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This is The Manthropologist, a column by Charlie Sosnick about the Internet and the male mind.
Last week, a spate of articles ran about “wellness darties:” college events, usually in the South, in which students run, do calisthenics, and cold plunge. The coverage prompted a wave of hand-wringing from cornball Millennials, who jumped at the chance to share photos and videos of what a “real darty”—daytime party—looked like in their salad days. The New York Times wrote that grown-ups “took the wellness videos as a personal insult.” The founder of the most prominent wellness darty said he named it that to “rage bait the millennials.”
Speaking as a Zillenial: Why do we care? Why is it an affront to our sensibilities that kids want to jog together?
In part, I think we see it as an insult to our traditions. Other countries have universities, where you study and get a degree. But America has “college,” a four-year rumpsringa of youthful debauchery. It is a quintessential part of our culture, which we export around the globe through film, TV, and music videos. Foreign cities now have bars where you can play beer pong, just to get a taste of it.
When we see college kids working out and shotgunning energy drinks, it offends us. We want to see them doing Edward Fortyhands, inhaling huge bong rips, and passing out in the yard in a sea of Solo cups, because it means our heritage is being preserved. Perhaps the collective unc response to wellness darties actually a warning: We’ve seen your future, of office jobs and bosses and hangovers and aging. Enjoy what you have right now. Millennials famously hate adulting, and it frightens us to see Gen Z starting too early.
But Gen Z might have to. They know what college costs. They know how hard it is to get a job. They know that everyone is constantly filming and posting, generating kompromat that could follow them for the rest of their lives. Many college students are now influencers themselves. Going viral for barfing on the dancefloor could not just cost you a job tomorrow, but your brand deal today.
College partying is also a risky enterprise. Thousands of young people getting hammered together produces a lot of negative outcomes: sexual assault, addiction, mental health issues, accidental death. Awareness of these has increased, and tolerance for them has decreased in the past few decades. As alumni, we want a vibrant campus social life built around drinking, but with none of the consequences.
The colleges, to their credit, are left in an impossible position. They must create a playpen for illegal underage partying, while absorbing the legal and reputational liabilities of the worst outcomes. All this while running a hospital, a real estate portfolio, and an endowment. At my alma mater (Penn), the campus magazine just published a feature about how the University adopted “a strict set of rules…amounting—in practice—to a ban on parties.” The response from the University, which says that the school is “focused on maintaining an environment of personal safety while allowing for an enjoyable social experience,” tellingly came in part from the Office of Risk Management and Insurance.
But is it possible that today’s college students just don’t want to party as hard? In Runner’s World, one student said, “Fear not, we are still having a great time at Midtown bars and going crazy on game days. I just think there is a push to find social outlets that don’t completely revolve around drinking.” One wellness-darty defender on TikTok said, “If there was not a single Saturday in your entire four years at college where you were capable of getting up at 10 a.m., that’s a problem for your generation and not a failing on ours.”
Young people have grown up in an aesthetic culture that is alien to those just a few years ahead of it. These students are probably not looksmaxxers, but they are steeped in the same conditions that created it. Concepts like lookism and hypergamy, which were developed 15 years ago by incels, have now proliferated into broader culture and shape how young people think. It is more important than ever to look good. In practice, particularly in the fish bowl environment of a college campus, that demands a public performance of “healthy living.” You can’t just skip the bar, wake up early, and go for a run. You also have to drink matcha and cold plunge, all while scantily-clad and filming yourself.
And that might be the real source of Millenials and Gen X dread. While you were being a drunken slob, the next generation was developing discipline. Here comes a demographic wave of hardcore 21-year-old Chads, ready to break into the workforce and replace you.
This weekend, I came across another new college trend on social media: the Pants Beer. Someone buys a beer at the bar, gets everyone’s attention, then pours it down their pants. Watching it on Reels, I achingly wished I was still in college so I could convince one of my friends to do that (or do it myself). At least the Pants Beer kids are alright.
