Downscaling the college party
A reluctant partyer's thoughts on the friendship recession
I’m not really a party person.
Sure, I went to some parties during my freshman year, but I can’t say that I got anything out of them. They’re a hazy memory in the distant past, a blur on a forgotten album cover.
Instead, the hangouts I go to now are a little different. My friends have taken to calling it the “chiller,” which implies a completely different vibe than the traditional college party. And it is.
You’ll see the doom scrollers, the people lying on the couch, joined by those who drank too much alcohol that night. On the other side of the room, there are the people playing Settlers of Catan or the (officially licensed) Jujutsu Kaisen survival game. Maybe there’s some people drinking on a balcony or back porch. Occasionally there’s a movie playing, which might be in the background or with everyone gather around. The lights are usually dimmed out.
It’s not quite a party, but it’s also not just a hangout. You could think of it as a downscaled party with more breathing space, literally and metaphorically. Or, it’s like a hangout that’s scaled up with concurrent activities happening. Whatever the interpretation is, the core premise is the same. This is the college party, but decentralized.
A compelling reason for the chiller might be the expectations of society on this generation, which have caused some chaos. Derek Thompson summarizes it well when he says that we’ve incidentally built a “world of greater professional ambition, more intensive parenting, and lavish entertainment abundance.” There’s a demographic in this generation that has never known a reality without these three elements.
A world of greater professional ambition is normal when it’s harder than ever to find a job, especially in computer science where I am; the pressure is on to constantly improve one’s resume and portfolio projects. I have historically been terrible at pushing back against the constant urge to work on this, and I know others are too. Even without this direct pressure, there is pressure in the social media age to maintain a “cleaner” reputation. After all, employers check social media too.
Intensive parenting is when my mom kept a watchful eye on my sister as she attended private school, underwent the hardest classes, and applied to top colleges. It’s also why my brother is undergoing a rotation of extracurriculars ranging from coding classes to sailing. It’s not a constant top-down directive; it’s more like instilling a belief in my siblings that this is what success looks like.
Finally, the abundance of entertainment has always been prevalent in our lives. For someone my age, the introduction of video streaming was announced by Netflix when we were just 3 years old. Video streaming, music streaming, and social media have all displaced what came before in some shape or form. Now, with TikTok and short-form content, we’ve arguably reached the endgame of passive content consumption.
Given these factors, I feel like the chiller (or whatever term your friends use) is a natural evolution of the college party. For a certain demographic, especially for one focused on their career, I would say it’s not just natural, but necessary.
We still want to see our friends, so why not host something which only includes these people? There are more affordances that are attractive: you don’t have to drink or do other substances, but you can. With more time dedicated to the grind, the chiller can become the primary way of engaging with friends; this is a hard-fought luxury in a traditional college party setting.
While I’m not advocating for intensive parenting, the fact that the trend exists contributes to this development too: with a more filtered exposure to the world, college presents an opportunity to get comfortable with friends at any pace one chooses. Personally, I know I didn’t make as many friends during my orientation week, but the ones I did eventually get to know became my friends for the entirety of college, and potentially beyond. In this process, had the humble chillers been replaced by larger-scale parties, I don’t think I would’ve made those connections.
Maybe the chiller concept isn’t entirely new. But in a world where the friendship recession is supposedly ever-looming, I like to think that our generation still enjoys having fun, and this is what has persisted.
Thank you for reading.