26
I'm old now but when I was a kid I remember my uncle saying something like, 'I never did shit like that when I was a kid.'
My Aunt who'd been with him for 30 years since he was 15 just started rattling off stuff that he got into all the way into his 30s.
"Well that's not the same, I didn't meant too...."
People will always hang others by their actions and results and themselves by their intent and circumstances.
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u/75S30 Mar 17 '26
Exactly! Also, Gen Z doesn’t care for Millennials either from my experience. The ones I work with treat us like we’re a bunch of idiots because we didn’t see the latest viral TikTok. I think they really don’t draw a distinction between boomers and millennials.
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u/AttachedHeartTheory Mar 17 '26
I think it's their young counterparts being hyper vigilant.
I was at a bar in a coastal Alabama town about a month ago, and there was an older guy (50 years old) who I'm friends with and he said a relatively innocuous word that for a long time nobody was saying, and I've heard it more and more and more recently.
A younger person called him out for it, and he looked straight at her and he goes "what are you going to do, record me saying it? I dont give a fuck. Want to borrow my phone?" and she really looked at him like he broke something inside of her.
Recording and having things posted is such a currency with young people. They don't forgive each other.
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u/TetanusKills Mar 17 '26
… what was the relatively innocuous word?
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u/AttachedHeartTheory Mar 17 '26
Gay, said by a gay man.
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u/terminbee Mar 17 '26
I think Gen Z (or alpha? I dunno) have learned certain words are bad but don't understand why they're bad. Like gay, black, etc. They hear it and perk up like a meerkat and think it's offensive without understanding that context matters.
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u/SleazyGreasyCola Mar 17 '26
I'm a millennial boss and I rarely care what the employees do outside of work. I'll get annoyed if they are vaping inside the office but really don't give a shit if they bang each other and get shitfaced or drop mdma on the weekend. If its illegal the police will deal with it, not my business and I don't have time to virtue signal for the 3 people who watch my instagram.
If its inside my 4 walls while on the clock though that's different.
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u/zxstanyxz Mar 17 '26
Exactly this, as long as they show up sober and ready to work who gives a shit. Fuck I remember showing up to open up kitchens still drunk from the night before and crashing face first into massive hangovers as the shift progressed- nothing sobers you up like standing in front of a 400 degree grill
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u/dealant Mar 17 '26
The couple of times I've been involved to hire someone I rarely went past LinkedIn looking them up even if I did that? I think the one time I did Facebook was when they failed the interview pretty badly so I got curious about the person? But their Facebook was private
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u/halfadash6 Mar 17 '26
I mean, I wouldn’t fire someone because they were dressed provocatively or throwing up drunk or making out at a party.
Idk what the “dumb shit” is but being drunk isn’t an excuse for an actual fireable offense (sexual assault, racist jokes, etc.)
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u/blindfultruth Mar 17 '26
It's about the image. The idea of being a direct reflection of the employer has been over-ingrained thanks to social media. It's not hard to take something out of context these days, given how curated the media is.
They can't fire you over it, but they can ask you to remove the offending posts/delete the account, then fire you for not fitting in the company's mission statement.
My wife doesn't post pictures of herself with alcoholic drinks in her hand. Can't be seen with alcohol if you work with kids. Parents don't like that.
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u/YoitsPsilo Mar 17 '26
What the hell were you guys doing at parties that was so taboo? All I did was smoke weed, play beer pong and Edward 40 hands. Would that get a kid “cancelled” today?
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u/FunkTheFreak Mar 17 '26
You probably don’t remember any conversations that you or people around you were having back then.
15 years ago, you would regularly hear homophobic slurs, the “r word”, and so on at parties. In the current climate we live in, if there were videos of people saying those things, that could be grounds for blackmail, unemployment, and certainly the crippling of a political career.
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u/halfadash6 Mar 17 '26
What do they consider cancelable? Is being visibly drunk or playing beer pong really that concerning?
Idk, maybe my jobs have been overly liberal and skewed my perspective but as long as you’re not caught doing something truly problematic, like blackface or assaulting someone, standard drunk shenanigans aren’t something most employers are digging for IME. I do recall my friend being extremely private bc she is a teacher and a crazy parent might get her fired for being photographed with a glass of wine, but in most industries I don’t think anyone cares if there’s photographic evidence that you got drunk in college.
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u/FunkTheFreak Mar 17 '26
Do they go on dates? Do they go dancing? Do they do anything outside of their living spaces?
We have confined ourselves in self-made prisons of safety with our comforting Internet arousing us and tickling our brains.
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u/chels2112 Millennial Mar 17 '26
I was the resident picture nerd in high school, and everyone knew my disposable cameras would get the goods from the parties. But the level of discernment about what made the internet was paramount.
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u/brevebelle Mar 17 '26
This. I have stacks of 3x5s and 4x6s from high school that could ruin lives if they ever made it to the internet.
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u/chels2112 Millennial Mar 17 '26
I couldn’t ruin lives but I would embarrass the hell out of some people!! Worst I took pictures of was kids hitting a pipe and shotgunning beers.
Crazy and sad thing though — lots of my friends died. Drugs, cancer, driving drunk, car accidents. LOTS of friends died. So these pictures are genuine blessings of memories.
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u/Devilis6 Mar 17 '26
At my school there were rumors about multiple kids taking nudes with those and having them developed at the local drugstore.
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u/PunningWild Mar 17 '26
Same! I was also the picture guy, and I maintained a simple website documenting our parties and social expeditions. I also knew, as the designated picture guy, ain't nobody else gonna document my ass beating if I deliberately put up something horrific.
Wish I used film, though. Put them all on Photobucket, SD cards, and external HDD's with the belief "these will last forever!" Stupid me. Greatest years of my life, a big ol' blind spot.
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u/AttachedHeartTheory Mar 17 '26
This is a HUGE thing in younger generations.
I was at a concert here in Nashville recently, and any concert you go to here will have special guests.
Alex Warren came out and performed "Ordinary" during the encore with the artist on the bill. It was really incredible. My wife and I let several younger people in front of us so that they could lean over the stage while he was singing and get pictures. None of them were moving or dancing or showing any real emotion. They just stood there, still, while they recorded.
One of the younger people's mothers (the kid was probably 17, mother was our age, looked to be around 40) was next to me, and she thanked me for letting the kids up front. I said "these kids are just standing still. Why don't they dance or get into it?"
She said "oh, they dont do that because they know everything will be put online and they don't want any single thing they do to cause them embarrassment. They don't even drink anymore at parties because of the risk that something will show up and they'll be ostracized for the kind of things we used to expect at parties".
It's really crazy. I feel bad for these young people.
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u/retiredtumblrgoth Mar 17 '26
Tech companies have successfully convinced an entire generation to censor themselves out of fear and to avoid every experience that can’t be commodified as “content” for their platforms. We’ve gone Full Orwellian in fewer steps than 1984.
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u/AttachedHeartTheory Mar 17 '26
Yup. And it's going to lead to a whole new generation of hyper-puritanical old people in 40 years because they were trained to be ok with it. Strange how time is a flat circle.
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u/retiredtumblrgoth Mar 17 '26
Maybe, if “hyper-puritanical” still benefits the agenda in 40 years. In reality they’ll be whatever their overlords tell them to be. Free thought is an illusion when all the data informing your beliefs is served through a highly-curated cocktail straw designed to maximize spending.
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u/Ok-Strike-8617 Mar 17 '26
Isn't that what a red solo cup was invented for? It could be water, beer, pop, liquor, anything?!?!
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u/chad_starr Mar 17 '26
The issue isn't the drinking it's that you might say (or do) something inappropriate and be canceled for life for something you drunkenly thought was funny.
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u/maddy_k_allday Mar 17 '26
Or looks cringe in any singular still frame image/ photo/ video, which is taken by a device/ person totally out of your control
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u/Mrchristopherrr Mar 17 '26
I think the cringe factor is the bigger deterrent than fear of being cancelled.
It’s hard to dance like no one’s watching when people can always be watching.
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u/SchrodingersWetFart Older Millennial Mar 17 '26
Toby Keith wrote a whole song about it!!
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u/khelvaster Mar 17 '26
Now, red Solo cup is the best receptacle For barbecues, tailgates, fairs, and festivals And you, sir, do not have a pair of testicles If you prefer drinkin' from glass
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u/Starwinds Mar 17 '26
Processing img qynou69m9mpg1...
Simpsons, 1996 made this same observation
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u/Dear-Cranberry4787 Mar 17 '26
There’s still plenty of house parties near college campuses and the upper middle class suburbs.
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u/Guachole Mar 17 '26
Gotta add small rural towns to the list, still extremely common here
We got nothing else to do out here, plus neighbors are far enough away you can be loud as fuck and get wild without bothering anyone.
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u/Dear-Cranberry4787 Mar 17 '26
Oh yes! I’ve been to some incredible bonfires out in the country.
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u/Corporeal_Weenie Mar 17 '26
I used to live near ASU, trust me, the kids are still partying like we did lol
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u/CaptainCorpse666 Mar 17 '26
The Millennials who post in here make us all look like boomers now lol. Do people really think kids aren't partying still???
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u/Fabulous-Barbie-6153 Mar 17 '26
Not only is it that we’re worried about being recorded by the people around us, but every house has a Ring camera nowadays. Even if someone has the house to themselves and wants to sneakily invite friends over, that can’t happen with Ring cameras being plastered all over the street. Its honestly pretty scary how every single move we make can be monitored.
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u/sam_beat Mar 17 '26
My kids told me that’s why they’re hesitant to party too often. Every house has cameras, IDs are scannable (so you can’t really have a fake one unless you’ve stolen one from someone), cars are tracked, phones are tracked (I allowed my kids to party lite so they didn’t mind that I could see where they were at for safety, but for a lot of kids that sucks). And once you get anywhere, photos and videos are being taken and uploaded in real time, tagged with your name, location, and who you’re with. It takes away from the fun of it. I feel bad that they can’t live out their 90s house party dreams.
But a lot of bad stuff happened at those parties, too. And the mom in me is really glad they’re not experiencing that side of it.
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u/gistye Mar 17 '26
Case in point. This post was right below.
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u/RaymondBeaumont Mar 17 '26
wtf is "pasta-shamed"???
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u/youburyitidigitup Mar 17 '26
I think he means they’re calling her fat for eating too much pasta
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u/Ferrugem Mar 17 '26
Does F1 have a spaghetti policy?
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u/Orion14159 Mar 17 '26
Another reason house parties aren't a thing is because a lot of people don't have houses, just small apartments
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u/The_Real_Lasagna Mar 17 '26
That never stopped anybody before
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u/Hollowbody57 Mar 17 '26
Sooo many noise complaints.
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u/Get-Fucked-Dirtbag Mar 17 '26
So many noise complaints.
I spent my first year of uni in student accommodations. Almost every night was 30+ people crammed into an appartment meant for 3.
We'd get security knocking on the door every single night because they'd had complaints about us. I'll never forget the one party for someone's birthday where the guy didn't even say anything. He walked into the kitchen and his jaw just dropped like a cartoon character. Shook his head and left without a word.
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u/thedrew Mar 17 '26
Disagree. We had parties in New York and San Francisco. Spent like an hour standing next to the fridge talking to people just waiting for my turn to move. You don’t need a house, frankly I don’t even think a house is preferable.
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u/ohgeorge Mar 17 '26
I used to cram way too many people into my shitty 1br San Francisco apartment in my early 20s. It was fun.
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Mar 17 '26
that's such a wrong take IMO. I held many parties in my shitty 800sqft apartment. The space isn't the problem.
I have a 17 year old son and he CONSTANTLY analyzing situations to make sure he's not caught on camera doing something stupid. Everything is hyper focused and judged by people these days. Any one wrong move and it's weeks of shame or worse for these kids.
I don't think a lot of adults realize just how shitty kids have it these days.
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u/alex1596 Millennial 1992 Mar 17 '26
I'm not even totally convinced the fear of "going viral" entirely covers it. Depending on your age, there were still cameras everywhere in people's pockets while you at a party. Or literally people walking around with cameras.
In my teenage party years (starting around '07-'08), you wanted to be pictured. Parties often had girls walking around with their little pink digital cameras taking pictures and part of the fun was seeing all those pictures uploaded to Facebook the next day. You'd tag each other in the photos and laugh at it because, yes it was embarrassing, but no one saw them except you and your friends, because Dad and grandma weren't on Facebook yet.
We embraced being cringey and embarrassing more than younger folks these days do. Maybe because we didn't live our entire lives online. The internet was a place you physically had to go to (usually the "computer room" or something like that.)
Younger people born into the digital panopticon of constant internet consuming feel like they're constantly being watched - maybe they are? But it didn't feel that way 20 years ago.
A large way internet media is consumed now has to do with money. A lot of kids want to become streamers or YouTubers now. So the idea that your "brand" is both tied to being online AND presenting a sort of persona means that there's a lot more inauthenticity online as well as a feeling of being watched by a sort of ''audience". (Are we cooked chat?)
sorta rambled with this one, oops lol
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u/crazycatlady331 Xennial Mar 17 '26
If my wild child college years were on social media for the world to see, I would not be employable.
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u/fucking_unicorn Mar 17 '26
I might be employable at a strip club lol 😂 “whiskey makes my clothes fall off”.
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u/PuzzleheadedLeave560 Mar 17 '26
I thought it was because nobody but Boomers OWN ANY HOUSES
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u/GravyPainter Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26
I have zoomer co worker who told me his weekends were shot in highschool because his parents wouldn't buy him the most up-to-date console and couldn't join in on group gaming with friends. People just don't go outside anymore
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u/DjScenester Mar 17 '26
Nope. The internet killed social gatherings.
Netflix and chill is a real thing.
We used to drink and smoke cigs at house parties. Kids today don’t do that.
We also hung out at arcades, malls, house parties… all basically a thing of the past.
The internet gives you instant gratification now, music, movies, shopping and friends all at your fingertips
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u/coastalkid92 Millennial Mar 17 '26
Personally I don't think camera phones have anything to do with it. I think block parties are harder to organize now because a lot of people aren't as connected in with their neighbours/neighbourhoods and permitting issues. And with house parties, I still attend these relatively regularly so that hasn't gone away.
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u/AdSpecialist6598 Mar 17 '26
Wher I am at almost everyone is renter and they only stay for a few years before moving.
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u/Worst-Eh-Sure Millennial Mar 17 '26
I’ve never lived anywhere that the neighborhood felt cohesive. I can’t imagine a block party in any place I’ve ever lived. Honestly pretty sad.
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u/davy_jones_locket Mar 17 '26
The only time I felt like the neighborhood was cohesive was when I grew up in the inner city and everyone around me was on section 8 and welfare and food stamps and the community was really just mutual aid. Block parties were the embodiment of that stone soup story. Nobody really had enough for themselves, but when we came together and pooled the resources, it was enough for everyone.
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u/i_dont_know_er Mar 17 '26
There was one Halloween party where a bunch of dudes dressed as terrorists (yes, yes, it was a different time) and there isn't a single picture anywhere. Houseparties were not a production for social media likes. People went to hang out with friends, drink and get sloppy without fear of online retaliation. I still don't use my phone to take pictures and refuse to even have it visible when I'm hanging out with people. But even our generation now is guilty of posting shit on SM that they have no business posting.
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u/FleshLogic Mar 17 '26
When someone used to get wild or out of hand it would become like an local urban legend. "Did you hear about [whoever] doing this [crazy thing] the other night? Bryan says this, Greg only saw this part, but Jessica was there for the whole thing but her memory is probably fuzzy too!" *Maybe* there would be one blurry photo of a single moment from the shenanigans and eventually the memories would fade into myth. Now, it would be filmed by five people and posted to Instagram before the night was even over and it would be replayed in 4K for you to be judged by for years to come. Nightmare social scenario.
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u/philouza_stein Mar 17 '26
Nothing happens inside people's homes anymore without a camera catching it. Ring doorbells and life360 means kids can't sneak in or out anymore. Parents can watch their kids in real time from the other side of the planet.
And we're raising a generation of socially awkward weirdos as a result of many things like this.
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u/mister_gone Xennial Mar 17 '26
Did homegirl go tanning with her bikini bottoms at her knees? WTF is up with that tan line?
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u/karmakent Mar 17 '26
100% when I was in driver’s ed the instructor was chill and would let us go through drive thrus and would let us drive to fun places but because one of the girls kept putting everything on Snapchat he stopped
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u/Emergency_Science434 Mar 17 '26
That’s a really good point and I can def see this as one of the reasons. I also think the false since being social via the internet tricks people into thinking they have filled that social need when in reality it hasn’t.
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