Meet generation stay-at-home: ‘You don’t need to pay to go clubbing: you can sit at home and watch it on your phone’::Why have so many teens and twentysomethings stopped going out?

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    Gen-X here. Articles and “hot takes” like this are as old as time. They called my generation “slackers”. Ok, I guess the rise of hip-hop, independent film, electronic music, and THE FUCKING INTERNET just happened magically. The called millennial’s lazy hipsters, but it was those hipsters that almost single handedly gave us all better taste in…everything and made it acceptable to enjoy life and experiences instead of just stuff.

    If Gen-Z wants to chill at home, fucking Let them! I enjoyed lock down. There, I said it. I didn’t enjoy people dying, but for about a year most of us got to stay inside and only go out to enjoy being outside. Some bettered themselves. Many realized that they enjoyed staying in, playing roleplaying games with friends over Zoom, baking bread, reading, writing, making music, or simply watching old concerts from the comfort of their own couch. I certainly did. Fuck the haters.

    • theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 months ago

      Lockdown was one of the best periods of my life. Getting to stay at home as much as possible and when I did go out people actually respected my fucking personal space.

      God I miss it.

    • Untitled4774@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      The best part was not feeling like I should be doing something else.

      I felt like sitting my lazy ass on the couch watching movies and eating popcorn was exactly where I was supposed to be for once.

      • UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        One hundred. It was like having an excuse to be a loner while also contributing to society, but by your absence from it. You got the feeling that everyone was cooped up for the good of each other, trying to ride this thing out. A beautiful hybrid lonely-solidarity: a unique feeling that will never happen like that again.

      • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        Boomers built ARPANET, later called the internet based on Gopher, Kermit, Usenet, and such. Then, HTML came along in 1994. It wasn’t earth shattering, just an easier way to format and navigate. It was this that gen-x took and used to create “the web”.

        Although it was boomers that created the transport protocols and text formatting code, it was gen-x that took that relic of the cold war and used it to literally change the world.

    • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Gen X also here… I never did the clubbing scene. I can’t drink, hate most modern “music”, and dislike crowds. Back when I was that age there weren’t smoking bans either and I hate that shit too…

      So what even was the point? Meh.

      • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        9 months ago

        I’ve never been to a club, but I did a nice ten years of raving. I’ll still go to one every so often, but I don’t drop X in public anymore. Those were some magical days, though!

  • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    For the same God damn reason as all the other things they’re not doing that everyone used to do; they’re flat fucking broke.

    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 months ago

      It being potentially fatal to be within five feet of strangers for a few years sure as shit can’t be helping either

  • filister@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    And this doesn’t have anything to do with sky high rents, youth unemployment, low wages, etc. right? It also doesn’t help that prices in the bars here after Covid grew by 20-30%. Beer used to be 3-3.5, now it is 4.5-5. Coffee shops saw similar price hikes. Groceries as well.

    Seriously, being young now sucks big time. Especially if you are not one of the few who happen to have rich parents.

    Here you can’t get your own place unless the rent is no more than 0.33 times your own salary. And guess what, rents have been steadily increasing in the last years (decades) and less young people can rent their own places.

    So they are now faced with the following dilemma, whether they should go live with roommates and spend a big chunk of their salaries still on rent or live with their parents and have a bit more disposable income at the end of the month.

  • ThrowawaySobriquet@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I think the real issue here is the system is reliant on people spending outside their means and taking on debt, so when large swathes of entire generations stop playing the game, those that benefit from it don’t know what to do. Other than try to insult and appeal towards the demographic in the same breath.

    As a millennial, I’ve been blamed for bludgeoning about every industry there is. No big headlines saying “Corporate Vampires Confused: No one just lets us drink their blood anymore!”

    Folks are wising up and the MBAs aren’t creative enough to save themselves. I hope

    • Mossheart@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      The MBAs are just becoming the landlords now. The"lol get their pound of flesh if we stay in or go out.

  • Meron35@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Because they broke lol. A night out is expensive, and can easily cost over $100.

    Public transport to club: $5 Dinner/pre drinks: $30 Club entry: $25 Club drinks: $18 x 2 = $36 Uber home: $30

    Sure you probably save money by going for cheaper drinks etc, but then you spend a lot of effort worried about costs for what is meant to be leisure time.

    Tbh I didn’t really understand paying for online events like twitch donations, but then realised that a night in with supermarket liquor + sub donations is much cheaper than going out.

    • 9point6@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Another thing to chime in with—when I was still going out to clubs regularly (in the UK over a decade ago), it was pretty much the main way to meet someone new. Nearly all of my romantic relationships started at nightclubs or music festivals. Now people have a sea of apps for that, I imagine it’s another reason to not bother with what were already overpriced clubs even back then. And tbh, I get the impression that if someone went to a club to meet a new partner these days, it probably would come across as a bit creepy.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      night out is expensive, and can easily cost over $100

      I remember when a bar tab for the table that exceeded $100 was a difficult challenge to achieve.

      Now it’s a couple of hours for one person.

  • Mango@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Why would I pay money to do things I don’t want to do? Want me at the club? Pay me. Pay me a LOT because that fucking place is noisy and full of attention seekers.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    9 months ago

    An editorialist got pissy that millennials weren’t buying diamonds, and the take was millennials were lazy and not working hard enough to make boomer money.

    So I’m cynical long before I read the take, since many of these kinds of articles are writteb to appeal to the insecurities of news agency owners rather than what the public is actually experiencing.

    • june@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Yep, this feels exactly like the articles that attacked millennials when we were coming up. If Gen Z isn’t clubbing, I guarantee this article has the reason why wrong.

    • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      lol I’m mostly in agreement, but I can’t imagine adolescence without that burning need to go out and see what happens. I mean, (Jesus, this makes me feel old), throughout most of high school, we had cell phones, but not smart phones. Smartphones were invented the year I graduated high school.

      But, the concept of going out just to be out of the house was so strong in me if I had to stay home one night I felt like the world was ending. “What’s happening out there,” “I bet [so and so] is doing something fun.” “I have to get out of this house.” And then as soon as I left the house, very excited, it was something of a relief to find out none of my friends were doing anything fun, but I’d drag them out of the house and we’d go sit in a parking lot somewhere, spending $2 for a drink and a fries, still being hungry, but not having any more money, finding a friend with weed, or finding a more secluded place to hang out, stand around for hours cracking jokes and listening to music…dude, those were the times. Although, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t cool or popular. I had my core friends, a true group of losers. But fuck if we weren’t trying to live a more sociable or interesting life despite our social awkwardness. And when we did find a party hosted by someone who’d let us come? We were so excited…and then we ended up hanging out together doing the same shit we were doing in the parking lot. But this time with some girls around.

      I can’t imagine an adolescence filled with the desire to stay home.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        I spent a lot of nights in, often talking to friends on MSN and exploring the internet, and a lot of nights hanging out with friends, often just at someone’s house watching movies.

      • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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        9 months ago

        When I was young I only went out to meet girls. If it was just going to be a bunch of dudes there I stayed home and played video games or worked on projects. That was more entertaining than just sitting around bullshitting.

        • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          Shit, man. I spent so much time with my closest friends, they were closer than my family. Different strokes for different folks.

          • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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            9 months ago

            Yeah, I think part of my problem was that most of my friends were not very good people and that kind of fucked me up.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Feels like they’re more concerned about clubs and liquor producers not making money than kids staying at home.

  • Decoy321@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I spent most of my 20s in nightclubs. As a patron, bartender, and manager.

    There’s no fucking way you’ll ever catch me in one ever again.

    They’re just the modern way to monetize the mating ritual, taken to an absolutely ridiculous extreme. It’s pretty fuckin disgusting.

    • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I had a similar arc. Learned the hard way: meet someone at a club and now you’re with someone that likes going to clubs.

      Meanwhile, some of the people you meet there are alright. But most of the people that you’d get along with are probably at home. And most of the club patrons are, well, people who like going to clubs.

  • Guntrigger@feddit.ch
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    9 months ago

    Gasp, gaming and talking to friends online? They should be real world socialising like talking to friends on the landline

  • zerog_bandit@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    “Please come to my club to kill your liver and brain with alcohol, I need to buy a third home!”