The Death of the College Bar Scene

Web 2.0 or social media or whatever we’re calling it these days will not stop until there is not a single for-profit business left standing anywhere in America, LOL.  The Wave of Disruption has now set its sights on the good ol’ college bar scene, which has been rapidly displaced as the central meeting and mating grounds of the university…

From the New York Times:

These days text messaging, Facebook and Foursquare make it possible to see if a bar is worth the trip (translation: who is there) without leaving the dorm. Meanwhile, location-based mobile apps like Grindr, which point to the nearest available candidates looking for sex or not-quite-sex, are helping dethrone college bars from their place as meat markets.

Students have spent so many hours pregaming (as in, getting as cost-efficiently drunk as possible, usually on hard liquor at a private party) that there is little need to waste money even on cut-price drinks, and they often don’t arrive at the bars until midnight or so, before the bars in Ithaca close at 1 a.m.

“Students don’t need bars to create a community the way they used to,” said Stephani Robson, a senior lecturer in the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell who specializes in restaurant psychology.

The whole piece is worth a read…the kids are still getting drunk and laid just like we did – but they’ve hacked it to the point of maximum time efficiency and lowest possible expenditure, just like in the real economy.

Source:

Last Call for College Bars (NYT)