Are We the First Generation of Young People Accused of Being Too Boring?
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Are We the First Generation of Young People Accused of Being Too Boring?

The myth of the moderate millennial is a middle-class fallacy.

There's always been something wrong with "the youth of today." Whether they're chomping pills or shaving their skulls, they've been a constant source of bemusement and disgust for the generation preceding them. Recently however, there's been a shift. While the normal pattern follows that the parents look down with disgust at their kids' excesses—they drink too much, they take too many drugs, and they're having far too much sex—it seems we're currently experiencing the exact opposite. The youth of today, so we're told, just aren't fucked up enough.

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The idea's been floating around for some time. Think-pieces have popped up relatively regularly across the past few years, declaring that 'millennials' on the whole are boring, polite, hard-working, sensible, studious and fearful. It's an attractive narrative. How we went from listening to house to simply never leaving it. How, neutered by Twitter and Tinder and television, we all lost interest in going out and dancing. Then there were the stats to back things up, with the Department of Health releasing figures in 2014 which indicated significant drops in a variety of nefarious activities. The number of teenagers happy to admit to taking drugs had dropped by half, with the number of drinkers and cigarette smokers dropping by close to a third—added to that drops in teenage pregnancies and abortions, and many deduced that generation sensible had truly arrived.

That might have been 2014, but the obsession with proving how boring we are is still alive today. We are the same young people who apparently prefer juice bars to clubs, and of course, the are the same young people who love safe spaces so much. In keeping with this theory, the Guardian recently ran a survey that "revealed" how an overwhelming majority of the millennials they surveyed preferred staying in to going out. Alongside the survey results the article also featured candid opinions from the young people themselves. Their declarations ranged from incredulity to ambivalence, all finding nightclubs impossibly unappealing places to spend their time. Frustratingly however, rather than representing the a cross-section of the nation's virile youth, the quotes appeared to have been lifted straight from a lifestyle tumblr, somewhere on frilly side of the internet where Zoella lives.

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For example, Lucy, 25, from London asked "Why she would be crammed in a sweaty club" when staying at home had "greater cultural value and without the hassle of trekking out?" On a similarly thrifty tip, Harri, 26, argued "you can now get cheap city breaks for the price of a good night out that you won't remember in London. And city breaks look better on Instagram." Now, maybe Lucy and Harri are a fair representation of the UK's youth. Maybe cheap city breaks, instagram filters and four episodes of The Tudors over a Marks and Spencer's two dine in for a tenner meal deal are the fullest reaches of our social ambitions. That, or maybe the in-bed-by-nine-narrative isn't telling the whole story.

Photo by Chris Bethell.

The biggest issue with the Guardian's research was the pool of people surveyed. With a grand total of 196 responses, the survey was about as comprehensive as poking your head into a branch of Itsu and asking for "a quick show of hands if you still like nightclubs." Not only that, but the call out for responses came from the Guardian themselves. I don't want to make any comments about the sorts of people who are taking time out of their evenings to respond to Guardian surveys, but I don't think they are the same ones stuffing their purple cheeks with nos balloons under dual carriageways every weekend. Not to mention that of the quotes included a high proportion were between the ages of 26 and 35. It would of course be unfair to describe a 35 year-old as past it, but they are an age group far more likely to be calling it a night after one too many Polly Toynbee long-reads than horny 17-year olds somewhere in the sticks.

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The generation sensible discourse is forced to ignore so much in order to make sense. There is seldom any mention that there are more music festivals than ever before, that MDMA use is at an all time high, that the strength of pills is higher than ever before, or that electronic music is more valuable now than it ever has been in its lifetime. Of course this data doesn't account for the quality of nights out, and some people think festivals are actually damaging clubs, but they certainly go a long way to proving that the desire to listen to loud music while taking questionable substances is as appealing to people as ever.

Young people don't just lose interest in the nighttime. The world isn't getting brighter by any stretch of the imagination and clubbing is now, more than ever, an essential release. The myth of the modern millennial, as imposed by commentaries and vague analyses, is applying a one-size-fits-all category to an experience as diverse as the stretch of time between the ages 15 and 25. The idea that youth culture can be summed up by sampling a thin wedge of university educated, Guardian reading, acai drinking, Instagram filtering, Ocado ordering, chuckling neeks, is not only limiting; it's laughable.

Just yesterday Hannah Ewens wrote the following for Vice, asking the question "Why do we talk about millennials like they're all middle-class?":

"The stereotypical life of gen Y has been shaped through and by the media. It's often based on studies that focus on university-educated young people in high-flying industries. This narrative is maintained by both a sprinkling of young media voices who legitimize these ideas with personal experience and the comment sections of newspapers which are dominated, like the media, by older people."

This shaping and misdirection is also at the centre of how our relationship with club culture and hedonism is being wrongly rewritten. The truth is, the misgivings and dismissals most likely coming from the acid-house generation—ravers turned media professionals— who partied through the early 90s, enjoyed the prosperity of the start of the 21st century, and now can't understand why the youth of today "don't know how to party." They're ignoring the rise in illegal raves, the gurning 14 year olds, the nos canisters on every street corner, the peaks in student house parties, and the clashes with police most likely because it's not happening to their financially comfortable kids.

That said, it's created an interesting social anomaly, a discourse where excess is no longer the focus of scorn, and instead moderation is the fault. Perhaps this comes down to just how much the previous generation sees themselves as the ultimate party-throwers, meaning criticizing the youth for going in too hard would resemble some sort of defeat—conceding that they weren't necessarily the best at staying up late. So instead, they opt to obsess over the mitten wearers, the tea-drinkers, and the degree finishers, thus allowing them to preserve their title and shake their fists.

It shouldn't really matter—young people don't need validation from media commentaries—yet right now, it does. Frustratingly, the 'generation boring' moniker has become a regularly used explanation for the disappearance of clubs despite the fact we have yet to see a major nightclub close citing "lack of interest" as the reason. The causes robbing Britain of its nightlife lie with councils and licensing boards smothering club culture, not disinterested teenagers dribbling over Orange is the New Black. The myth of the modern, moderate millennial is a flimsy category that covers a slim, relatively well-off portion of young people. In the struggle to save nightlife, the hardest battle continues to be the fight against misrepresentation. Proving that not everyone picks Nutri-bullets over nightclubs.

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