Earlier this summer, a clip of me went viral. I was on my friend Esther’s podcast somewhat jokingly expressing my concern about the decline in clubbing and how young people don’t know how to dance on tables anymore. It has 11.3 million views on IG reels alone and hundreds of thousands of shares. The resounding sentiment in the comment section: agreement.
More recently, another content creator Rae Christine ( @raechristine___) also went viral, lamenting the same thing. Rae Christine expressed her sadness about clubbing’s demise, and encouraged people to wear heels again. The internet had words to say about my millennial sister’s choice of shoe, but the sentiment remains: what has happened to club culture?
I just returned from Mykonos and am happy to report that club culture in Europe is still going strong. But what about non-Euro summer clubbing? What about the great nightclubs of eras past, specifically in the US and UK? Which my millennial sisters among us also cut their teeth at Mahiki, Tenjune and Hyde, (may they rest).
I think before we decide if we can save clubbing as we once knew it, we must first analyze what happened. My diagnosis: cell phones and social media. Sure, I gripped my blackberry tightly while I was clubbing in the 2000s, frantically BBMing boys in the bathroom line, but once I was done I put my phone away, often letting it run out of battery as a symbol of my party endurance. I wasn’t uploading to IG stories, I had no fear a video of me dancing would be uploaded to TikTok to be mocked, and I certainly didn’t have 59 iMessages to go through at any given time. Clubbing used to be a thing you did to forget the world, and now with our phones, that’s impossible.
Deeper still, I think the digital watch-dog age we live in has caused us to deeply fear being embarrassed. See: Gen Z’s obsession with 'cringe'. Another trend on TikTok that circulated recently was making fun of how 'older people' aka anyone not Gen Z dances: apparently it is deeply humiliating to dance with your hands in the air. Think back to all the hit songs from the 2000s laden with instructions to 'throw your hands up' - well, no longer. Everyone is so worried they’ll misstep and it will land online. I truly believe this anxiety is connected to us being unable to club in the same way, except when we’re four espresso martinis deep on holiday in Croatia.
And yet, there are signs of life. Brat summer, for example. The anti-clean girl aesthetic cultural movement led by millennial queen Charli XCX. Her banger of an album followed through with a summer of meticulous branding and creative direction has the girlies smoking cigs, wearing sunglasses inside and dancing on tables again. The Cobrasnake (Mark Hunter, the American photographer known for his photographs of American nightlife from the mid 2000s ) even shot her birthday party… we are so back.
Plus, Jeffery Campbell just announced that the iconic indie sleaze icon shoe, the Lita is back. Some of us club rats still have our originals (I had black leather because obviously), but I’m excited for this new generation to get their hands on what can only be described as simultaneously the most comfortable and most dangerous pair of clubbing shoes available to man. For the uninitiated, the Lita is a sky-high platform bootie popularised in the 2000s. Who knows, maybe all the kids need to get into clubbing is a really comfortable pair of shoes.