Someone asked a question about how frequently young people have time to socialize and it made me think about what people do with their evenings. I recently asked my son to go to a concert (free ticket to see a band i know he likes) and he declined because it was an hour away on a weeknight. If we invite our kids or niece/nephew to dinner they always want to go at 6/630 which feels so early. Edit: Kids are 30ish.
Early 30s. Outside is a scam. Everything there involves spending money and dealing with people. I’ll talk and play games with my friends online but don’t see people unless I am at work or forced to go out.
Everything there involves spending money
Almost all the good socialization has become commercialized. There’s no town square anymore, it’s turned into a Walmart.
I think that’s a big point, hardly anything is open late anymore. Seems like the world stops at 10PM these days and everything has to shut down then.
I don’t go out because post covid everything costs 100% more and is 100% worse.
I spend $60 on two beers and a mcdonalds quality hamburger + fries last week. F that. in 2019 that would have been 20 bucks. in a place that was crowded and it took me like 30m to get my food. and almost every place is like that now. double the price for half the service or quality of product.
if going out was fun and affordable I’d do it more. I went out regularly before covid. I just don’t want to have to drop 30-40 bucks for a single beer and junk food meal anytime i want to socialize.
all my old spots that were affordable, chill and fun, are gone. i used to hang out in coffee shops after work because they were quiet and i don’t drink… now they all closed at 2pm. bars are noisy and crowded and want $15+ for a cocktail and $10 for a budweiser. that used to be $10 and $5.
Dude even stuff like bowling is too much now. An hour for two people can approach $70 at certain places. Not the bougie places either, those places are even more. I was browsing Google reviews for one place nearby like that and the owner responded saying that they should look for a Groupon.
I get that. On top of increased cost we got into this overtipping to help people who were working and it’s all gotten out of hand.
yeah i’m not even counting tipping. that shit is insane. lots of places in my city now want a 20% tip, and a 5-10% fee. on top of a 9% tax. So basically your meal is now 35-40% more than the prices in the menu. and it’s expect at literally every joint now, take out and coffee joints too.
it’s just not worth it. for that kind of pricing I’m better off just getting delivery. which is what i do now. ubereats is a 20% tip and like a $5 delivery fee. it’s cheaper and i don’t have to deal with slow/rude service and other customers being loud and obnoxious.
I still tip 15% most of the time. Tip flation is a scam when tips are already a percentage of the total. Don’t feel forced to tip more.
We doordash or order from the restaurant more than going out because of the tip and restaurant alcohol costs.
We did not get into over tipping to help people who are working. Tipping popped up everywhere because it’s profitable for POS terminal operators and business owners. It wasn’t something society decided on, most people complain about it. It was brought about suddenly when the POS terminals changed, mainly from Square Cash, but everyone else followed suit.
I’m not saying that’s why we started tipping. During COVID we started really overdoing it.
Seriously? I thought a beer’d be 4-5 American dollars, burger 5 and fries 2ish.
Depends on where you are and what you want. In Texas, you can get a beer in a small bar for $4-5, especially during happy hour. Hard to find a burger delivered to your table for less than $10. Fries and non-alcoholic beverages have become surprisingly expensive. Fries can easily be $5-7. Restaurants have gone over the top on portions - half pound burger on a giant bun and a bucket of fries for $20. They sell more, charge more, and half of it goes to the trash.
Where do you live that burgers are that expensive? At most they’re maybe $12 here in one of the nicer places.
Not young anymore, but when I see the price of live music, alcohol, etc, and combine that with things like student debt, low income jobs and the pressure of potentially being humiliated via social media, I wonder how on earth young people ever go out.
I feel incredibly lucky to have been in my late teens/early 20s during the late 90s and early 2000s. I suspect a lot of my generation dodged a fair few bullets, and never even realised it at the time.
parental money and credit cards.
my work hires lots of 22 year olds. most of them are getting an extra 1-2K from the bank of mom and dad per month, and loading up on debt. i’ve seen their statements that they download onto their work computers. kid making 40K a year has 15K in CC debt. (of course this same kid got fired because they were doing personal shit on a work computer).
poor kids live at home with their folks to have any semblence of a life.
If we invite our kids or niece/nephew to dinner they always want to go at 6/630 which feels so early.
I hate to break this to you… but it’s likely because they want to do their own things as well.
yeah, i grew up with 4 meals. breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper. eating at 6pm seem early for supper and late for dinner to me
It’s funny how much this varies from family to family. We never eat dinner before 9PM. Usually two meals per day, lunch at maybe 1PM and dinner between 9 and 10PM. We’re just doing desk-work though, so no extra calorie needs. If I’m doing physical stuff I’ll usually add a light breakfast.
At least for me, its a threshold problem. The internet means that staying at home is always going to be at least somewhat interesting, which makes it a lot harder to take a gamble on a random late night outing. It’s not just staying out late, either—Gen Z shows declines in a whole host of risky behaviors. Smoking, alcohol, drug use, teen pregnancy, are all way down in our generation. In some sense, we’ve found a drug that we prefer to actual drugs.
