Why has everyone become so serious?

Hannah Betts bemoans the death of never-ending nights out and the sober, short, not-even-sweet events that have almost entirely taken their place
Hannah Betts28 March 2018

Recently, I attended a ‘party’.

I say ‘party’ because I’m not entirely sure it qualified. It started at 5.30pm (5.30pm!) in the manner of some nursery tea. Alcohol was thin on the ground, the drabbest of work clothes were sported. There was no frolicking, no flirting and no happy fracas. Instead, clusters of couples (couples!) stood about talking in earnest yet desultory fashion before making a collective move for the door. The entire thing was done and dusted by 7.13pm. I’ve been to more exuberant funerals. Welcome to the New Seriousness, in which parties have been replaced by politics, carousing by causes, self-abuse by self-care.

Ten years ago, five years ago, three years ago even, life seemed like a non-stop party. One was out on the tiles every evening, typically with two or three bashes from which to choose. These days one is lucky to unearth half that, and even these tend to be sombre, well-intentioned affairs. It’s not that I have suddenly become a social pariah, rather it appears to be the way we’re choosing to live. As an events guru who asks to remain anonymous laments: ‘It’s not you, darling. It’s everyone. No one goes out any more without some bloody “reason”. It’s all so ditchwater dull — and those are the ones who can be persuaded to leave the house.’

Those who do still sally forth do so in cautious and conservative fashion. As Fernando Peire, director of The Ivy, recently explained: ‘In the 1990s Londoners did not eat early. Everybody ate late. The Ivy was full at midnight, while 6pm is not considered too early for dinner now.’ These early-bath-and-so-to-bed types aren’t heading off to have sex, they’re off to ‘sleep clean’ before sweating up a storm come morning. In my younger days, we did that on the dance floor. Now people pay some thug to put them through their paces.

Dry January seems bigger and more omnipresent than ever, canapés have to be vegan-friendly while nightclubs and pubs are dying out. Even La-La Land awards ceremonies have become po-faced with everyone striving to out-PC each other, social activists the only arm candy in town. At the Golden Globes, not one, but eight political campaigners accompanied its leading ladies on to the red carpet. How long before political stylists usurp sartorial ones?

In a poll in which I ask every Londoner I meet over the course of two weeks what their social lives consist of, I receive the following answers: ‘talks’, ‘my non-fiction book group’, ‘marches’, ‘exercise’, ‘theatre’, ‘chess’, ‘art galleries and museums’, ‘art-house films’ and ‘nothing’. The dreaded platitude ‘self-care’ crops up several times. Not one of them mentions clubbing, partying or dancing.

A couple refer to courses at Bloomsbury’s School of Life, where head of content Sarah Stein Lubrano tells me: ‘It’s easier to sell a special event with a politician than with a novelist, and with a psychologist rather than a B-list celeb. Not that novels aren’t serious, but politics has become a big concern lately. In many ways, our brand continues to rely on the relative seriousness of our audience, as our own message is rather sober. Most of all I am struck by the hunger of our audience for serious conversation about their lives, their goals and the wider world.’

Even fashion — formerly that great bastion of class A-fuelled frivolity — has gone dour. Phoebe Philo’s decade at Céline made impeccable, rather joylessly tasteful stealth wealth the order of the day. Elsewhere, we’ve had normcore, athleisure and a sense of pained privilege with slogan T-shirts stating things such as: ‘We should all be feminists.’ Of course we should. I just don’t need my T-shirt to say so, just as I don’t need a Hollywood star to tell me what books to read (thank you, Emma Watson). When even Kate ‘social maniac’ Moss is espousing a tome entitled Self-Care for the Real World, one knows the jig is up.

That great oracle of all things zeitgeist, Nicky Haslam, sums up what now passes for a social scene: ‘It’s the not-smoking, all the ghastly new diet fads, everyone seeing films on Netflix rather than jolly nights out at the cinema, then having rows after. No one has amusing opinions any more as every subject is a minefield of possible hate posting. You can’t make jokes now, let alone flirt. Nobody gossips. It’s all mindfulness, gym crazes and, worst of all, “rights”.’

The causes of this New Seriousness are all about us. With many still reeling from a bitter and bloody recession, next came the misery and uncertainty caused by the pale, male and stale triple whammy that is Brexit, Trump and Weinstein. Whatever one’s political persuasion, the turmoil that has ensued has been undeniable. At best, our daily news yields a sense of drudgery, at worst Armageddon. And, in unpredictable times, our impulse is to batten down the hatches and stay safe by staying put.

No one has embraced this tendency more than millennials, aka Generation Y, born between the early 1980s and mid-90s, for whom 9/ 11 and the global economic crisis have been as formative as occupying a virtual world, while attempting to save the real one. For, if Generation Y has been the po-faced driver of this New Seriousness, then it is because the world appears to be falling apart about their impoverished ears. Where once our bright young things coruscated, so today they glower within an all-encompassing gloom.

The average Gen Y-er consumes just five units of alcohol per week — equal to two glasses of wine — with 71 per cent preferring smoothies to alcohol. Where Nineties It girls engaged in fizz-fuelled carousing, so today’s society starlets run vegan juice empires; the latest party trend, a gym-based birthday bash. Millennials are day people rather than nocturnal animals, brunch their social zenith. Sourdough apart, their only addiction is house plants, if a recent Washington Post article is to be believed — and not of the wacky baccy variety.

Harry Mount, editor of The Oldie, certainly holds Generation Y responsible for the collective tedium. ‘Young people are taking themselves far too seriously and becoming increasingly self-obsessed,’ he argues. ‘That leads to tremendous worries about their bodies, health, career and happiness — and to very boring conversation and behaviour.’

After all, our dreary virtues don’t seem to be making Londoners any happier. For all our bleating about self-care, the incidence of anxiety and depression has never been greater. Perhaps the answer is to chill out, cut loose, let our hair down? The best thing about the New Seriousness must surely be that a New Hedonism is just around the corner? Amen to that.

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