Millennial club culture trend takes over social media as Gen Z learns how wild and cringe nights out were

There was a time when going out meant squeezing into a dress you could barely breathe in, putting on heels that had absolutely no business being that high and drinking whatever alcohol was left in the house — regardless of whose glass it had been sitting in.

There were no Ubers waiting outside your house, no carefully curated “get ready with me” videos and certainly no consideration for whether you’d look good in the photos the next morning.

In fact, the photos were almost guaranteed to be terrible.

Think tiny digital cameras, flash photography, aggressively orange Valencia filters, Facebook albums with 147 photos in them and at least one picture of someone crying, vomiting or asleep in a strange location.

And somehow, we survived.

Now millennials are looking back at their chaotic younger years — and Gen Z is being given a horrifying glimpse into what passed for a normal night out in the early 2010s.

A trend has taken off across social media in recent weeks, with millennials sharing the things they used to do on nights out that would leave younger generations completely baffled.

And, honestly, some of the confessions are enough to make you wonder how we ever made it to 30.

Caitlyn Munyard shared a carousel on Instagram reflecting on her millennial years.

“Physically, I’m a 32-year-old mum. Mentally, I’m still a millennial somewhere in the early 2010s 🤪,” she wrote.

“When life revolved around music festivals, going out multiple nights a week, zero responsibilities and putting a Valencia filter over everything before uploading it to this brand new thing called Instagram.

“Before everything was content, nights out needed to be aesthetic and our questionable choices were documented in 4K 😂.

“It was chaotic but was SO much fun. Forever some of my favourite memories!”

She is certainly not alone.

Kelly McCarren shared on Instagram a video.“These are things millennials would do that the young of today simply wouldn’t believe,” she said.

First up was perhaps one of the most questionable traditions of all — combining whatever was left after pre-drinks into a single bottle and taking it with you.

“Germs didn’t exist back then,” she joked.

“You just were on the war path to stay as inebriated as possible.”

There was also the footwear.

“The heels that we were wearing were diabolically high,” she said.

“We looked like baby gazelles.”

McCarren has a point.

Millennial women were somehow expected to spend an entire night dancing, walking between venues and lining up for taxis in heels that looked more suited to an architectural demolition project than a night out.

Then there was the complete lack of concern about photographic evidence.

Former Bachelor star Tara Pavlovic shared her own take on the trend, admitting she misses the days when social media was considerably less curated.

“I just cannot believe how different social media is these days. Honestly, it used to be loose. No one cared,” she said.

“I feel like life was so much more authentic.”

Back then, whatever was on your digital camera simply made the Facebook album.

“That is me passed out with a spew bucket next to me and I put it on Facebook,” she said.

There was no deleting a photo because your face looked bad.

No spending 20 minutes choosing the most flattering frame.

No wondering whether the lighting was right.

If your friend took 400 blurry photos on a red digital camera, all 400 were going online.

Puffy eyes? Upload it.

Double chin? Upload it.

Someone asleep on the dancefloor? Absolutely upload it.

Someone caught mid-vomit? Well, that’s going in the album too.

“I really miss when no one cared… When Facebook was basically just a photo album of the life you were ACTUALLY living,” Pavlovic captioned her post.

“You went to a festival to dance, not to get the perfect photo. You took 400 blurry, unflattering photos on your red digital camera and uploaded every single one. And you didn’t give a shit what anyone thought.

“We weren’t characters on the internet yet. We were just living our lives and occasionally putting the evidence online.

“But like it was legit evidence — not at all curated for likes.

“I miss it.”

And perhaps that is the strangest part of the millennial party era.

We had absolutely no idea how good we had it.

We were dancing instead of filming ourselves dancing.

We were drinking instead of reviewing the cocktail menu for TikTok.

We were taking terrible photos instead of taking 47 versions of the same selfie.

And, most importantly, we were blissfully unaware that one day we’d be trying to explain all of this to Gen Z, who probably don’t care, think we’re deeply cringe and are wondering why we keep talking about the year 2012.