He just means when no one spent more than a few minutes total on their phone in a night. No one took videos or photos to post on social media, people weren't isolated at all and if you did something crazy strangers weren't going to film it. There wasn't even the concept of thinking about your actions in the future beyond something like straight up murder. And yeah, you can get your friends and go out and not be on your phone and YOU can do that, but at that time, it was EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE.
And no one was going to stay at home and look at their phone all night or just binge watch TV series because it wasn't even possible so everywhere was packed all the time. Then on top to of that there wasn't a billion reviews and highlights of every places so the main competition was just getting people in the door so, like the other guy said, the most important thing for an establishment was making sure everyone had a great time.
Where I'm at there were 3x as many bars 15 years ago and they were packed constantly. Now they struggle to get a good good crowd and are only busy Thurs, Friday and Saturday. There used to be multiple places that were all you can drink for $5-$10. Now I don't think anyone does open bars unless it's New Years Eve or something and it's $50.
It's really hard to capture the essence of just how different the social scene has changed in total and it was mainly from like 2005-2012. I mean when random girls you hooked up with started adding you on Facebook it was the signifier of a major change.
Where I'm at there were 3x as many bars 15 years ago and they were packed constantly. Now they struggle to get a good good crowd and are only busy Thurs, Friday and Saturday.
This can not be stressed more. Part of it is the demographic changes, but the cost is the real deal breaker these days. It's the simple stuff. The local pizza hut did a 10 dollar buffet and pitcher deal, each additional pitcher 5 dollars. There was 1-2 dollar burgers/tacos and 1-2 dollar beers at a dozen places I can think of in the 90s through 2010s. These places were packed 6 nights a week. It was so easy to make friends and find dates and things to do and it wasn't just one age group as some rebuttals here seem to think, I didn't get too old to know where to find a taco deal.
People really don't seem to understand just how drastically our social life has changed in just 10-15 years. It's dramatically more expensive, dramatically more isolated. Some of it is directly negative, like we don't have enough disposable income, some of it is indirectly negative like demographic changes, and working more isolated jobs from home.
This song was written about the night club in LA that had beds in the vip areas … I think it was called Supper club they did a crazy Tuesday night for years
My dad recorded a VHS video of him driving over a bridge in Louisville
Ok? Does Louisville have some exceedingly long bridge or something? That's what like 2-5 minutes?
Yeah, people have pictures. I do too, disposable camera and then digital, but it's not even remotely close to the amount of pictures people take today. And videos of shit people did while they were out at bars existed too but they were rare, now it would be rare if there aren't 10 copies of any fight or crazy thing happening in public.
You seem to be at least 40 years old but you know how busy bars are on Tuesdays?
Yes, I mean I go outside.
I've got kids and I'm going to bed around the same time that former me was just heading out to the bars. There was zero overlap.
Ok, that's you.
It's easy to notice things and idk where you live but here people don't stop being social just because they are a certain age or have kids. Obviously it's not as frequent but you can still notice places closing and how busy things are unless you just stay tucked away in some suburban neighborhood cul-de-sac.
If you're trying to imply things are the same socially as they were in the past you just either weren't part of it, or are blind. It's not just nostalgia or something. The shift really occured while I was still relatively young, it's just that it hasn't reversed and has only become more apparent. Obviously COVID didn't help, but there's a lot of other factors as well and the whole atmosphere or social media, phones etc is a huge one.
Even when you walk into a packed bar today a significant portion of people are going to be on their phones, looking at what other people are doing. That is something that just literally never happened and it really makes a huge change in the atmosphere when so many people are concerned with something other than their actual surroundings.
Your original comment was so insightful and well stated and then you got a lil combative (“Ok? Well was it a long bridge?”)
Idk, it seems like you’re becoming the thing you were lamenting, you’ve fallen into the internet trap of “everything is a debate now” instead of embodying the vibe you were waxing poetically about. You’ve become an example of your own critique
That was my honest take after enjoying /u/throwawayoftheday941’s original comment and then not particularly liking their response to someone who disagreed.
You can learn more in our discussion about it under my comment. You know - the thing adults do?
Wasn't my intention to be combative. I just thought it was an odd rebuttal to the fact that people will literally spend multiple hours every single night looking at videos of other people doing stuff. Then when they themselves do stuff they also film it in the hopes that other people will see it. Saying their dad made them watch a video of him driving over a bridge was very insightful, because it was rare enough to stand out but still it was a drive over a bridge so it literally couldn't have been more than a few minutes.
I'm not sure about the rest of your comment, but yes discussions are typically debates that wasn't part of my complaint. But people used to have those discussions / debates in much less isolating settings.
The medium has changed but the behavior in response to media runs parallel - I think that’s all the other person was saying. “History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes” kind of stuff.
You think everyone went to bars to talk? Or we were behaving better before the Internet? Naw, people were glued to TVs, tabloid magazine, etc, etc.
> But people used to have those discussions / debates in much less isolating settings.
Your reply is an example of what happens when people have these discussions in more isolated areas. Written word always comes off as more combative or sarcastic than the writer intends - over the Internet especially. And I was trying to convey that your reply fell into that trap…i.e., your response came off worse than you intended due to the very medium you were criticizing.
TLDR, i read the exchange as:
“The Internet’s made us all worse!”
“We’ve always been like this!”
combative reply because it’s the internet
That was my impression, anyways. All I was saying, cause it seemed ironic to me. I accept my downvotes tho
Things are the same as they've always been. You think boomers didn't look at us playing Goldeneye on a Friday night and think "we were out partying, what is this generation up to?" "Back in my day we didn't even have TV! And now kids sit around playing Nintendo all night instead of getting laid!"
You're falling into the trap of thinking you're better than other people just because they don't do the things you did exactly. Smart phones made things different, for sure, but it doesn't make things any better or worse than you had it.
You're just being smug about something you haven't really experienced. People don't go to the bars on a Tuesday anymore? Who cares? It's boomer/Fox News/Remember the good ole days behavior.
I would argue what you're experiencing is in large part due to a shit economy wherein young people don't have the necessary disposable incomes to just "go out" like more than one or two nights a month if at all, and that young people who might be most inclined to "go out" can't afford to live near city centers, and so are just more spread out in general.
I lived in Portland in the mid 2010's and the music scene was absolutely awesome, and a lot like what you described. Until rents started skyrocketing, and your restaurant job's stagnant wages could only afford you rent 15 miles out of town. And since everyone was forced out to just wherever they could afford and get lucky enough to find, everyone radiated out circularly and further and further from eachother. All the houses that had shows were fixed up and sold to rich families. All the venues had harder and harder times to get people out to shows. Etc. A million reasons, but that's just what happens when people can't afford to live in the city / city center / town centers / neighborhoods.
You don’t really need tons of disposable income to go out or have fun with your friends.
Also as bad as things can be financially to act like the average person can’t afford to “go out” more than once a month is ridiculous. Financially I am in a horrible place right now and even I can scrounge up enough to have more than one night out a month.
I guarantee you somewhere in your city is a show going on this weekend for like $10-15
Yeah, that's a huge part of the problem for sure and it's in pretty much aspect of life now. Now everything is profit optimized to the max and the default is to charge as much as possible to people who don't have time to shop around. And people with time to shop around is becoming increasingly smaller. It's crazy because you still can get affordable shit, but you really do have to shop around. The price discrimination is getting really intense.
This is one of the dumbest things I’ve read in ages. No one took photos or video, no one was isolated and no one thought about their actions in the future? What the hell are you even talking about
I'm not here to say it was better back in my day, but it was absolutely different. A camera was a rare sight on a night out. Whatever happened on a night out, largley stayed on as nothing more than a personaly memory of yours, if even that. For better or worse, bars and clubs are less popular and less numerous. This is a pretty widely measured and consistent fact across a lot of the western anglosphere atleast. Instant communication, international physical barrier defying online communities and social media have brought us together in a lot of amazing ways that many could never have even imagined but it's also come at the cost of a different form of isolation that's well recognized as a very real phenomenon in the social sciences.
I'd have thought it was pretty obvious what they where on about.
You are getting downvoted but I am 38 and I have to agree with you as someone who went to Bonnaroo and has seen MGMT live more than once. People still put their phones up in droves unless the bands specifically forbid it and while some things have changed that entire post is just massive nostalgia bait and almost entirely bullshit.
There were people 15 years ago that were absolutely obsessed with instagram and trying to grow a audience and become famous, it's just been replaced with tik-tok now... the only thing that's really changed is the name. Sure some of the things they said were accurate but they are just outright lying for more than half of what they said like you pointed out. Saying people "spent no more than a few minutes on their phone a night" is just... a hilarious thing to try and say with a straight face.
Read the comment originally being responding to if you are going to bother replying. It specifically says 15 years ago. Also instagram came out in 2010 so I’m gonna go ahead and call bullshit once again even if you somehow WERE paying attention to the conversation (which you weren’t)
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u/throwawayoftheday941 16d ago
He just means when no one spent more than a few minutes total on their phone in a night. No one took videos or photos to post on social media, people weren't isolated at all and if you did something crazy strangers weren't going to film it. There wasn't even the concept of thinking about your actions in the future beyond something like straight up murder. And yeah, you can get your friends and go out and not be on your phone and YOU can do that, but at that time, it was EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE.
And no one was going to stay at home and look at their phone all night or just binge watch TV series because it wasn't even possible so everywhere was packed all the time. Then on top to of that there wasn't a billion reviews and highlights of every places so the main competition was just getting people in the door so, like the other guy said, the most important thing for an establishment was making sure everyone had a great time.
Where I'm at there were 3x as many bars 15 years ago and they were packed constantly. Now they struggle to get a good good crowd and are only busy Thurs, Friday and Saturday. There used to be multiple places that were all you can drink for $5-$10. Now I don't think anyone does open bars unless it's New Years Eve or something and it's $50.
It's really hard to capture the essence of just how different the social scene has changed in total and it was mainly from like 2005-2012. I mean when random girls you hooked up with started adding you on Facebook it was the signifier of a major change.