See maybe this is why I never understood the supposed all-important-ness of Events. I still just hang out with friends or family or by myself rather than going to "events".
At the older end of "teens" - a lot of people enter partner dance scenes when they're starting college. So 18-20-ish. (I'm a late bloomer, only started dancing at 25.)
And at that point, yes, they start to do everything on Facebook.
I follow local market and food truck events, a couple of cool bars and arcades I like that frequently have events on, a place that does dog-centric events, local car shows that are of interest to me, etc. Facebook then surfaces other events that it thinks are of interest to me, and most of them are. I'd say 75% of my social calendar comes from Facebook events. I can understand young people not being interested in any of this and following their specific interests, like following a band on instagram rather than a venue on facebook.
> See maybe this is why I never understood the supposed all-important-ness of Events. I still just hang out with friends or family or by myself rather than going to "events".
It's not so much all-important, but it's the one feature that impacts Facebook-abstainers the most. If someone's planning a party and is lazily using FB events, you'll probably be left out if you don't have an account.
My point is that I, and I suspect lots of people, aren't reliant on being included in party planning of this sort. I just send or receive a message to my friends or family like "barbecue at 6:30 on Friday?" or way more often I don't do that at all and just chill at home. I'm not at all saying that there isn't a very large contingent of people for whom Events is super useful because they do way more stuff that makes sense to plan that way, I know that this contingent definitely does exist. What I'm saying is that there is another contingent of people like me who just don't do that, and people often seem to be in disbelief that such people exist. We do!
A few of the local meetups are organized over FB instead of Meetup.com (because even the few bucks that Meetup charged was "too expensive" - though I think more in time/logistics than in actual dollars).
Similarly, my daughter's GirlScouts troop uses FB exclusively for organizing/announcements/voting, etc.
I used to organise a local user group - it was free to attend, quite small, and we averaged maybe one meeting every couple of months. I wanted to put it on meetup.com for more visibility, but $10/month feels like a lot to pay for something so small and non-commercial.
It’s hard to coordinate large numbers of people without events. Organizing a party before Facebook was actually a lot of work compared to now, when all of the information you need is all in one place.
If we're gonna meet up for a few drinks or lunch/dinner, we just message a group (whatsapp/telegram) but if were sorting a weekend away, or a party then FB events gets used. Easy to keep the convo all together, post details, see whos coming etc.
When I started going to raves you got a phone call from a guy who heard from a guy that there was a layby off a remote B-road that you might want to be at and when you got there another guy would give you directions along an unnamed road to an abandoned airfield and that was where the rave was.
Now we got corporate raves on a public website. The old way was better.
Yes, the raves you will only hear about from friends of friends are very much alive and well. Weekly in my area. The bars/clubs close at two, these start right after and go to 8am... 1pm next day... whatever you want.
