I was watching This Is England from 2006, and it reminded me of the olden days of yore, in the fabled before-times, where people would just bunch up together every Friday in someone’s flat, get drunk, blast music, and talk without distractions.
I can barely remember it now.
Anyway, get off my synthetic lawn.
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?
It’s impolite.
Are you 60+?
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.
It’s weird because the social pressure is mostly off because you have this task before you all. The game itself is the social mediator and a great way to get to know the basics of someone.
And yet, phone up, eyes disengaged, anxieties and physical responses hyper analyzed like an prison inmate with nothing better to do but to overthink every tweek and quirk of their bodies. (It’s a thing, in psychology. Suddenly even a foot falling asleep because you’re sitting on it means something.). Granted, for non-inmates it passes into the counseling speak and self-diagnosis.
Versus just creating excuses, like a game, to talk to people.
My biggest blunder online as a millennial was going on MySpace or bebo and acting drunk
But nobody check that daily even at the height of its popularity
Geez, bebo.
Mine was being actually drunk and going on random boards on mIRC without changing my usual username
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.
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…
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.
Right, when you called it mattered. Minutes were expensive back then. Still is but it used to, too.
In fact, more or less, I paid about the same then as I do now per month. I get MORE for the money now but I’m still broke.
What? No. In europe you could receive calls for free but calling out cost per minute billing so all the teenagers pretty much only had their phone as a means for their parents to call them. if you had to call your parents you’d call let it ring once and hang up, they’d see the missed call and call you back. if you had one kid whose parents loved them enough to give him a subscription with included minutes instead of pre-paid everyone in the group had to use their phone.
I took a few months off from Lemmy and it’s amusing to me that upon returning I find that almost every post in this com still breaks rule 2.
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…
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.
Absolutely. Same here. When we’re 50-100 years away from this social media is going to be discussed in the same conversation as prescribing heroin for a headache.
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.
i was born before 2000, and I don’t know it neither
We used to have bonfire parties out in the woods. Such good times.
As a post-2000 person, I can get a glimpse of that in some TV shows like breaking bad. Also when looking at my parents pictures from when they where younger.
But I’ve never experienced it. You can hang out with friends and all but good luck convincing 4+ friends to NOT take their phones to a gathering.
There’s always someone texting their gf/bf, someone who likes to post too much, someone deep in online gatchas.
Even an inactive user will carry their phone because of navigation, feeling insecure at night, paying stuff…
There’s a billion excuses (with a range of validity) to take your phone with you.
Meh 😕
Easily solved by social compact, box (or more fun, jenga tower) on a table, phones go in box. First person to remove phone from box for reasons other than poop break (I’m not a monster) or leaving owes the group something, even if it’s just a little dance.
It’s helped myself and most of the people I have done it with to truly understand how much we are actually addicted/dependant to the little electric serotonin dispensers.
YMMV on getting others to agree 😅
I was born in 1952.
To me, people born after 2000 are true, real “aliens”Wait so there are Boomers on Lemmy?
The fact that you have not realized until now should tell you something
Deport’em All
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!)
