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u/Onuus 1d ago
I graduated high school in 2010-2011, there were phones at the time but nothing like there is now.
I remember the first iPhone coming out, and once more people started getting them you could feel a vibe shift when someone would pull out a phone to record.
It was either, everyone gets stupid silly and overacts, or everyone tenses up and gets quiet
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u/Chron_Imus 1d ago
yeah i graduated hs in 2010 and there was still a stigma around being the guy that was always pulling a camera out because it could ruin the vibe. even then we could see how different (for good or bad) people acted when being filmed
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u/MyCatsHairyButholle 1d ago
Early 2000s here, pulling out a camera of any kind was taboo at gatherings like this
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u/The_Autarch 1d ago
eh, a couple disposable cameras floating around wouldn't have been weird back then.
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u/Weekly_Interview_936 23h ago
Or taking a selfie that only included those who agreed to be in it. That's most of what old school facebook content was! It was all drunken party selfies back then. But everyone in the pictures had consented to be in them so it was ok.
The real shift came when people started videoing shit. Video can easily unintentionally pick up people who didn't agree to be in your selfie and easily pick up stuff best kept off camera.
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u/ice-eight 23h ago
It was ok until people started getting fired when their work found drunken selfies on their facebook, even though they were taken when they weren't at work
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u/VSWR_on_Christmas 21h ago
Was that actually happening to people aside from teachers? Not to say that teachers shouldn't be allowed to have fun, but I don't know if I ever heard of it happening to other folks.
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u/ObiLAN- 20h ago
This is anecdotal: but I don't think it was so much getting fired, but not getting hired in the first place.
My late uncle was a recruiter/hr/hiring person for a pretty large construction company. He'd tell stories about how him and his hiring co-workers would look applicants up on facebook and Ixnay their resumes right away if they saw any pictures of partying.
Always thought he was shitty for doing that. I'm sure this has been common place.
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u/ariolander 19h ago
At my job HR absolutely does a curious Google/Facebook/Instagram search of your name on top of running criminal background checks if you pass the first round. The background checks cost money do they don't do those until you are pretty far through the hiring funnel, but you good searched online before your in-person. It wouldn't get you disqualified if there wasn't something blatantly illegal but you got a note added for your in person interview if you passed a call/vibe check.
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u/MaximumSubtlety 14h ago
Can confirm. Was interviewing around that time and dude said "we didn't find anything embarrassing on his social media."
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u/Jiminy_Cricket12 22h ago
It was all drunken party selfies back then. But everyone in the pictures had consented to be in them so it was ok.
I don't know what kind of parties you were at but no one was walking around asking if everyone in the background was consenting lol
I definitely got tagged in pictures and woke up the next morning scrambling for "delete tag" on a few occasions
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u/AgrajagsGhost 22h ago
In 2006 our highschool class got a talking to about not drinking underage or doing anything sexual at parties because people could post Myspace photos against our will with no recourse.
It's gotten WAY WAY worse since, but it isn't like cameras didn't exist before the iPhone.
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u/The_Real_Lasagna 22h ago
People weren't all consenting to having their picture taken at parties, I never heard anyone ask that once
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u/Luci-Noir 21h ago
I wasn’t in high school at that point but regularly took pictures at my big parties I had every week. Everyone knew they were in a shot and there wasn’t anything embarrassing.
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u/Scuba9Steve 23h ago
Thought that was more of a family gathering thing or weddings. The bride and groom handing out disposable cameras was pretty popular. Then again when I was in college disposable cameras were things of the past so maybe I’m wrong.
I do think there was a shift in social media though were early camera/phone if good enough use was for friends. A lot less of the “look at this person” shit. Like even outside of parties it’s ridiculous now, even 10 years ago. I remember going on military leave and meeting up with my brother. We ended up getting frozen yogurt and someone snaps a photo “relationship goals”. Like it’s my brother and idk I have a sweet tooth. I don’t see how this is a strangers social media feed worth but whatever. Before 2013ish or so this never happened.
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u/airinato 1d ago
I believe you'd get your ass kicked doin' something like that, man
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u/Ifriendzonecats 20h ago
And yet tons of party photos ended up on Facebook in the 2004 to 2010/2ish before it started getting the 30+ crowd and people started getting concerned about their parents or boss seeing those pictures.
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u/gamayogi 22h ago
I remember mid 2000s reunion after party. A few girls decided decided to go swimming topless or skinny dip. Some chuckle fuck pulls out his phone and starts recording video. Gets immediately shut down like "what the fuck dude, you're killing the vibe".
Cell phone video back then was like 3 pixels but still that was the start of it. Before that it was disposable cameras or you had to pull out a proper camera which was super obvious.
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u/mongoose_kai 15h ago
Oof, yeah dude -- now in my mid-40s, none of the girls I know are dancing topless, but back in college I saw more than a few tatas at parties. Easier to not give a fuck when you're never gonna see these people again and nobody can take video.
Ended up with a lab partner like that, and said "hey, were you at Justin's party during move-in weekend?" And she just says, "Yeah, I was drunk and it got pretty wild. But if you wanna see it again, let me know next time you guys get a keg."
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u/BasicDesignAdvice 23h ago
I took tons of pictures at house parties senior year 2001. It was just a regular camera I had to print pictures for and no way to publish to the internet though.
My friends and I loved looking at them after I got them developed.
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u/Fast-Prompt-3034 1d ago
It still is, I wont think twice about smacking a $2k iphone outa someone's hand who is being an offensive recorder. Gotta full bag of smacks to hand out. Hey! What did the five fingers say to the face!?
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u/Gonzappa92 15h ago
And that was just them having a video stored on their phone to show a couple people not going on live for the entire world.
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u/PiccoloAwkward465 1d ago
Yeah, we had phones with cameras. We just didn't really use them at parties. It wasn't cool. Definitely a "don't be a narc" attitude.
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u/TerrificVixen5693 23h ago
What are you talking about? We used to photo dump 100+ photos of the night on Facebook with zero context of us doing inappropriate shit.
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u/Baprika 23h ago
I feel like photos never where the problem, videos are what killed the party vibe, for me at least - you could upload a picture of me puking on the dancefloor and i would mind less then a video clip of me just dancing
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u/BassChoocher 20h ago
idk wtf either of you are talking about, people used to bring digital cameras to parties to take photos because camera phones were so shit and had limited storage. A lot of people didn't even care if it was posted to the internet with underage drinking because the internet wasn't that serious yet.
I graduated 09, the majority of the photos taken of me in high school was at parties lol
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u/Eckish 1d ago
I imagine home security increases have also impacted house parties. I remember most of these parties being times when the parents were away. You'd party, then clean up before anyone could find out. Now, they can find out in real-time and even yell at you through the camera.
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u/Bovine_Joni_Himself 22h ago
Yeah I thought this was the answer for house parties. It's literally impossible now because the parents know what's happening at all times.
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u/Blenderx06 20h ago
Also the parents are more likely to face liability now, so are stricter with the kids in turn. It's a whole circle of surveillance and control lol.
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u/MazzleMaze 1d ago
No idea what y'all are talking about... People loved taking their phones out so they could throw up albums on facebook, lol.
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u/egg_enthusiast 22h ago edited 21h ago
Yup. The American student in that era spent Freshman and Sophomore year posting constant pics of them partying and living it up. Then scrubbing everything by Senior year because businesses would check social media and you'd lose your internship offer because youd* celebrated Wasted Wednesdays
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u/Weekly_Interview_936 23h ago
Albums of selfies, selfies where all the people in the picture were there knowingly and willingly. That's very different from the modern "video record everything with no thoughts to the people your camera is sweeping over" culture of today. A static selfie that contains only people who agreed to be there is not violating consent or accidentally showing stuff best kept hidden.
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u/flyinhighaskmeY 23h ago
Yeah, the entire vibe of the initial post is gross. The majority built a surveillance state with their smart phones and destroyed youthful socialization in the process. But that means people who use websites like Reddit are like...really REALLY responsible for the destruction. Because this site has encouraged that behavior, and the weaponization of those videos against those who have almost any differing belief.
So it gets twisted into "the problem is housing costs". Which...are a problem. But not THE problem.
Which is why all the "Nazi" talk on Reddit is so gross. Redditors are the Nazi's. Videoing shit and posting it online to encourage the ruling class (majority) to attack those individuals is the modern "rat out your neighbor to the SS". In a democracy the majority IS the government.
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u/atln00b12 22h ago
Phones just need to be treated like cigarrettes. Want to use your phone in the club, go over to the phubbing section. Around 2005-2007 we were throwing parties and putting them no cameras because of stuff getting tagged on facebook.
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u/obeytheturtles 1d ago
This was around when I was finishing undergrad. We had facebook starting freshman year at our school and "party stalking" on facebook was definitely a thing, even before iPhones. People would post pictures of the party and other people would see it and roll up. It was kind of a crazy time - you and a few friends could throw in on a keg, start posting pictures around 9 or 10 pm, and by 11 you'd have a house filled with random strangers. Which is what we wanted for some reason. "Hello random people on the internet. Please come to our house and drink our beer so we can post pictures of a crowded party on the internet, so our friends at other schools will think we are cool. PS - Bring weed."
This worked because only college students had facebook. Once anyone could use facebook, the idea of openly advertising house parties like that kind of went out of style.
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u/JalapenoPopPoop 22h ago
Yeah and all the people going "wdym we used to put whole albums on facebook!" don't get the difference. It was one thing when you were taking posed pictures with your friends where you all wanted to stop and smile for the camera for a sec. It's a totally different vibe when someones just having fun and someone else across the room decides on their own accord to take their camera out and start filming them like "this is going on my socials I don't care if you want it to or not if you didn't then you should have been doing it!" The consent part is gone
It really is a total wet blanket whenever someone just starts pointing their phone at something, you really can palpably feel the vibe shift
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u/Smurph269 23h ago
I graduated high school in 04 and was in college when Facebook/social media first hit. I saw the before and after. Prior to facebook (started spreading in 04 but I don't think events were a thing yet), word about house parties spread by word of mouth or by people visually seeing that there was a party while walking down the street. After facebook, event invites spread through facebook, and if things weren't locked down you would have like 200 people show up, a bunch of whom probably wanted to rob the house or do other bad things. So everybody would super lock down their events and the parties got a lot smaller, because nobody wanted 200 internet randoms to descend on them.
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u/A_Nonny_Muse 19h ago
Graduated high school 1985. If anyone was to pull out a camera at a party, they would get tackled. Not all of us were underage. The adults there would be in prison if authorities knew. Doesn't matter they were just guests in someone else's house. They would be blamed for all of our drinking and drugs.
One picture is all it takes.
All y'all are crazy for taking pictures at parties. You can wreck an innocent life for nothing. For what? Cause you had to post a fucking selfie in the most inappropriate setting possible.
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u/MinuetInUrsaMajor 15h ago
I was in grad school at the time.
People would freak out if you recorded them while they were drunk and acting drunk.
But it's not like we would post it anywhere. It was more like a harmless "gotcha" between friends. It goes without saying that pictures or videos would be deleted upon request. It wasn't dangerous - it was just one more bit of drunk silliness.
I don't understand how people posting non-consensual photos today are not getting their asses tore apart. If it's just someone looking unattractive, okay - whatever. But if it's you doing something embarassing that's a violation and should be dealt with as such.
I don't get it. Are Gen Z just afraid of looking unattractive in a photo? What are they afraid is going to get captured? An N-word rant?
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u/action_turtle 1d ago
Same reason as bars and nightclubs are now shit. Cost and cameras.
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u/Scuba9Steve 1d ago
Yeah go get a 12 pack for the cost of 1 beer at a bar/club
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u/Hank_Henry_Hill 1d ago
But you can’t talk to other people in your room.
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u/SirJedKingsdown 1d ago
An empty room can get pretty crowded after enough vodka.
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u/NovelStrict5281 22h ago
also; I think Oscar Wilde said: " I drink to make other people more interesting."
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u/Weekly_Interview_936 23h ago
Thanks to the way modern culture has ingrained neuroticism into people, they're not talking to anyone that they didn't go there with at the bar or club anyway.
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u/obeytheturtles 1d ago
Well you do both. Even going to house parties where the keg was free, we'd pregame at home first.
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u/Scuba9Steve 1d ago
Yeah and notice you say “we”. Idk why that guy was acting like it has to be one person in an empty room. If they don’t have roommates they can invite people over.
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u/MainsailMainsail 22h ago
A big part of vrchat is people talking with other people while also drinking in their room.
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u/Nutlink49 22h ago
Chatroulette and a case of Schlitz used to be a good bit of fun back in like 2010-2012.
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u/SLUnatic85 1d ago
part of "social media" actually does mean you can though.
I think that's not the main point here, but also part of it.
Kids surely feel connected to each other in so many different digital ways now, group chats, insta, snapchat, gamer chats, video calls, memes, etc, etc, surely they yearn less than before to bend over backwards and get permissions and get rides and make excuses, and all that just to get 2 hours in a basement to talk about stuff with some friends and a 6 pack of bud light from your friends dads garage that now has a ring camera on it.
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u/BasicDesignAdvice 23h ago
Social media is not the same as being social. Like literally your brain does not respond to it the same way.
People need to be around people to be happy. We are increasingly isolated and everyone is confused about why mental health is declining. Its the lack of a social life.
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u/SLUnatic85 23h ago
trust me I know. But your having a completely different conversation, that I happen to also agree with as a parent.
I am just saying that the ability for many kids today to stay so constantly connected in ways we couldn't have dreamed up, likely affects the decision making process of how to hang out in person. I don't see how it wouldn't even if only to a small extent.
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u/Kythorian 1d ago edited 1d ago
That was the case 20+ years ago, but lots of people still went out to bars back then. I think it has more to do with social media - people now do ‘socializing’ through social media and rarely go meet people in person regardless of the cost. Which is extremely unhealthy, but the decline of bars and clubs is a side-effect.
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u/ThrownAway17Years 1d ago
Go support your local dive bar. That’s completely on you for going to bars charging $12 for a beer.
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u/Forest_Orc 1d ago
And then gen-Z thrive third place but they don't go to bar which used to be the default third place. It was already fading, but when we had a a hole in the school schedule we would go to a bar to play flipper and/or vintage video-game. Now these bar facing the high school are closed (and kids are anyway not alloed to leave when they have a hole in the schedule)
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u/Lonely_Chemistry60 1d ago
To be fair, nightclubs have always been shit, you just don't realize it when you're younger
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u/Slumunistmanifisto 1d ago
And cops, they were honing their skills on us back in the day. It was almost like a game to them busting teenagers.
Now they have cameras and drones....and probably your cell location.
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u/theartilleryshow 1d ago
Mostly cost
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u/TumbleweedOdd9412 1d ago
im filled with envy whenever I see 90's movies and people pay like a dollar for a beer.
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u/Vhadka 23h ago
Hell even like 15 years ago there was a local bar that on Sunday afternoons would have $1.50 IPAs and buy one get one free pizza (and their pizza was great).
My buddy and I would go every Sunday during football season, have some beers and pizza.
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u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount 20h ago
The college town specials we had around 2000 were insane.
Penny Pitchers. Five bucks to get in and then pitchers were a penny. Meaning they were fee.
Power Hour. Ten at the door. Free drinks from 7-8 & 9-10. *Everything* is a dollar outside of that.
Quarter beers. Sold to you at try at a time in those smaller plastic cups. Pay $2 to get a proper cup if you wanted.
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u/bored-at-work_ 1d ago
Cost is by far the biggest thing. I'm trying to get involved in my local music scene and every single bar in my small town is dead past 6pm with the only people showing up for open mics or band performances being other musicians. No one wants to go out and spend $30-50 CAD for a few beers and something to eat.
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u/WaltRumble 1d ago
House parties are a cheap way to drink. Everyone pitches in 5 bucks for a keg and cheap liquor.
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u/lord-carlos 23h ago
You can go to clubs where they put stickers over every phone camera.
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u/DroidArbiter 1d ago
I'm a kid that grew up in the 80's and went to high school in the 90's. House parties happened because your parents would be out of town. Now everyone has house cams at the house and the kids would be busted instantly.
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u/opinionsOnPears 22h ago
Now everyone has house cams at the house and the kids would be busted instantly.
and their parents will blast it all over social media.
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u/IlludiumQXXXVI 22h ago
Lol, my sister, or one of her friends, but an ad in the classified section of the local newspaper, that's how they got caught!!
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u/tech_noir_guitar 20h ago
This right here is the real reason. There is a surveillance state type situation going on with parents and kids so kids have an increasingly difficult time doing shit we used to get away with very easily. Most parents I know track their kids through their phones at all times, get notifications when they leave certain areas (geofencing), and have cameras around their houses. Pretty hard to sneak out to a party when your parents can see your location or can see who's at their house when they are away. Also, social media is a thing so any time kids are at a party they are going to broadcast it all over so it's not going to be a secret especially since most parents follow their kids social media accounts.
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u/scoff-law 23h ago
Parents being out of town was majorly disrupted by the pandemic. Parents being out of the house was disrupted.
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u/FrankPapageorgio 21h ago
Seriously... even in high school both my parents worked. They'd get home around 6pm, maybe 7pm. You could sneak home after school with the GF and have some fun.
Now I work from home full time and I can't remember the last time my kid was at my house alone.
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u/luxxeexxul 20h ago
Lol yeah, these folks are crazy if they think we were ever having these parties in houses we owned ourselves.
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u/phunky_1 1d ago
Kids don't really drink like they used to either. House parties where people are standing around hitting a vape pen once an hour aren't the same.
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u/Kalthiria_Shines 1d ago
Kids don't really drink like they used to either.
Trend's reversing hard core: https://futurism.com/future-society/gen-z-alcohol-reversal
Seems like that actually was just a product of coming of age during lockdown when you'd normally develop a drinking culture at college.
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u/IKillZombies4Cash 22h ago
Probably a distillers group backing media like this, trying to fake it to make it...like "LOOK THIS SAYS MY GENERATION IS DRINKING! MAYBE I SHOULD DRINK MORE!" kinda guerilla marketing / influence that should likely be illegal.
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u/Niceguy4186 18h ago
Gen z is 14 to 29 year olds, of course it would be lower 3 years ago when the majority are below drinking age, and some of them not even into the teens.
That said, one drink in the past 6 months is a horrible metric.
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u/Kerlyle 1d ago
now lurching towards alcoholism
Nature is healing
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u/Honor_Bound 23h ago
You jest but as a child of alcoholics this does not bode well for Gen Z (or their future kids)
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u/nomad5926 22h ago
Geez Gen Z really just is borked on so many levels. Not only are they the first generation to get dumber, they're also bringing back Alcoholism....
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u/scoff-law 23h ago
I live near a university and among college rentals, and not only is alcohol back on the menu - so are cigarettes. My impression is that this is a pendulum swing from the pandemic.
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u/IEnjoyRadios 1d ago
Kids don't really drink like they used to either.
I keep seeing this everywhere but I do not buy it for one second. I just think the people saying this haven't been to a university any time lately.
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u/Silent_Wave3137 1d ago
It’s statically true. Alcohol consumption is down A LOT across the country. It’s down the most with people under 25. I dont know if there’s a study for number of parties but it would line up given everything else we know to be true about college kids right now.
If you think drinking and partying are common at your university now, you’d be blown away by college around 2000-2010. I was in college 2008-2012 and I went to minimum 3 house parties a week every week for 4 years. The week after finals and midterms was legit 5-7 house parties back to back.
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u/tttaaayyyUSA 13h ago
My freshman year was 2011 at one of the top 3 party schools. I went to a party every night almost. After sophomore year I went home, I was extremely homesick. After a botched run in corporate America and commuting in CA I went back 5 so years later to the same campus. I still looked college aged so none of my class mates knew I was older. We were doing some exercise and a girl and I figured out we had birthdays on the same day, it’s Halloween weekend. In the past I partied for my birthday easily for a week straight. I was turning 25 or 26 I think and she was turning 20 or 21 I wanna say. I asked what she was doing and she said going for a hike. I couldn’t believe how much my school changed in a matter of years. I guess my freshman/sophomore year was so out of control they had party task forces after. But still. Just wild. My birthday week alone was a good two week hangover.
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u/retrojoe 20h ago
You can see the ones still practicing excess. How are you seeing the ones abstaining? Also, some schools had an incredibly excessive party culture, so them getting better would probably still look excessive.
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u/OnlyGuestsMusic 1d ago
This is the answer. Kid’s didn’t own houses in the 70s through the 90s either. Their parents did and still do. That party culture started dying in the early 2000s.
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u/Morningfluid 1d ago
Maybe you were too old, but party culture was VERY MUCH alive and well throughout the 2000's into the mid-2010's. Beer pong was prominent in that decade and I was off living on my own after highschool and friends had tons of parties, add in frat parties and that culture, plus basement shows full of bands playing. I would argue it was dying off after the craft beer boom, whereas now people just smoke at each other's places and things are more mellow regarding hangouts in general.
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u/itsall_dumb 1d ago
Yea idk what bro is talking about my entire high school and college was house parties in the early 2000s. And they were packed with people.
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u/psychedAddict123 1d ago
I agree. I went to a shitload of house parties between 2010 and 2018. It was very much alive (at least in Europe)
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u/krustytroweler 1d ago
Nah sorry dude but this is you wearing old timers "everything was better 10 years ago" glasses. I was going to house parties with people in their 30s all the way up to the very beginning of the pandemic.
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u/RedsDelights 1d ago
As soon as campus security starting going on FB to look for events, that was like 2006/07ish
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u/upjump_daboogie 1d ago
Parties faded because of social media.
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u/Weekly_Interview_936 23h ago
Half right. They faded because of video-based social media. Believe me, the Myspace and early Facebook days had a ton of party selfies going up on them. That was probably half, maybe more, of the content.
The thing is that a selfie or group selfie usually only contained people who consented to be in it. You very much were not supposed to be taking pictures of people without their permission. Video is not discriminating, someone doing a spinning video selfie is catching and posting everyone and everything it sweeps over whether they agreed to be in it or not. That's what killed a whole ton of social activities.
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u/FrankPapageorgio 21h ago
As someone that graduated college right before the first iPhone dropped... to take a photo you needed a nice point and shoot camera, like a Canon Powershot, which meant taking it with your intentionally. Your flip phone was taking VGA 640x480 photos that were so blurry that you had plausible deniability based on not being identifiable.
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u/ClitStitches 1d ago
And cameras at the house. Mom n dad would find out instantly before the party gets started.
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u/BLT_Trade_r 21h ago
House parties were always about lax parents. Nothing has changed now. You can't tell me that there aren't still tons of parents who don't have cameras or do not care. People also used to talk to neighbors more, and believe me, your neighbors would tell your parents if a party happened. If you had strict parents, you would be done for, so you wouldn't run a house party. Lax parents turned a blind eye on purpose. There were always certain kids who ran lots of parties, and one kid in the town whose mom was literally banging kids at the party and supplying alcohol. Something else has changed.
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u/Downvote_Comforter 18h ago
It's a variety of things, but it is simply overwhelmingly true that it is much harder to throw a house party without getting caught than it used to be. Obviously some house parties are and were the product of lax parents, but there were also tons of them that took place without parental permission. I had 3 at my house in high school and got away with 2 of them. But the one where I got caught wasn't until the next day when my mom talked to the neighbor and the party still happened. Today, my mom would have been aware of the party as it was happening in real time and that would be that.
Additionally, there is way more monitoring of the guests, not just the host. Lying about (or omitting) what you were doing that night was a hell of a lot easier than it is now when a huge chunk of parents track their kid's location. And let's be real, the odds of a few parents finding out about it in real time on social media are pretty high.
The majority of houses having cameras that provide real-time alerts, teenagers carrying a tracking device 24/7, and the ease of real-time social media monitoring absolutely means a large reduction in teenage house parties.
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u/TheEndOfEverything0 1d ago
I do think young people think a lot more of how they look in a situation than we did before everyone had phones or were live streaming.
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u/Worth-Librarian-7423 1d ago
Nobody has a house they an afford to destroy
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u/TuorSonOfHuor 1d ago
House parties in highschool were held at your parents house. House parties in college were held at houses you’re renting.
I don’t think I ever went to a house party before the age of 25 where someone actually owned the house we were partying in
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u/Scuba9Steve 1d ago
Yeah really, by the time the person owned the house it wasn’t even that kinda house party… more like their kids 2nd birthday or some July 4th cookout.
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u/UnnecessaryPeriod 1d ago
Bought my house in 2009 at the age of 25. Had 4 years worth of hard partying with me and my girlfriend and tons of friends. Had a baby in 2013. My now wife and I havent had a party since, not like those anyway. 4 year window was very fun.
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u/trixel121 1d ago
you needed to bring the boys over for an adult party. fire up the gril bust out 4 beers and watch the kids run around.
granted the kids 13 now and you are like 10 years late for that but yeah, ya shoulda kept hte parties going just they ended at 830 and started at 2 instead of the other way around and its more about burgers then beers.
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u/Velorian-Steel 1d ago
I was going to say, the ownership of the house by the people hosting the party was very rarely ever a factor. Most house parties I went to were either belonging to the parents or like shared by a bunch of roommates/frat house
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u/fork_yuu 23h ago
People grew more responsible. But also tiktok generation is more for the short form entertainment, house party seems too long for their attention span lol
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u/Healthy_Turnip7352 1d ago
so there's a spot in high school that we used to go to and destroy.
never really thought about it, but it was always clean a week later.
then someone put a garbage can there.
old lady was coming every week to clean up after us asshole children drinking bud lite and thinking we're so cool.
the sad part is, the kids never really stopped destroying it.
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u/nopenotgonnalie 1d ago
Right, because all our parents could afford to have their house destroyed in the 90s. They were totally cool with it.
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u/The_Freshmaker 23h ago
this lol. We had house parties when we rented out someone else's shitty house. Now that I have one you think I'm gonna let a whole mob of people I barely know mess it up?
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u/EkaL25 1d ago
I’d argue they probably don’t happen because of social media. You invite 50 people over to party at your house. Then those people post about it to their stories and another 100 people show up.
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u/MichaelW24 1d ago
It was that way before social media too, just with phone calls instead of social media posts
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u/ClitStitches 1d ago
Back in the early 90s no high school kid had a cell phone. People at the party had to drive (drunk) to their friends' houses and bring them to the party.
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u/Tvsfotografie 1d ago
Problem is with current state of mind it's "cool" to destroy another persons property and items. The amount of people would always showup, then and now, but the kind of people and their mindset has shifted
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u/retrojoe 20h ago
Uhhh...you sound like you were never a teenager. I (old millennial) remember HS guys comparing the best ways to destroy mailboxes in the middle of class.
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u/lifeintraining 1d ago
I think social media has made kids less social and given many of them social anxiety, which caused house parties to fade.
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u/SoberxStoner 1d ago
I’m so glad I had all my shenanigans before camera phones became so huge and clear. There may have been some grainy pics and videos, but not many.
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u/snorch 23h ago
I partied hard as a teenager in the late 00's when most folks still had flip phones and even then there were unwritten social rules about bringing cameras to the debauchery. It's crazy to think what we got up to without any record of it whatsoever when every sneeze is documented and catalogued and weaponized to sell you Kleenex now
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u/most-okayest-mngr-77 1d ago
Why have a house party when everyone sits around on their phones/laptops and prefer to socialize online instead of in person? The rise of the internet killed socializing.
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u/socialistrob 22h ago
I do think we've seen a drop in socializing in general. People have fewer friends, they spend more time online, they drink less, they go to fewer parties and many of these things are self reinforcing cycles where the fewer parties and less friends you have the less likely you are to either host or go to parties which means you meet fewer people and are invited out less.
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u/most-okayest-mngr-77 20h ago
My wife and I don’t go out like we used to back in the day and decided some years ago to host an annual Halloween party as well as a New Year’s Eve party. We usually get anywhere from 10-30 people at each depending on which friends bring friends. The older folks always comment how the parties are like the old days and the ones in their 20s always comment how they’ve never been to a party like ours. It’s just basics like free flowing alcohol, some weed, beer pong, some games, loud music, and chatting. We are just trying to keep the old ways alive.
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u/SthenicFreeze 16h ago
Hard disagree with you there.
With the Internet, I can talk and play games with my friends that live hours away on a regular basis for the cost of a monthly Internet bill and a cheap game.
Socializing pre-internet was most likely going to a bar. Nowadays it's $10 per drink and $12 per appetizer. A basic night out is $30-50.
I can't afford to do that once a week, let alone on a regular basis to socialize with only local friends.
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u/throwy_6 15h ago
You proved his point. You don’t feel the need to see people in person because instead you play video games with people that live hours away from you. There’s no need to meet in a third space or leave your house. Also talking to people online isn’t socializing. Many people are able to have relationships online but can’t connect with people in real life. A lot of communication is non-verbal and people need to build those skills.
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u/Doodiecarrier 1d ago
So retarded, nobody threw house parties at houses they owned.
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u/sysblob 23h ago
This meme is wrong on BOTH counts. Millenials and Gen X both have houses right now (most likely) and they would be the parents, so the houses for house parties are there. The later generations don't throw house parties anymore because they barely socially interact at all because they're all social anxiety ridden device children.
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u/BrainLow6059 1d ago
I don't know anyone who owns a house who ever threw a house party in this fashion, but I knew so many friends in college who threw them in rentals lmao. If anything more youth are renting than owning now, so that response doesn't really make sense.
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u/Throckmorton_Left 18h ago
Living close to a college town, I assure you house parties are still very much a thing, with kids packed on lawns and balconies and drunk students playing frogger in the streets.
They're rental houses and frat houses. These parties were always in rental houses and frat houses.
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u/Ok_Blueberry_1068 19h ago
1: no one young has a house, and many people's parents dont have houses
2: the economy sucks. No one wants to spend hundreds of dollars for one weekends worth of bad decisions and hangovers
3: surveillance state. Someone is going to record you. Could be the government, could be an insta girlie, could be a bum ass influencer wannabe. Point is, you're going to end up on camera, and most people dont like being recorded and posted by strangers.
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u/BootySkank 14h ago
Nah it’s not just because of cameras, it’s because nobody wants to host a house party because people just straight up destroy the houses instead of being somewhat respectful.
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u/RaccoonSamson 23h ago
Huh? I've still been going to house parties regularly to this day
But I live in a rural area with basically zero nightlife
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u/AvengingBlowfish 18h ago
As a young person, house parties were a lot of fun... as an adult who can afford a house, I would never want to have one of those parties at a property I owned... Seeing those people on the roof is giving me anxiety about the damage being done to it and the liability if someone falls...
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u/Loose_Log_6253 17h ago
I just assumed parties still happened and I just wasn't getting invited anymore because I'm too old
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u/fancywipe 1d ago
YES no one has a house
Cameras don’t allow mistakes to be forgotten
But the biggest one is…. How a house party worked was you would phone that friend that took the courage and adventurous spirit to GO AND SEE for himself, you then phoned him “how is the house party????”
You heard music “lots of people” which you assumed and decided to join in, that exact effect happened over and over and with in 1hour to 2 hours this party is incredible
We lost our sense of wonder, maybe, adventure, putting ourself out there because a simple photo can solve all your questions
“The house party is dead!”
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u/ScubaFett 1d ago
And how many parents can afford to go on a holiday for the weekend, and leave their teen at home.
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u/mightyDblock 1d ago
Can’t do anything anymore cause people just film everything and blow up your spot.
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u/Akaishi264 1d ago
I think it has more to do with newer gen parents being more hover parents than they used to be. Kids don't have the freedom to be home alone on a weekend night to throw a party at their parent's house. Also, parents these days are trying to follow their kids to college classes. How are you going to get 50 kids at a house without some parents crashing it?
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u/BLT_Trade_r 20h ago
Another major issue with parents is they now have to work a ton at home. They have to bring laptops home and so on. Work-life balance has gone to hell, and it affects everything. In the 90s your parents went out at night to do their own partying. They let their kids hang out with friends; now the parents just gotta work more at night.
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u/Tolkor 22h ago
Are they now just switching to road/intersection takeovers?
This happened in San Diego area recently: https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/chaotic-pool-party-leaves-san-diego-neighbors-furious-fearful-for-safety/509-0d55d19f-bfa8-4f46-84ff-2a56ef5f98a8
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u/jaam01 19h ago
Too many reasons: 1. Nobody is going to lend their house to be trashed by strangers. 3. Alcohol and snacks are too expensive. 3. Kids are under constant surveillance (trackers and cameras making imposible too actually loose up). 4. Everyone has a camera in their pocket, so nobody can loose up.
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u/UrsaMinor42 18h ago
House parties died because, once upon time, you could invite 40 people over without someone with a phone and internet inviting another 450 people over. Can't seem to do that now.
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u/Budsygus 16h ago
Or because nobody wants to invite a bunch of people over to destroy or steal your stuff and leave you with 39 hours of cleanup and $14,000 in damages.
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u/Halftied 1d ago
In my neighborhood if your some plays football in the varsity team he can live at my neighbors house full time. They have a large pool, and huge party area and just extended their parking area to handle four more cars. I believe there are six or seven boys living there now and it is one constant, loud party.
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u/KerbalEnginner 1d ago
That is when you order a house on AirBNB or whatever that renting place for party apartments is.
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u/Elsupersabio 1d ago
A combination of factors including that a lot less young people are drinking, a lot less young people are going out and interacting in person with each other, the average age of a homeowner has gone up by about 20 years basically the same people that owned homes back then still own the houses now and the ones that didn't still mostly rent.
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u/LabOwn9800 1d ago
What do we mean when we say house parties?
Everyone I went to was “hosted” by someone that didn’t own the house.
In high school it was the kids inviting people over their parents house and in college and through my 20s it was house rentals. I haven’t been to a raging house party in a long time though as I’ve aged out of that scene so maybe I missed the house party hosted by a home owner.
But I’m a home owner and there is 0 chance I want a raging house party at my house. I’ll have friends over and I’ll go to friends houses for drinks but we are treating the house with respect. If we want to go wild we go to a bar.
I have to imagine if you are responsible enough to buy a house you are not hosting (probably not even attending) these types of parties
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u/alien_farmer1 1d ago
Cost of a party, cameras&social media, people are not as social as before, people are way too spoiled because of that they may ruin the party
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u/Soggy-Worldliness834 1d ago
lol bro do you know how many street fights and bs we recorded back then? It wasn’t a fear of being recorded these kids just don’t have any desire to be social. House parties were some of the most fun I ever had in my life
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u/hockeytemper 1d ago
This is like 2001 -- we had a house party in Uni, one of my roommates (super come to jesus type) snapped pics of everything including my GF and her friends doing lines in my bedroom.... This is way before social media.
When I confronted him, he got fucked up by me and other party attendees. But the icing on the cake, my GF grabbed his camera, pulled the film out, and still decided to destroy the camera itself. A thousand dollar, maybe 2 K lesson.
I would like to say lesson learned, but I doubt it.
I dont know how youth / university students stay out of the pubic light these days, but its in their best interest to do so. Day one of frosh week was naked guys and girls, drunk as hell doing drills on the football field.. It was sponsored by a major beer company.
At a different house party we had at my rental, Jump around was playing--- too many people, the living room of the house fell into the basement.
Good times.
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u/Bongressman 1d ago
Neighbors, neighbors are why house parties faded. Rural HPs are still very much a thing.
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u/octorangutan 1d ago
I’ve never understood the appeal of these anyway. Like, a bunch of people you may or may not know having open access to your home, doing god knows what; it sounds like an absolute nightmare.
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u/Delicious_Rule_7324 23h ago
Noo it faded long before cell phones and social media. Nobody wanted their houses destroyed in the 90s. Anyone who was foolish enough to have one regretted it the next day🤣
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u/WadeoftheWoods81 23h ago
House parties failed because of liability. And the silly rave phase filtered a lot of the party crowd to clubs. That’s my take at least. Graduated in 99 and spent nearly every weekend at a house, barn, or woods party.
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u/Weekly_Interview_936 23h ago
It's the cameras thing. Rental houses absolutely work for house parties. But always being at risk of being on camera with your drunken shenanigans? That, that is why you don't want to go be drunk around a bunch of strangers at a non-controlled environment. Too damned risky.
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u/Antique_Text_29 23h ago
Even back then it helped if you knew someone who owned a house and had parents with fck you levels of money
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u/Accomplished_Pay6842 22h ago
I wish there were cameras when I was at school. The cops once broke up a house party I was at and we watched a dude throw an entire keg over a fence and dip on them. Incredible shit.
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u/enadiz_reccos 19h ago
If you had pulled out a phone and started taking pictures/videos back in the 00s, you would have been thrown out of the party
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u/AdonisJames89 19h ago
no u wouldnt lol we USED to do that. The problem youre looking for is putting it on social media to expose someone
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u/cheneyza 19h ago
Surveillance society. I wouldn't have done half the shit I did growing up if I could have been recorded.
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u/Dawson__16 17h ago
You never threw them at your house anyway, they were at frat/college/your parents house.
House parties faded for the same reason as everything else. It got too expensive, and covid lockdowns shifting the culture. Do you have any idea how much that much booze costs?!? I'll throw a house party right now if I could do it for a couple hundred bucks, but getting a neighbourhood drunk would cost thousands.
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u/aldrinjaysac 17h ago
No it’s not because of that, pre covid we would have Airbnb parties all the time. It’s that no one really trusts anyone anymore.
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u/RosatheMage 16h ago
I grew up before cell phones and the internet. Good times. I'm glad that there's no evidence to my mischief. I feel bad for kids/young adults now, they're not allowed to let their hair down without someone filming it.
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u/BicFleetwood 16h ago
I'm pretty sure hose parties faded in no small part because the cops kept showing up and brutalizing people for partying.
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u/G-T-R-F-R-E-A-K-1-7 16h ago
House parties evolved into mature gatherings so there wouldn't be some dipshits ruining it for everyone
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u/Lyonwytchwardrobe 15h ago
Hosted a few during those days. Cleanup afterwards was a bitch. I always used to find hella vapes though, like brand new like they just bought it for the party. And I had leftovers for days.
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u/2FistsInMyBHole 15h ago
We werent having house parties in houses we owned, we had them in houses we rented.
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u/endergamer2007m 10h ago
Or maybe because if you bring guests over, the landlord will throw you into a woodchipper and if you do have a house, you're most likely a responsible adult so the most house party you'll get is sipping tea or two or three beers then peacefully going to sleep
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u/HyenaThen572 1d ago
I can't have a house party because I'm poor and live in an apartment.
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u/OrangeOwie 1d ago
The greatest house party I ever went to was at a new construction and nobody owned it. Mother fucker hired a DJ.
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