I just don’t get it… Why is that important, especially for kids now, that feel like they need to do a YouTube video asking for a date or doing some meme stuff. Some teens even hire the hottest celebrity or ask them to appear in their prom? This is so bizarre for me, all that just for a frivolous night.
In my country prom was a thing but nowhere near as theatrical, I didn’t went to either my prom trip or the party. Also skipped half of my middle school trips.
It’s an important social event for teenagers. It affords a time for teens to dress up and look extra nice and make some coming of adult age decisions like asking your crush to dance, abstaining from peer pressure, etc.
It’s an event for teens to be feel special, have fun and to exercise self control. College comes quickly after and a lot of them are studying for finals and so on so it’s a good way to blow off steam.
Ultimately, just another cultural implementation. Other countries have similar events I can only imagine
Prom is fun. You get to hang out with all of your classmates, ask someone out. A subset of people are always going to go overboard, but keep in mind that you don’t see the “normal” cases. Most people just walk up to someone and ask them out. They find a date from the school or go alone.
I’m from Canada so I don’t know if the US is wildly different, but here it is a bit of a big deal, but I think part of that is what makes it fun, you sort of build a bit of hype around what would otherwise be just another school dance.
Is just weird for me, in my country nobody ask anyone dates is was just a party. And even like that I didn’t went… Always had the impression that USA gives this idea that you must get a date to go
The rituals started in the 1950s. At that time, in order to go on a date with someone, your parents had to chaperone you. It was the wisdom at the time. Prom and homecoming were the only exceptions, so it became a really big thing. Then those people grew up, impressed upon the next generation how homecoming and prom were the best times in high school, started making nostalgia movies about homecoming and prom. That created pressure to live up to this, girls started getting overly fancy dresses, guys started doing elaborate prom-posals, the wedding dress industry jumped in to fill the gap, and now it’s a whole capitalism-fest like Christmas and Valentine’s Day
FWIW I think it is actually a valuable social skill to be encouraged to ask someone out to prom. A lot of people don’t have many similar experiences throughout their lives.
I’ve never been with anyone in my life. I highly doubt it has to do with not going to a dumb party though.
I don’t really mean literally to practice asking people out. But there are times in your life where you need to ask people for things. It is hard to get over the anxiety, risk of social embarrassment and practice showing confidence (even if you are not). These are valuable skills in all sort of social circumstances.
I asked sometime to the prom and got turned down. All I learned was that rejection hurts a lot more than I would have thought.
Yeah, being rejected can destroy someone’s confidence
You might consider what’s driving you to put people down who are having fun
I don’t put anyone down just because I think a party is lame dude. They can do whatever they want, I can’t stop them.
When you call an event where kids get together to celebrate the end of high school “frivolous” and “dumb,” it really comes across as putting other people down.
you must get a date to go
You really don’t, it’s where the phrase “going stag” (To go without a date, or with a group of friends rather than a date) is commonly used.
Also, HS is important for developing social skills and prom is usually for seniors. The end of the last stage of childhood and an opportunity to flex those skills out as graduation is usually within a couple weeks after prom at which point you’re ejected into the adult world.
It’s just a fun event for teens to be teens before they go fully into the workforce or college
Yeah, with my kids and their friends, it was mostly one or two couples and then their girl and guy friends all went together as a group without dates.
I don’t know, why do Japanese schools have culture festivals? Is it not enough to say that some countries have different cultural norms and traditions?
Most US kids skip prom as well but there is a lot of pressure to go and have someone to bring. Honestly its not as big a thing as TV/movies makes it.
Thanks to COVID, we didn’t get to have a prom. I don’t feel like I missed out on anything.
There’s also a lot of variance within the US. In some towns prom is huge. In my home town it wasn’t as much. Many students elected not to go at all.
It’s sort of a first step into adulthood and just a way of marking a coming of age threshold as people head out into the wider world.
Most proms aren’t that crazy, I think the real thing you’re noticing is more the distorting effecf social media can have on any cultural tradition or practice. You’re seeing people who would go overboard about anything they thought might get them attention. Kind of like people who have insane weddings, the majority of people still have totally normal weddings for the most part.
Yeah it’s important to remember that social media has a distorting effect and shouldn’t be confused for reality. The things you see on social media have passed a certain filter. Namely that the person sharing it believed it ought to be shared. This alone means that viewing the world through social media will hide a lot of the mundanity and normality that actually is out there all around us.
most proms are held in a the gym with a shitty dj and shitty catered food. but you’re not gonna see that portrayed in media. parents drop them off, there are no limos.
Here they are big, catered events in a rented venue with expensive tickets, limos, etc. Friends daughter has several ~$500 dresses. I don’t understand how or why.
It goes to show the socioeconomic differences. The more affluent kids at my school went all out. There was expensive outfits, limos, and after parties at other venues. For others it was just mom dropping them off at the vanilla school hosted event and that’s it.
For a lot of high school seniors, prom is the last big event before graduation. It’s an event where you can hang out with a lot of your classmates away from school and parents and such. There aren’t too many opportunities to just hang out for a lot of teens, what with the homework and extra curricular activities and such occupying a lot of their free time. That being said, it’s not uncommon for people to skip the prom and some schools make it a bigger deal than others.
prom used to be an event where young adults get to actually act as adults in an adult setting.
unfortunately, the Infantilization of the unites states youth has turned this into something of a farce. its clearly backpeddled into child-fantasy land.
high school kids used to be given actual responsibilities, and treated like young adults… open campuses, student governments that could affect actual change. that is no longer the case.
I’m just going to throw out that if your understanding of US prom is based off of movies and videos people make to try and get views, that doesn’t match reality. For mine, it was fun to dress up and dance, but I knew plenty of people who didn’t go, and plenty who went without dates. And there was no prom queen or king or anything.
That’s like asking why people celebrate holidays.
That’s all it is. It’s a holiday that’s just for teens.
It’s ridiculous and goes along with the gender reveal parties and outrageous destination bachelor/ette parties. Opportunities to post pics of yourself and say ‘look how cool i am’.
Haterade
I though that as well
The USA is what we call the Great American Melting Pot. A bunch of cultures stripped of their cultural practices as much as possible.
It means we have very little in the way of innate cultural practices. Which is why we cling to things like sports, fast food, pop music, (much of which isn’t ours, but anyway), military celebrations; because we’re desperately trying to find ceremonial right of passage/cultural identity. We are a blank slate.
We don’t have a quince, we don’t have a bat mitzvah, we have prom. It’s stupid, but it’s ours.
I disagree we have everything that everyone has because we have everyone living here it’s just celebrated by whoever wants to celebrate what. Stop making it sound like a couple hundred year old country doesn’t have ceremonies we cherish.
Whoosh
Tbf that’s a better explanation than any other I’ve heard.
Tbf, being a melting pot also means all those cultures impact and influence “ours.” Plenty of Americans have bat mitzvahs, for instance, of course they’d be particularly the ones that are Jewish, but plenty of Americans also observe Ramadan. We have a lack of cohesive culture because we’re not just one cohesive “people,” yet we all are under the banner of “American.”
Our country is a melting pot, and so “our culture” is too, made up of pieces immigrants have brought with them from everywhere in the world. I think it’s pretty cool, personally.
“God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of the history man, no purpose or place, we have no Great war, no Great depression, our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we’ve been all raised by television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won’t and we’re slowly learning that fact. and we’re very very pissed off.”
-Tyler Durden
You have fun with all that! I otoh am going to eat shwarma, then hit the mexican ice cream truck for dessert. Maybe watch some anime after that with my friend from Prague.
Or to put it concisely: “even the fascists eat kebabs”
Yes yes I’m a fascist because I was born in a place you don’t like and appreciate the cultures others have decided to share with us. Does it get tiring, being a contrarian just for the sake of it?
Hey, I was agreeing with you. If even the far-right consume the foods of the very cultures they rally against, then those cultures have already assimilated into the public’s unconscious
Ah I misunderstood, my mistake.
I would separate the two – Prom isn’t necessarily theatrical in nature. It’s usually the first time a teen gets to dress up and do something special with friends, but the type of thing you’re seeing sounds like pretty typical “lets see if I can go viral” narcissistic behavior.
I haven’t seen anything like what you’re talking about, but Prom isn’t the only target of this type of thing.
Even without the viral part still think is weird. I already though it was weird during my time and that was over 15 years ago and in a third world country.
Just because you’re not into that sort of thing doesn’t make it weird.
“Weirdness” is a strange concept, honestly. People probably thought you were weird for not going.
Bullshit! Obviously there can only be one correct viewpoint and it’s mine
Only weirdos DON’T attend prom. Even I went.
Sure
A school dance isn’t just a date, it’s a social event. The US doesn’t really have a lot of public social rituals, so a school dance is a unique kind of social experience that doesn’t really exist outside of school. It probably wasn’t as big when there were town festivals and church holiday events where everyone knew each other, but over time the school dances have become the only thing left.
