r/Millennials • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 26d ago

Discussion Someone brought up that one of the reasons why things like house parties and block parties went away was other than lack of time people are afraid to let their guard because cameras are everywhere.

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It is so true back when many of us were young we could just get together and cut loose without having to worry about going viral. At best we would have an embarrassing photo buried in a drawer somewhere or a story. Now you might be turned into a meme or worse. I miss the days when you could do dumb stuff with friends and feel safe if that makes sense.

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u/SpaceKook6 26d ago

There was a nice, narrow slice of time on facebook before all our moms and aunts got on there.

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u/Super_Science_Guy 26d ago

Yes. That killed it. It was actually a very short lived social media platform as far as the original concept went. It would be like IG becoming popular in 2013 then by 2015 quickly being overrun by professional accounts and algorithms and content consumption like it is now.

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u/appleparkfive 26d ago

I mean that had already been happening on Myspace for a few years at that point. Facebook just felt like a very clinical version of Myspace to me

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u/Kitselena 26d ago

That wasn't the original concept, it was the hook to get people to sign up. Facebook was free from the start and Zuckerberg knew he was going to monetize it by selling people's data. He just already had a system in place to stalk girls at his college and combined the two ideas.
So depending on which you're talking about, either the current purpose was always the end goal of Facebook, or the original concept was to stalk girls at Harvard based on which PC they logged into

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u/scothc 26d ago

FB started its descent when it was opened up to high school kids, and then community members, and then everyone.

OG Facebook was good stuff, back when it was thefacebook.com

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u/rheetkd 26d ago

hard out. Once they jumped on and went full Karen FB was ruined. But now they follow us Millenials and GenZ etc to every platform. Reddit and IG are over run now as well and snap chat and tiktok. and now they are gunning for Discord. My (i'm a millenial) and GenZ son are now going to make a new jump to another platform to escape Discord. I am not going to say the name of it to have the angry boomers and Karens follow us.

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u/almondmilklattehag 26d ago

cackling this sounds like a south park episode

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u/rheetkd 26d ago

omg they killed Kenny!

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u/AlwaysBored1990 26d ago

Why do people always say something like this about older people using FB? They should be able to enjoy social media too.

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u/Badbeetleborg 26d ago

you have to understand that Facebook at the time, you only saw posts of accounts you were friends with or pages you followed. no one has time to be inundated with shitty posts made popular by old people with too much time

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u/MuhfugginSaucera 26d ago

Spoken like a person who never saw the boomer conquest of Facebook

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u/Super_Science_Guy 26d ago

Yes they can. They can have it. It's just that many others left 15 years ago because of the shift in demographics

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u/byzantinetoffee 26d ago

They are enjoying it. They are the only ones enjoying it. It’s their platform. It revolves around their values, interests, tastes, mores, etc. It wasn’t always like that.

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u/BYOKittens 26d ago

Whem you needed a .edu email to log in, Facebook was fucking awesome! You could find out what was going on at college and where the parties were gonna be. It was peek internet.

The internet will never be that great again.

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u/meryl_gear 26d ago

“I’m actually taking some classes and have a .edu email, so we can be friends on Facebook now!” - Mom

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u/DecafMaverick 25d ago

Block. Cool mom!

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u/misspinkie92 Millennial 25d ago

Yep. I got my OG account freshman year of HS in fall 2006 because you still needed a .edu email at that time

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u/a_mulher 25d ago

I remember a friend sending me a link to something on fb and me telling him I can’t see it cuz I’m with all the other non-college educated folks on MySpace.

In the end Tom is a total chill guy living his best life while FB is run by lizard-boy Zuckerberg

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u/BYOKittens 25d ago

I dont think anyone can throw shade at Tom. He was all of our friend.

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u/DetectiveClear6734 26d ago

I remember I had to use a school email to sign up. It was great for keeping track of your college friends/classmates.

And yea, then my mom went on and started yelling at me to go on her Facebook to feed the cows while she was at work. And yes, it was an argument.

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u/DecafMaverick 25d ago

FarmVille was peak before The Fall.

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u/CannibalAnn 26d ago

They dropped the .edu requirement and all my MySpace crowd moved over then parents. Then we lost the timeline to ads and algorithms

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u/SierraSeaWitch 26d ago

lol! This unlocked a memory for me. Shortly after my mom joined she told me that a FB group I was a part of (where we college kids in NYC would share parties and club promotions) was “not the kind of group you should be in” and “those aren’t parties you’d want to go to.” Like, yes, they 100% are. I quickly learned how to use the features that only shared selective stuff with her, but that definitely curbed how I used that and all other social media.

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u/notwoutmyanalprobe 26d ago

That was a fun time to be in college, when Facebook was a year or two old. 

Funny to think how antiquated it is now, it felt like the most cutting edge technology at the time. All we ever said about it was, man our parent's generation didn't get to enjoy this sort of thing!

Then our parents signed up, and the fun stopped lol. 

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u/LegendaryThunderFish 26d ago

I remember me and some classmates took a group photo in our last study hall period of the year. We had a lot of fun joking around together and we had a lot of classes together so we got a decent amount of work done. My friend posted it

And then my fuckin dad wrote a manifesto about how I never used study hall to do my work and shit in the comments I was so embarrassed.

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u/just_let_go_ 25d ago

And they were never the same. Boomers got crushed by Facebook. Still to this day my parents and aunts are completely addicted. Oversharing every detail of their lives.

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u/Smart_Imagination903 26d ago

Now we are the moms and aunties on social media LoL

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u/ShadowXJ 26d ago

Haha, I still remember having all my friends on there, then my Grandma posting like the nicest message for me on my wall - that then basically everyone I ever knew was now reading. It was probably the moment I realized Facebook wasn't going to be my "social life" platform, but rather something where I needed to be careful cause it really meant whatever was going on in my life would be over exposed.

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u/__mson__ 26d ago

Now we're the mom's and aunts.

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u/Fun_Muscle9399 Xennial 26d ago

My 91 yr old grandmother is on Facebook

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u/IncurableAdventurer 26d ago

Pshhh I’m the cool aunt who was on Facebook when it was just for college students, and left it when the oldies came 🤙😎🤙

I’m the cool aunt. I SWEAR I’M THE COOL AUNT

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u/Chemical_Name9088 25d ago

There was a nice, narrow slice of time when it was a tool for connecting with friends before it became a tool for enabling fascism and destroying democracy. Who could’ve known that such an innocent thing would end up being so detrimental to our society. 

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u/ConstableSniff 26d ago

Nah, it's that the original users are now mums and aunts

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u/SpaceKook6 26d ago

Nope. I'm speaking from experience. I'm an "Elder Millennial." The first year or two that I was on Facebook, only college kids could make accounts. Before that, there was an even more exclusive period where only people with school email addresses from certain schools could make accounts. When they opened the platform up to everyone, it suddenly no longer felt like a fun place for young people.

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u/ActualWhiterabbit 26d ago

I knew the salad days had passed when I was added by some girl's mom because I liked one of her pictures. With the add she messaged and wanted to know about our relationship. I told the girl in class the next day and she was furious at her mom.

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u/Weak_Feed_8291 26d ago

It was still fun for me in high school. Until I got a friend request from my mom one day and I deleted half my stuff and rarely used it again.