The list of reasons why Gina*, 23, doesn’t really go out these days is long. ‘I haven’t been in quite a while’ she tells me, ‘I feel like nobody really goes. Everybody seems to end up in pubs or bars. Clubbing is expensive and the truth is that there aren’t that many good places to go.’
In 2005 there were 3,144 clubs in the UK. In 2015 there were only 1,733 and counting. The number of places where you can lose, find and lose yourself again is declining.
This year in London alone several high profile closures have taken place. Fabric’s doors were forcibly shut for the last time, ostensibly because of drug-related deaths but, in reality, it was also because of a complex cocktail of socio-economic reasons as opposed to drugs.
Fabric joins a long list of venueswhich have struggled to stay afloat in recent years. Rising property prices, circling developers and relaxed licensing laws which allow bars and pubs to stay open later aside, is it possible that the youth of today are also less supportive of night time culture than previous generations? There has been outrage about Fabric’s closure, but not on the sort of scale you might expect. Has clubbing ceased to be the cherished past time it once was and if so, why?
‘I limit my nights out for fear of the short-term future’, Sarah, 22, says. ‘I know I won’t be able to function on a hangover…and if I’m paying 10 grand to do a Master’s I can’t afford to take a day off.’
Does she feel guilty about the prospect of going out and having fun for it’s own sake when times are tight? ‘I guess I do…I feel guilty for having fun…mainly because it costs so much. I think this extends to a bigger culture of guilt for our generation…people feel guilty about wanting to leave work on time. Even when I’ve been doing unpaid work placements I’ve felt the need to stay after working hours.’
A recent report came out of America which seems to confirm this. It found that Millennials are the worst generation for not using their annual leave and being reluctant to take time off. Almost half of those surveyed considered it as a good thing if their bosses saw them as ‘work martyrs’.
I ask Gina whether she thinks going out has become less acceptable as a pastime. Originally from Cheltenham, now living in London she feels like the culture of going out has changed in recent years. ‘It’s definitely less acceptable to go out and get wasted than it used to be. I get the impression at work, that 10 or 20 years ago it was kind of cool and more ‘rock chick’ to go out in the week for instance but if I come in with a hangover I see everyone drinking green juices and then I just feel shit. But, on the flip side, I feel guilty when I don’t go out but when I do I feel bad about being there. I don’t admit that I’d rather be at home watching Netflix.’
Weekend hedonism was once something to be celebrated or, at the very least, seen as a necessary foil to a stoic attitude to work during the week. Leisure time was something to be cherished and preserved, often with the sole purpose of indulging in life’s finer things. In philosophy it was long considered to be the case that human beings are motivated by both pleasure and pain, in equal measure.
At the turn of the Twentieth Century having an abundance of leisure time was aspirational, a marker of being a member of the middle to upper classes. However, today, it’s somehow become desirable to be busy and productive at all times. We spend our weekends taking on extra work, doing ‘self development’ or going to extreme exercise classes as opposed to letting it all hang out during long, boozy pub sessions. We’re addicted to being busy for fear of being labeled as ‘lazy’.
Could it be possible that the narrative which has emerged out of the last decade of Conservative government be partly responsible? We’ve not only seen the debt that graduates emerge into adulthood carrying increase, forcing them to think very seriously about their finances from a young age, we’ve had it drilled into us that when it comes to your place in society you are either a ‘striver’ or a ‘shirker’. The subtext of this narrative, at a time when our nation was coming out of a recession and seeing the nature of work change was that we are all ‘replaceable’ so you need to prove your credentials as a ‘striver’ or you’ll be out on your ear.
Some have argued that the closure of Fabric is symptomatic of a wider shift towards a new puritanism in Britain: a culture in which fun, hedonism and cultural experimentation are no longer valued. It was a space where people were going to drink, dance, stay out late, hook up and do drugs. Clubs in Berlin are awarded cultural institutional status, in Britain the general consensus seems to be that they serve no worthwhile or, perhaps more to the point ‘respectable’ purpose, it was right that the police crack down on such a den of iniquity. Much better that young people sit at home in their living room-less flats, bathed in the luminescent glow of their Netflix accounts and stay out of trouble.
If a new puritanism is on the rise in Britain it’s too simplistic to say that it’s being imposed on young people by the ideology of politicians, although that does seem to be the case to some extent. Poll after poll has demonstrated that younger generations today are actually rather conservative, having more in common politically speaking with their grandparents’ than their parents’ generations.
Another huge influence on the neo puritanism of the young has got to be the simple fact that we have less money than our elders. Indeed, the Office for National Statistics has found that young people are less likely to drink, while higher earners drink at least five days a week.
Emma is 25, she thinks that guilt plays a huge part in all of this. She says that, until now, she’s felt immense guilt for ‘having fun’. So how does she spend her time? ‘The majority of my free time has always had to be spent on something that would be positive for work or developing a new skill for my future’ she says, before telling me that she’s trying hard to let her hair down a bit more. How I ask? ‘I’m getting a bit better at fiercely defending time to watch something like Stranger Things or have a drink with someone after work.’ Netflix and the occasional drink hardly count as hedonism. Does she think her peers are more stoical than those slightly older than them? ‘yes, absolutely…we’re constantly being told we won’t own a house, we won’t have a job for life…you feel a constant sense of needing to be at the top of your game.’
At 28, nearly 29, I can’t help but feel nostalgic for my teens and early 20s. I felt little guilt about chasing the night and rarely gave it a second thought. Some of the biggest adventures of my life happened between the hours of 3am and 6am and some of the strongest bonds with friends were made on loud, crowded, sweaty dance floors.
Recently I found myself drawn to a colourful book in the shop of an art gallery, ‘RAVE’ it read on the cover. I flicked through it and realised that a particular era in dance music and clubbing culture had become a historical talking point as opposed to the cultural cutting edge. If neo puritanism is the order of the day and stoicism is the new hedonism, is there a danger that we’re going to lose a really important part of what it is to be young?
I asked Dr Rupert Till whether I was simply being wistful for my salad days or whether a real sea change was occurring. He is a Reader in Music at the University of Huddersfield. His research explores electronic dance music, club cultures, trance and spirituality.
He explained that ‘in the 1990s at the peak of UK dance music culture, 1.5 million people were going clubbing every weekend, that is more people than would take part in the Methodist church. For young people it provided a generation a focus for millennial fever, allowing society to ritualise the marking of this point of time. A generation embraced transcendental and psychedelic trance experiences on the dance floor, creating a subculture focused around ceremonial dancing and drug taking.’
What was it about that particular period that fostered clubbing culture and provided the perfect conditions for it to flourish in? Till thinks that electronic dance cultures ‘provided a sense of home to a generation that had lost faith in traditional communal structures, and offered opportunities to still the mind and embrace the body in a Western culture that had become disenchanted with the individualised modern search for the new.’ More than anything, he says, it was a generation’s embrace of ‘the value of dancing together, of losing and dissolving the ego on the dancefloor’ and it centered around ‘losing yourself and connecting to those around you…as well as the transcendental wonder of dancing until you disconnect from day to day life, and connect with something or somebody else.’
That connection – be it deepening your relationship with somebody you already know or forging something new with a stranger – is something that you can’t do on the sofa while you binge watch a Netflix original series. I ask Sarah whether she thinks club closures are concerning? Whether she’s worried about what younger millennials are missing out on? ‘To be honest’ she says, ‘I worry about not being able to find a job at the end of this year…we’re so busy worrying about life in general that we’re not taking the time to look after ourselves, let alone have fun. But no one wants to complain for fear of being labelled entitled.’
Perhaps stoical neo puritanism is the inevitable order of the day in post austerity Brexit Britain. However, culture moves in cycles. In recent decades music culture and the spaces in which people experience it has shifted and evolved: disco in the 70s, new romanticism in the 80s and rave in the 90s were all reactions to particular socio-economic conditions. Music is alive and well today but it remains to be seen what will come out of the 2010s: the decade which doesn’t quite seem to know how it wants to express itself yet.
*names have been changed
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.