Have you ever been to a house party? Are they similar to the ones we see in the movies?

26 comments

1. Sometimes, yeah. During college I’d say I went to quite a few house parties pretty similar to those portrayed in television and film.

   Of course, like any film aspects can be exaggerated and rarely give a great glimpse into reality, especially with the varying lifestyles of real people.

2. Yeah, I-I’ve totally been to parties! My girlfriend, she goes to another school, you wouldn’t know her, she’s not into social media anyway so you can’t look her up, she throws lots of parties!

3. Not only have I been, but my house was the scene of quite a few.

   Some were kind of movie like, other than people were generally respectful of the property. For the most part it was always limited to people I would have wanted there, meaning there weren’t total rondos showing up.

   But they did often feature kegs and people grilling in the back yard and red solo cups and bottles and cans of various alcohols.

4. Yeah, I’ve been to countless parties in high school and college parties that are exactly like the movies. Beer kegs, red solo cups, beer pong, flip cup, costumes, people passing out, jumping off rooftops into pools, passing out on the floor, vomiting… actually more probably happens in real life than most depictions in movies, but the movies are pretty accurate.

5. Sure when I was in high school ALL the time. Literally one every weekend. On nights that we couldn’t find a house to use, we partied in the woods somewhere.

   It was very stereotypical – expect dancing! Kegs, drinking games, PACKED houses, couples in the upstairs bedrooms, people puking out windows, cops, skinny dipping, stuff getting absolutely trashed, literally swing from chandeliers (doesn’t go well), and a fair big of dangerous shenanigans.

6. Yes. Some are. I’ve been to parties that were every bit like the ones in most movies.

   Most of the time they aren’t like that. More often you’re just hanging out with a closer group of friends/roommates.

7. Many house parties, mostly in college, some after college. They aren’t as wild as what you see in movies, because if a movie just showed a bunch of people standing around talking and playing beer pong or dancing it wouldn’t be that interesting. But generally house parties are: a bunch of people are in a house, one room probably has music playing and people dancing, another room might have a table where people are playing drinking games (flip cup, beer pong, quarters, kings or some other card game…), the other rooms and back yard will have knots of people standing around talking. Sometimes there might be grilling in the back, but maybe not. Most people are drinking alcohol, usually beer, at least in my experience. That’s basically it. Pretty fun!

8. Only as a teenager but it was nothing like movies. It was so tame. No booze. Doritos and we watched Monty Python.

9. Yes, but I’ve never been to a movie style house party.

   It’s usually friends and family, burgers or pizza/pasta (or both), and alcohol. Somewhere between half a dozen and a few dozen people. People may get drunk, but not wasted. Mostly it’s just hanging out and socializing. When I was younger there was often dancing. Maybe someone will pull out a movie or games, especially when we’ve got kids there. My uncle with a lake house has the best parties because it’s at the lake and he’s got a boat.

   Edit: I’m 40. House parties aren’t limited to rebellious high schoolers. The parents who actually own the houses host parties as well.

10. As a teenager yes they were a lot like in the movies. Someone’s older sibling would get a keg, we’d go to the house of someone whose parents were out of town, or permissive. Someone’s crappy garage band would play live music.

    Everyone would drink and smoke until the wee hours.

11. Yes. Mostly in college. They’re usually smaller and not as crazy as the movies but they can be similar.

12. In college we had street parties a few times a year. In all honesty they were probably crazier than what’s shown in some movies. But at the same time most parties it was just a bunch of friends playing Mario cart or something

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14. They can be. But the quality of the party is the result of the quality of the hosts.

    You can have a great party with equal amounts of gentlemen and ladies, great decoration, awesome dance music with space for dancing, and a wide selection of beer and alcoholic

    Or you can have a party of mostly gentlemen, with no decorations, the fluorescent overhead lights are on, there’s a television playing the band “Sublime” and nothing else, and there’s only cheap beer available.

    I witnessed these two parties on the same night nextdoor to each other.

15. Yes – and I’d say that although generally they *can be* exaggerated for movies/tv (*at least, not every single party is like one you’d see in a typical teen show or movie) I have been to some ragers that were pretty much *exactly* like what you’d see in a movie – broken up by the cops and all.

16. Been to many, thrown many, back in the day.

    There are all sorts of parties. It just depends on the people throwing them and who shows up. Mostly the people throwing them. I’ve been to quiet civilized ones and ones that honestly make most Hollywood versions look tame.

    A friend of mine had an old house way out in the country with a huge property. He had a whole disc golf course out there, and we also rode ATVs around. At night we sat around a fire and some people played guitar, banjo and mandolin. Very chill scene, almost wholesome if you ignore all the beer and weed.

    I used to hang out with these guys who were super into extreme sports, and that shit got crazy. They moved all their furniture out of the first floor for their parties, and those guys liked to get rowdy. They would have a group chicken fight / mosh pit thing at times. Chicken fighting =/= fighting chickens, it is when someone rides another guy’s shoulders and they try to knock off another guy riding someone’s shoulders…works best with a little guy and a big guy. I’m a big guy, so the first time I partied at their place this one little wiry dude leapt off the bar (yes they had a bar in their living room) and onto my shoulders, no warning, and kicked my sides like a horse yelling “giddyap!” We ended up knocking one pair of guys over so hard the top dude’s head went through the drywall. Like it disappeared into the wall up to his neck. He freed himself and roared, and grabbed the beer out of someone’s hand and pounded it, then roared again.

    I’ve been at a party where it started snowing hard, and seeing the snow building up outside kept everyone excited so nobody got sleepy and nobody wanted to leave, so we just hung out and drank beers until there was two feet of snow outside, and then we went out around dawn and went sledding down the street. Some good citizen type yelled at us for making noise and called the cops, and the police officer arrived, saw that we were just having fun in the snow, and he was like “Screw that guy for calling me out for this in a snowstorm. Gimme a sled.” And he made a couple of runs before leaving.

    I’ve been at a party where everyone was on ecstasy and the guy who lived there was DJing shirtless with a 9mm stuck in his jeans. Very sketchy scene but I got blown by two girls, so…

    One party my roommates and I threw, we had a bunch of mushrooms and two girls decided to make plaster casts of me and my friend’s faces. Being sealed in plaster and breathing only through straws stuck up your nose…well, I wouldn’t recommend it while tripping on mushrooms.

    At another of our parties, everybody painted pictures on the walls. Haha, it was a rental house too. We didn’t think that one through. At that same party, somehow a fucking oppossum wandering into the house and someone discovered it in the bathroom while peeing. That was some funny shit. We heard this wild screaming coming from the bathroom, I busted in there and Pete is backed into a corner, trying to hold in his pee, but not entirely successfully, and hollering at this oppossum that was hissing at him from under the tub.

    I remember one party where somehow some friends and I got our hands on a blowgun and shot needle darts at each other’s butts until our pants were speckled with little blood spots. Why?!?

    I’ve been to a graduation party, the guys who were graduating lived in an old house that was going to be torn down and the property turned into a housing development, immediately after they moved out. Their landlord told them they could do whatever they wanted to the place, it’s just getting bulldozed. So we trashed the place, smashed through walls, tore doors off their hinges, and dragged an old (really old, not worth anything) upright piano out of the house, smashed it with sledgehammers, and set fire to it. Fun fact: this is actually quite dangerous as it turns out. The tensioned wires started snapping and shooting sharp, glowing-hot bits of themselves out of the wrecked piano at high speed.

    These are some of the coolest or craziest ones of course. Many, many more that were just people hanging out and talking while they shipped beer. It doesn’t have to get crazy to be fun. Sometimes all you want is to just socialize and meet some new people.

    I don’t know what it’s like now, with everyone socializing online – we didn’t have an option – if you wanted to hang out with your friends, you had to *hang out with your friends* – and even back in the early 90s, my set of friends was a little on the wild and inventive side. Your mileage may vary.

17. In the movies they are usually in rich neighborhoods where the houses are close. In those neighborhoods, the police would be called by 8:00.

    Usually the wild parties are in less affluent neighborhoods or in rural areas.

    The rural ones are usually the crazy ones.

18. It’s kind of like that, but obviously everything in movies is exaggerated.

    Shoulder-to-shoulder crowd? Check.

    Ridiculous consumption of alcohol? Also check.

    Deafeningly loud rap music? It’s actually louder in real life than it is in a movie. Movie characters can somehow hear their friends talking to them.

    Guy jumping off the roof into the pool? Rarely.

    Cops show up and 17 year old kids run around everywhere in sheer panic? Usually the cops don’t show up to those parties, but it’s a surprisingly accurate depiction of how things turn out when they do.

19. For sure yes. My college was a “dry campus”. So no alcohol allowed in college owned housing. Off campus housing is where all the parties happened and they were always in houses. Tons of unfinished basements in my neck of the woods and we would have very big house parties. 200 ppl in 2,000 sq ft house.

    I actually lived in a “party house” my senior year. It was wild to have an “open party” (non Greek life) and have random ppl show up and party. All the houses would get nicknames and be passed down between certain groups. Bat Cave, Country Club, Hotbox, Upper deck, Bamboo Lounge, vineyard, two six one, green acres, old style, Zanzibar, marushkas, TBF (the big fucker), econo lodge

20. I went to loads of house parties back in high school. Generally we played Cooking Mama or Guitar Hero/Rockband. I killed Baba O’Reilly in a duet with my friend’s mom.

21. Some house parties are absolutely like you see in the movies. Went to a few frat parties where they had a fire suppression system rigged with neon paint and black lights in the basement, strippers , djs. Full bars set up in the living room with bartenders, 2nd floor was the “smoking section” a makeshift rooftop patio was super sketchy but had couches and lights.

    Another one was a trust fund babies parents mansion on a lake. People were trashing the house and they didn’t care. Got busted by the DNR of all agencies because they caught a couple of drunk minors fishing without licences. I heard later they arrested 15 ish people for underage drinking and another 15 or so with cocaine and LSD. That party was cool.

    Now I sit around with the boys and talk about health insurance while the kids run around the yard.

22. College house parties were next level. But, I was in a sorority, and most of the parties that I attended were frat ones, at a party school. One of the frat houses had a full ass DJ setup in the basement, lights, the works. There were huge bonfires out back, grilling and lots of alcohol/kegs, occasionally food trucks would be commissioned (especially for Taco Tuesday). Definitely similar to what you see in the movies. When I went to non-frat parties, they were more laidback. A lot of gaming, sipping wine, talking politics or whatever with a few people in the corner while everyone else played beer pong. I preferred those ones by far. 😀

23. Once went to a house party when we were in college and the police were called. By the time they showed up, there were only about 8 of us close friends, sitting around quietly watching The Little Mermaid. Police walked in, looked around, and said something like “carry on” and left.

24. Most aren’t like what you see in the movies, but they still have a couple aspects from what you see in the movies (getting way too drunk, people doing crazy shit way too close to the fire, pissing off neighbors/noise complaints, one night stands, fights), those are generally the memorable parts.

25. They aren’t always like the movies in that everyone is making out in this room. You always see in the movies that there is plenty of booze to go around but usually that’s not the case. Usually, they don’t end up buying enough.

26. In college I went to some wild house parties that were like you see in the movies. The jungle juice, the funnels, the keg stands, the beer pong. 100s of people crowding one house and dancing to crazy loud music.

    I went to one frat party where the house had a front porch and the roof was accessible by the second floor. 50 people were out there and dancing and caused the roof to collapse, spilling the occupants down onto the front lawn and street. A few broken bones that night.

    That said, most house parties I’ve been to in high school and after college were more low key events with maybe 15-30 people. A bit of dancing, a bit of beer pong or cornhole. Some flirting and chatting.