Nightclubs on the brink as clean-living Gen Zs ditch scene

return2ozma@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 217 points –
Nightclubs on the brink as clean-living Gen Zs ditch scene
yahoo.com
96

clean living

Can't afford $16 + tip for a drink

They mention cost of living a lot in the article. They also point out that there's way lower drug use. On top of cost of living I bet a lot of people are getting their escapism from games and Internet instead.

drugs have also gotten more expensive :(

An ounce of weed is like $50 these days, a fraction of when I was a teenager. Just blaze.

Maybe where you live.

Weed is cheap as hell in Michigan. I wish it was true in Illinois. I'm in Indiana, where it's illegal, but getting weed from Illinois is a 30-minute drive. However, it's much more expensive and you're limited to 14 grams as a non-state resident. Getting weed from Michigan is much, much cheaper and there's no limit, but it is a 5-hour drive through Indiana for me and I'm not driving that far back through Indiana with a shit ton of weed in my car.

I just buy mine online. No driving needed.

I buy online too. And then I drive to the dispensary in Illinois and pick it up. How do they get it to you if you're in a state where it's not legal?

I buy via https://stnrcreations.com/ Get them delivered straight to my house. Delta 8 is federally legal, so that's what you can purchase from the regardless of state. Where I live, all the smoke/vape shops also sell a bunch of delta 8 products. But I've preferred the stnr brand over most things I've tried.

Sorry, I don't trust that synthetic stuff. I'll stick with the real thing.

Same, order online and it's in my mailbox in two days.

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And more tainted. As young millennial, I feel like I missed the hay day of un-fentanyl’d drugs.

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I think the fact that almost anything might be laced with a lethal dose of fentanyl these days could also be a contributor. A lot of drugs are just white powder… makes it hard to know what’s in it in a party setting.

Always test your stash.

🌈the more you know.🌠

They mentioned a party setting.

I don't know about you, but I'm not bringing test strips to every party, cause I'm not automatically assuming that every party will have drugs. Drugs at a party are the kind of thing that randomly shows up when you least expect it, so it's not always easy to be prepared.

Always have a Guinea pig no one will miss tagalong with you to parties

🌈The More You Know🌠

I bet a lot of people are getting their escapism from games and Internet instead.

More and more people are getting addicted to computer/smartphone games, porn and online gambling. Less do alcohol. Tobacco seems to be constant.

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Plus entry fee. I grew up in a college town and went to the same university. There was a nightclub there (still there amazingly) that had beer for a dime after you paid the cover fee on Tuesdays. I think the entry fee was something like $5, if that.

This has to be some sort of penis based loss leader for them right? Like get the dudes sloshed on cheap beer so they'll buy pricier drinks for women they hit on. I hate to say it but that strategy would definately have worked on me when I was college age.

It isn't a singles club type of place, so I don't think so. It has live bands. I'm guessing it doesn't have dime beer night anymore though.

My college town had a bar that served 25 cent PBR solo cups on thirsty Thursdays.

I still wouldn't drink them.

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I'm in the "Z-lennial" group, it's mostly just the cost for me. Why would I spend $20 on 2 drinks at a bar when I can get a 12 pack for $16 and play terraria with my friends?

There's also the fact that games and Internet are a social option for your generation at all. Previous generations didn't even have that option the same way. Even as a millennial it wasn't nearly as accessible as it is now.

For sure. My 8yr old plays with his friends on FaceTime and Roblox as soon as he gets up. In the winter online play is probably 75% of how they play. When the weather is better that changes to 25%.

Not in the same way, but I made a lot of friends on MUDs and local BBSes in the early 90s.

Yeah there were options but they were not convenient or mainstream. When I was a kid I played online games with friends, but that involved calling them on a land line phone, logging into the Internet, which meant turning off your house phone for most people without dual phonelines, and no video call and text chat only.

You're supposed to walk in just sober enough to get past the bouncer, dance/flirt, maybe but a single drink, leave.

If you're doing it right you should only drink water inside the club.

$10+ drinks is the more likely cause.

We went out recently. Purchased 4 x small red wines. Plastic cups. $100. I nearly died. It's out of control.

The new attitude, coupled with a cost of living crisis that leaves many younger generations unable to afford a party lifestyle, is having a knock-on effect on the nighttime economy.

Title is blatantly misleading. Gen Z wants to party as much as their predecessors did, they literally just don't have the money to do so.

Best to keep titles short, and free of any context that might detract from the goal of building sympathy for business owners.

Millennials didn't have money, either (and still don't), but that didn't stop us from partying. I literally entered the job market right as the economy crashed, but I still found a way to get my party on. Cheap hobo wine is the nector of the gods when you're 21 and have been unemployed since you were 17.

I bet it’s a little of both. I think every successive generation in the US has become more socially isolated. Car culture, suburban sprawl, internet culture, lack of “third places”, etc. I’m reminded of the sociology book Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam. It starts with the observation that more Americans go bowling than ever, but memberships to bowling leagues has fallen. Americans are still bowling, but they’re bowling alone.

GenX/millennial here, you ain't missing much. It's loud and impossible to meet anyone unless you're already good looking.

Also around your age (46). I didn't go to clubs to meet people, I went to clubs to drink and dance. Or see a band if it had live music.

I saw They Might Be Giants in a club. I saw P-Funk in a club. I saw King Missile in a club. I saw some fucking amazing bands, both national and regional, in clubs and I think the most expensive was P-Funk at $20.

Elder millennial here, it's supposed to be loud. Wear earplugs

Of course it's supposed to be loud, but wearing earplugs doesn't address the main problem I have with loudness, which is that it makes it almost impossible to have a conversation. Whenever I go to a club (which is pretty rare these days), I always plan on just hanging out with the people I went there with.

A loud club is not for conversation. You are to communicate through actions, and talk later.

I have no idea how to do that. It's fine with me if some people like to go to clubs to meet people, but it's not part of my skill set, so they have a pretty limited appeal to me.

The only times I ever met people at clubs were when I was hanging out in the outdoor smoking areas some of them have (had?). I wasn't there to smoke, just to get a break from the loud music.

the cause is the same as everything else: it's too expensive and we're all poor. I'd love to go out more, including to nightclubs, but I can't afford to

Soon

Gen Z is killing the food industry with a new fad they call 'dying of malnutrition '

I guess it says a lot about the Lemmy demographics but it's getting really sad that every time something about nightclubs appears here, there's a whole bunch of people explaining why they don't like night clubs.

I'm assuming Lemmy trends towards a more introverted group and that's cool. But I'm here not caring about Linux or Baldur's gate, while at the same time understanding that it's very important and interesting to a bunch of people.

I'm an elder millennial. I spent a shit tonne of time in clubs, as did the majority of people I know. I still did other things in places that were more quiet, had conversations and met people. It's true guys - you can actually like both!

I went clubbing to sometimes meet boys, but mostly to drink and dance to extremely loud and often very commercial music, sometimes on drugs too. Because people, that kind of activity is really fun to some people.

But these threads always read like a Boomer pile on on a Facebook post, yammering about how they played outside as kids and walked to school.

The reason younger people aren't clubbing as much is cost. That's it. Talk about that. Not how you think it's an interesting take that clubs are loud and dirty.

I was at a night club last night, partying like I’m in my 20s. Difference is now I’m helping produce the event rather than just going

Average cocktail around here is $15 + 20% tip = $18.

I am sorry... but maybe I am old, you tip on the drink. Either $1 or $2 depending on complexity, not on price.

Or maybe it's because the majority of Nightclubs are bad products... Why would I want to go to a club where all the art has been sucked out in the name of profit? The resident DJs are just going play the same top 40 tracks while cheap dmx lights are set to auto. There are hundreds of promoters putting in actual value to their shows which makes people actually want to go out instead of the cheap cookie cutter shit you find in the avarage club.

Yeah it's another gen hit piece. Like Gen Z all convened and decided to skip nightclubs for, idk, the lulz

I guess that's very location dependent, I have no troubles finding cool parties here in Europe. I still only go about twice a year these days but that's for different reasons.

Let me be clear, here in the US Nightclub ≠ venue/party/rave. They are very similar however fundamentally different.

I see, yeah I would say here clubs would englobe everything from the top 40 places to the warehouses.

Nightclubs aren't on the brink, the idea that one can open a night club and charge $$$ to get in as well as an absurd amount of money to buy drinks is. On a side note, as an elder millennial, I have never really been attracted to loud and dirty places where I can't have a conversation with anyone and every surface is slippery or sticky with god knows what.

A lot of them are reacting to the decreased number of customers by...raising drink prices. Doesn't really help the situation. I'm too old to go to clubs regularly but if there's an act I want to see, I just get drunk beforehand.

Of course a lot of this is actually because of ridiculous rents anywhere where a club might actually get patrons. Clubs are no small square footage and they need to bring in a lot of money to stay open.

Alternative non commercial clubs, festivals and parties. That's where the fun is.

Oooo what’s a non commercial club

I’m guessing that’s what we used to call underground and house parties?

Interesting, if that’s what it is. Different terminology these days maybe? I was imagining like a club club. But not for profit? I dunno

A club run not for profit? Mostly by some alternative folks. Often with some leftist touch. I was doing visuals in a few spots like that, besides illegal outdoor parties - best places for me. And I'm not even that much into it to begin with.

Yeah, I’ve been to off the book raves and parties and stuff, but I didn’t realize there were not for profit CLUB spots

Never heard of that. That's interesting.

if you microdose mushrooms when you go out you only need like 1/3 of the normal number of drinks to have a great time trust

Clean living Gen Z? Lol ok sure

There's been a lot written about how Gen Z has been less prone to premarital sex and less prone to drinking (they prefer weed over alcohol and find bars too expensive) than millennials.

It's because they are too busy switching genders and installing Linux builds

Gender swapping is just distro hopping for the body?

sounds like someone needs to introduce these kids to the warehouse district

The majority of Gen Z isn't even old enough to get into a nightclub to begin with. Gen Z is currently 12-27. I'm bad at math, but isn't that something like only 40% of the generation that's 21+?

Most places in the world allow people to drink before age 21.

Oh yeah that's right. I always forget that's a thing. That still seems so bizarre to me.

That people can drink when they’re considered adults? Or that america sends them to war or to take on a mortgage before they may have a beer out of some puritanical prudishness?

Not a puritan prude, but children shouldn't drink alcohol. I don't think that's really that hot of a take. There's a lot of science behind the damage alcohol causes to developing bodies, but hang onto them pearls, I guess.

Im not in disagreement, just saying if someone is considered old and implicitly wise enough to grasp what joining the military or taking on decades of debt really means, they most certainly are old enough to drink alcohol as they see fit.

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Meh if you can't find ways to get booze under 21 you don't deserve it. Prison style wine is trivial to make or just pay a vagrant.

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If that's what it takes for them to stop pretending that anyone wants to pay that much, then great. Alcohol prices are obscene.

And that's coming from someone that absolutely hates alcohol's mere existence as a beverage type. I won't go into that here, but rest assured I'm not losing any sleep over anything that makes it more obvious it's a bad choice.

I've always said that I am ok with almost everything that makes cigarettes and/or alcohol less convenient/more expensive/less desirable.

I'm willing to admit part of it is a "stop looking what I don't like", but I REALLY hate both of these things, and will rejoice any time something "terrible" happens to those industries or the people who benefit from them.

I'm the monster that sees a smoker get lung cancer and just don't feel bad for them. You literally chose that. Sorry but you did.