Yep. When our group had nothing to do we pretty much all went to somebody's flat and just hung out. Talked shit, smoked cigarettes, listen to music and laugh a lot. Pur friend circle was guys and girls who were not in relationships with each other so was cool as we could all be ourselves. Maybe we might jump in a car and go somewhere when it reached evening or just stayed in and had our own micro party with just the 7 of us. I do wish o had photos from then, but I am also glad we do t jave photos from then.
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
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They also don't know what it's like for someone to move away and you just never see them again.
You can still do that now.
Source: I am appalling at keeping in touch with people I don't directly see face-to-face.
But it's an option for you to find people.
Back in the day, if someone changed their address and phone number, you'd have to work hard to find them.
My best friend in high school joined the navy and disappeared. I worked for decades to track him down. Then one day he was just on Facebook. We have nothing in common any more and nothing to talk about. But damn do I have some great memories of us hanging out.
Sure. That too. But honestly that's a tradeoff I'd be willing to do in a heartbeat.
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Kids these days will never know the simple joys of lighting a filthy mattress on fire in a derelict parking lot and drinking a case of warm beer that was the easiest thing to steal from that one gas station a town over with the near sighted night clerk.
My town had a bowling ball factory and on winter nights when the river was frozen we would steal reject balls and throw them off the bridge downtown. They made a truly incredible noise when they hit the ice.
That sounds fucking phenomenal. Now I need to see if there are any derelict bowling alleys around here to explore.
Maybe it's something of the people I socialize with. But we don't look at phones when we gather. It's impolite.
Phones are a great distraction when you're in a liminal space with nothing interesting going on.
But parties tend to be the opposite of that. The only reason someone looks at their phone is if they're trying to avoid the party. And why even show, in that case?
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I think another thing is the lack of cameras. If you brought a camera before it was because you intended to take pictures. Now, everyone has a camera with them at all times.
Are the parties young people have nowadays just less wild because everyone has cameras? Or do people mostly party at clubs and bars and so they expect it to be on camera? Or do people not party as much?
When I was younger and before cell phone cameras of high quality were everywhere, parties were filled with debauchery and drugs like out in the open.
Is this why Gen Z thinks hedonism is cringe?
Are the parties young people have nowadays just less wild because everyone has cameras?
I believe so.
Is this why Gen Z thinks hedonism is cringe?
I think part of it might be the (reasonable) fear of being caught and it haunting you forever increasing overthinking. But I think the main reason is excessive access to everything online desensitizing and removing the enicing part of exploring 'taboo' stuff. Under that aspect I think, the internet as we have it today has also just reduced curiocity overall.
I think a more significant part though is that sex, drugs and the like are just not that taboo anymore. You are not hooking up as an act of rebelion against your parents if your parents lived hookup culture and are open about it.
And a lot of us are just more lonely/less social which loops back to the original post I guess.
I was born in 1952.
To me, people born after 2000 are true, real "aliens"
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I watched Donnie Darko the other night and the age of it just hit me all at once. That world is unrecognizable now.
Right? Jesus is this what our parents felt like when the Internet came? Poor bastards, I pity them still.
Having nothing to do but engage others. Board games. RISK 2210, a 3hr game with 5 turns each. Does anyone actually play games together any more?
The amount of hours I have in that game could probably be measured in weeks. It is still probably my favorite iteration.
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I was born in 93 and I don't know what any kind of friday night party is like.
That sucks. How come? Hell I'll drink with you right now. No phono.
...quietly puts away record collection...
This is what we'd do because we were broke. If we had money we'd go to bars and stuff, but otherwise we'd ask the supermarket for free fish ice and buy beers, then filled the bathtub with them.
As people came over they'd go drop the booze in the tub and pick up a cold one.
Many fun nights, though finding people using your bed, not so much.
I'm born in the late 80s and I don't know what a party without phones look like. We had phones by the time we were in highschool.
They were so cool back then too. The thing is, they never rang or dinged. They were mostly just a call out thing at that point.
They didn't ring? Custom ring tones were super popular.
Someone born in the late 80s likely wasn't in highschool until the 2000s.
Are you picturing me as a baby going to parties ?
I was also born in the late 80s. I remember having a cell phone in early high school. No one else had one. My parents would call me on it, and I would call them. Maybe you went to a little more upscale school where more kids had a phone, but all of my friends in high school had landlines. That changed toward the later years though, as everyone was getting cars and their parents wanted them to have phones.
But I more meant like, they were just used for phone calls and some texting. We didn’t have apps and push notifications going off constantly throughout the day. MySpace wasn’t even accessible on a phone.
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Change used to be gradual.
You could drop Cleopatra into Queen Victoria's court and she'd figure out the rules in a week.
Obama was cutting edge in 2008 because he used a Blackberry
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My friends and I would be glued to the N64 or xbox instead
"Nobody looked at their phones during a party in 1999"
Holds up picture of a LAN Party
Bro all of you with friends happy with staying in one place are crazy. Every partier I know wants to change bars every 45m
There was no way to coordinate, so you'd talk in school on Thursday and decide about meeting up in so and so's house whose parents were away on Saturday and it would just spread like through some weird subcommunications channel and people would show up and you never knew what to expect because nobody was sure who would show up or when or if...
Then if you were like a couple of lads or gals short someone would be like "I know this dude at so and so adress let's go there!"...
It was spontaneous. I don't think spontaneity has changed much in humans over the past two decades, just the form of it, or perhaps the constraints within which it operates.
It feels less important now, less like an adventure.
Now bring me my defibrillator will you?
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I was born after 2000. I couldnt really tell you the point of going to a party where you dont know anyone, like what seems to be most coming-of-age movies. Even some parties with friends have been extremely dull, and wrecking some strangers house seems like a great way to add weight to my conscience
Well, one could argue that not doing things that push the boundaries of your comfort zone is why echo chambers exist, whereas meeting people you don’t know and interacting with them is how you make new friends and potentially grow as a person.
I’m not saying you’re wrong for not wanting to do that, or even that you should want to do that, but that would be the point of it.
And for the record, parties that happen in movies aren’t really representative of what actual parties were commonly like, at least in my experience. The most wrecked that I’ve ever seen a house get after a party was needing to clean or pick up some trash. The way you keep the weight off of your conscience is to help the host clean up the next day, like a decent human being.
(I can’t afford a lawn, but get off of my dirt lot!)
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I am after 2000 and am not attached to my phone at all. To the point where my work tried contacting me for almost an entire day and I didn't check messages until end of day.
I'm a way it's easier to disconnect because you don't have a phone attached to the wall that you can hear ring from any room.
But there is an expectation of being immediately available so when you're not, people freak out.
The only time we get that now is when the power goes out. Even then most people just stay on their phones unless the cell networks are down.
Blackouts are among my favorite events in life. Just complete stillness, peace, and quiet. People start lighting candles, talking to each other in the streets...
Rose tinted view. There were plenty of distractions without phones and people would just get black out drunk wayyy more often than they do now. Maybe a positive is that people can pave themselves easier now.
Only when the road construction crew gets too drunk and starts playing around with the steam roller! 😁
I mean I was born in 1989 and I can't really remember it because I wouldn't be invited to those kinds of parties until after the invention of the smartphone.
Hell I remember in high school everyone spent most of the time swapping phone bodies around and sharing polyphonic ringtones via IR blaster. And later, Pokémon via a link cable.
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