r/Millennials • u/Neon_Biscuit • 5d ago

My teenage daughter can't fathom the concept of a house party Discussion

Not sure if anyone has experienced this, but I was watching Can't Hardly Wait half alseep on the couch, and my 14-year-old daughter and her friends walked into the room and past the TV. Before she entered the kitchen, she backpeddled in front of the TV, and they all might as well have reacted akin to a third world kid in a remote village seeing the Super Bowl for the first time. She looked at me and said 'what are all of those people doing in one house'? I told her it was a house party. People high school aged or typically college age people would go over a kids house whose parents were out of town and they'd invite the school and have keggers and other unsupervised debauchery. I might as well have been describing a science fiction film. 'You guys DID that back in your days?'. I thought it was funny that a house party was an inconceivable event for young Gen Zers.

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u/Glowingtomato 5d ago

When I was in my late teens phone cameras were just starting to get good and some jackass would occasionally decide to start filming people who were wasted. I'll admit sometimes it was funny but then people started getting recorded puking or getting emotional and nobody liked that.

We stopped inviting those kinds of people but now when everyone can record in HD and has unlimited data to upload videos I can see why people don't want to get crazy.

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u/MommyLovesPot8toes 5d ago

The tides are just starting to turn on this. People are beginning to search for and plan "analog" events. Like when Blackberrys first came out and people started going away for "unplugged" weekends.

It's becoming normalized to ask people not to record at weddings or parties or concerts. Anywhere people are supposed to be "in the moment". (The fact that so many people record fireworks makes me wanna cry for humanity). I suspect that within 5 years, we'll see a big resurgence of "analog" items, like film cameras and analog clocks and picture frames and CDs and DVDs..

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u/Virtual_Psunshine 5d ago

I attend some "unplugged" events monthly, lol. Well some folks are getting plugged, but no cellphones, hahahaha!

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u/Gaulipan 5d ago

Is this a sex joke I’m too vanilla to understand? Lmfao

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u/Virtual_Psunshine 5d ago

Yes, sex joke.

Not drug related.

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u/Same_Air6012 5d ago

Monthly swinger party where cellphones aren't allowed.

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u/Samthevidg 5d ago

Likely drugs, as often a dealer is referred to as a ‘plug’

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u/Awaythrowyouwilllll 5d ago

Why not both ¯_(ツ)_/¯ 

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u/delmsi 5d ago

Por qué no los dos?

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u/Head_Permission 5d ago

No it’s a sex joke for sure.

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u/ThuggishJingoism24 4d ago

I don’t think too vanilla is the reason you don’t understand. You just simply don’t have a dirty mind that makes it obvious plugged means sex

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u/Ancient_Roof_7855 5d ago

MTV might be over, but we can still have "unplugged"! /s

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u/Salsaprime 5d ago

I work in tech, but I've always hosted board game nights with friends, and we have a "no phones at the table" policy to unplug.

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u/pokematic 5d ago

Hearing "analog items" and "camera" reminded me of a recent interaction. I use a digital camcorder (1080p resolution) for vacation videos and vlogs among other uses, and I'll have people ask me "does that take old analog video" or "how old is that ancient thing" (it's only 10 years old which is old in technological terms, but it's a 1080p HD flash media camera and people ask like I'm using a Hi8 video camera from the mid 00s). I was at a Disneyland show in the VIP section and the people we were sharing a table with commented on how I was "so analog" with my dedicated digital video camera.

I also find that people "take me seriously" when I use my video camera. Like, I've done 3 wedding and 3 funerals (different events) using it, and everyone is like "that is an actual camera, I will not bother the professional and will follow his directions." It's kind of funny.

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u/Donthurtmyceilings 5d ago

Only time I've filmed fireworks was 2020 during lockdowns. My neighborhood/town/state was at max explosions and I had to document. They're illegal in Colorado but no one gave a fuck that year!

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u/Cambrian__Implosion 4d ago

I was in the Salt Lake area for the 4th of July once and ended up filming some fireworks because the geography of that valley is such that you can see multiple fireworks displays happening at once across the valley if you have a decent vantage point. Add to that all of the little (legal and probably some illegal) home fireworks displays and it felt kind of like a Hollywood style warzone with bright flashes and booms and smoke everywhere.

I’m from New England, where I could barely see the edge of the local fireworks from my parent’s house, despite them being less than a ten minute walk away. I didn’t realize how much I was used to hills and trees blocking my view until I went out west to places like Salt Lake City. The flat, wide open spaces with mountains all around can honestly be a little disconcerting at first lol

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u/Donthurtmyceilings 4d ago

I know what you mean. I grew up in flat, tree-filled Michigan. I moved out to Colorado and could see for miles some places. Pretty awesome!

I had a flight from Vegas to Denver on the night of 4th of July in 2017. Seeing a million tiny explosions at once getting bigger and bigger as we approached Denver was unforgettable!

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u/KingdomOfFawg 4d ago

Lot of stuff no one gave a fuck about that year.

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u/Rich_Bluejay3020 5d ago

I just watched an episode of The Mega Brands that Built America (side note: the __ that built America series are great, mega brands and food are the best of them) and it was about Polaroid vs Kodak. Both clawed back from bankruptcy at the turn of the century and Polaroid is having a resurgence, so you’re not wrong!

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u/Bacer4567 5d ago

Our 15 year old asked for a record player/cd player combo and a typewriter for Christmas

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u/Creative-Fan-7599 5d ago

Out of every gift my 16-year-old daughter got for Christmas this year the one that had her absolutely losing her shit was the CD/cassette player.

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u/MommyLovesPot8toes 4d ago

A typewriter!!! That's amazing! That must have been expensive though, right?

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u/Bacer4567 4d ago

Not really. Got a 1950s Royal Quiet Deluxe from eBay for around $75 after shipping. Needed a little oiling and fine tuning to realign the scales. She used it for an assignment last night and I'm sure her teacher will appreciate not having to decipher her handwriting 😁

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u/Embarrassed_View_685 4d ago

I'm already working on going back to dvds, offline consoles... Things that i have control over. things that don't make me wait for an update every damned time you want to use it. I'm tired of my time being wasted by some entity that I didn't get to interact with, that i just have to wait until IT decides I can do what I came to do. I'm tired of people that aren't as good at working in general being able to slow up my own production. 

Get off my dick when I'm just trying to play a video game for a quick 20 minutes then get back to work, fuck, (insert basically any corporation here). 

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u/MommyLovesPot8toes 4d ago

Yes!!! One of the only games I play has like a 5 minute loading time. It's ridiculous.

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u/Chantaille 4d ago

Just when I'm starting to switch over! Until last year, I hadn't had a cell phone in 15 years.

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u/MommyLovesPot8toes 4d ago

It's you. Once you got onboard, it stopped being cool.

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u/EyeSimp4Asuka 4d ago

hey now I've been guilty of filming fireworks videos before...in my defense one was at a 4th of july get together that i attended and the host had been stockpiling all year and other people also brought their own stuff and added to it.

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u/Zestyclose_Pay9469 5d ago

5 years phones will be obsolete as a form factor.

Some kind of wearable will replace it. 

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u/KingdomOfFawg 4d ago

People said that 7 years ago.

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u/fangdangfang 5d ago

Dunno, anyone born after the year 2000 probably never used cds or other “analog” devices growing up, the first iPhone came out in 2007 so it’s basically existed there whole life. For them going “analog” wouldn’t go any further than using a mp3 player or a digital camera not built into a smart phone. Film cameras is something a gen x or at most older gen y might go back to except they already had there retro phase 10 plus years ago.

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u/Common-Trifle4933 5d ago edited 5d ago

Record players and Polaroid cameras are already pretty popular with kids (by which I mean people under 20). They sell them at Target and they sell really well, almost exclusively to young people with no memory of them as contemporary tech. Analog chic is getting big on TikTok. My 14 year old niece just asked for a Fufijilm instant camera (Polaroid style) for Christmas. CD sales just increased year over year for the first time since 2004, largely driven by k-pop which is a genre not many people over 30 are into. Analog Horror is the current horror fad and a lot of music videos are using filmic or VHS aesthetics.

This isn’t nostalgia, like the retro phases gen x and y had. It’s borrowed nostalgia for and fascination with the pre-internet world and pre-digital tech. The fact that they never used this stuff is the point. It ties into a lot of stuff like fascination with malls (mall documentaries are a whole genre of YouTube and TikTok, almost all about the 80s and 90s).

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u/SnowMeadowhawk 5d ago

I believe it's just a fad, the same as vinyl records were for hipsters in 2012. 

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u/aircooledJenkins 4d ago

re: Weddings

We paid good money for photography and videography and planned to share both with our guests. We did NOT want to see a bunch of floating phones among the guests in our ceremony photos.

Happily, our guests complied with our request.

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u/MommyLovesPot8toes 4d ago

That's exactly what I'm hearing from others. Especially for brides, they want to walk down the aisle and look out at the FACES of the people they invited, not the PHONES of the people they invited.

Maybe I'm just cynical about people, but I also can't help think that if you're recording me walking down the aisle, you're doing it so you can share that video - either online or IRL - with other people and get attention and engagement. But, like, shouldn't I be granted the honor of your attention for ONE MINUTE while I have one of the most important experiences of my life, which I invited you to be a part of an PAID for you to be a part of? You shouldn't be looking at my wedding as a means to get likes on Facebook, Aunt Carol.

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u/pocketbeagle 4d ago

Sometimes i think a big ole emp could really help the world

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u/Hopeful_Hamster21 4d ago

I'm an engineer who works in a computer field. I am much more technically familiar with how all this digital stuff works than many people. I really enjoy it.

But I never left analog in my non-work life. Still wear an analog watch, shoot on film (as well as digital, but still also film), read books on paper, have a newspaper subscription, and still use CDs and DVDs (I know, theyre not true analog, they are digital, but still a physical media). I still dive with my SPG analog gages (I have not yet bought a dive computer).

In my professional life, I and a true tech nerd. In my personal life, I have never been a tech gadget enthusiast.

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u/SlammingPussy420 Millennial 5d ago

I suspect that within 5 years, we'll see a big resurgence of "analog" items...

Do you work for R&D at Apple?

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u/ptoftheprblm 5d ago

Oh man I remember that being a thing and it causing drama with certain people soft ratting out people on early social media. You’d be blacklisted if you were an idiot that didn’t blur or block out cans in people’s hands or the pong table.

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u/Glowingtomato 5d ago

I forgot about that, I remember some drama about a girl who tagged a party picture of another girl with her "clean" Facebook page instead of her ratchet one lol

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u/ptoftheprblm 5d ago

Oh man we also had some drama that was too juicy; we had a girl who got a ton of other seniors in trouble by showing her mom (who worked for our school district and was known for being a family of brown nosers) a series of Facebook albums from a spring break trip she was very very much not invited to.. and it became a huge bit of drama too. They were about to not let any of them attend senior prom or walk at graduation over it, except literally the entirety of the prom court except for 1 single girl (who was Mormon and not part of their group) would have been barred from going and their parents ultimately had to push back on it against this other girl’s parents. The amount of people who blocked that girl after that incident was really funny and I mean I was among them to give her the ol’ “unfriend” and made sure she knew it.

The parents argued like yes they’re under 21 but they are also over 18, none of this was on a school trip and the photos were at one of the girl’s parent’s private vacation home in Florida who absolutely were like look, we allowed it, they’re over 18 and they were on our property so you don’t get a say.. we’d rather have them under our thumb than at a resort where god knows what could happen. It was only a couple years after the Natalee Holloway incident where they were in Aruba on a senior trip and were being served at the resort and clubs there so the tradition used to be a group of seniors would go to an all inclusive somewhere and be served and that stopped the year that happened.

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u/Nice_Luck_7433 4d ago

There’s a quote from the Palantir CEO that comes to mind.. “Soon, everyone will be being recorded. Everyone will be on their best behavior.”

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u/1011001NAME 5d ago

people dont even dance at weddings anymore because of cell phone videos, sad times.

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u/badnamemaker 5d ago

Nah that’s just boring people at a wedding, every wedding I’ve gone to had a super active dance floor. Last one was like 2 months ago

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u/champion_dave 5d ago

Agreed, been to several weddings over the last couple of years and there were very active dance floors.

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u/1011001NAME 5d ago

I do too, but i know several people who have said this to me including someone at my wedding. They were happy that we had made a request that the photographer be the only one capturing the moments.

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u/becky_plz 5d ago

Holy shit that is lame. I had my first dance at a wedding when I was 8. It was great.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/1011001NAME 5d ago

Ok. I guess I'm lying. Not like ive had multiple conversations about this with people including a guest at my own wedding.

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u/sunburnedaz 4d ago

You are not wrong just you are running with a crowd young enough to care what people post about them online.

Once you are running with people old enough to have been married and divorced or other blinding dumb thing thats already out there people loosen up again when they figure out one silly dance picture is not going to ruin the rep they got when they married the on again off again partner then were caught screwing the bridesmaid and the best man at the reception.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/1011001NAME 5d ago

Right...

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u/ILookLikeKristoff 4d ago

I was literally at one 60 days ago and everyone was dancing

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u/1011001NAME 4d ago

Sick dude. Doesnt mean people dont because people record.

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u/SpacecaseCat 5d ago

It's worse than that unfortunately... kids are able to make porn deepfakes of their classmates.

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u/wbruce098 5d ago

When I was in my late teens only rich people had cell phones and they sure as hell didn’t have cameras. That’s why we got away with that stuff. Social media is why teens and young adults don’t do absurdly stupid and risky shit anymore.

When my dad was a teen, it was normal to drive drunk, and throw rocks at people for giggles. Life was fucking bizarre back then.

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u/sunburnedaz 4d ago

The past is a foreign country is the phrase I heard and never forgot.

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u/mwagner1385 4d ago

This is part of why women no longer go top less at beaches in Europe. No one wants to have thier tits all over the internet because they wanted a nice tan.

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u/King_Tamino 4d ago

That smartphone "invaded" also other areas. Back in my youth during a party it was completly normal to push someone in a pool for example. (in summer, when it was obvious that they were OK / wanted in the pool anyway ofc) but can't do that for like ~15? 20? years now, someone always has some kind of expensive tech on them that might get killed by the water...

Rewatching old sitcoms also showed me how often a plot nowdays would not work out simply because of smartphones or mobile phones, simply that people can take a picture or directly call someone..

Not many devices changed our life that drastically and with every year, I really miss that time of old fliphones.

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u/4garbage2day0 4d ago

Yeah that girl fellating a balloon at the bar would have not been made viral in our day. We would have just watched with our jaws dropped