I was born and raised in America, and for some reason I have this classic notion in my head that people should be dancing at weddings.

However, now that many of my friends from earlier in life and college are getting married, when I go to those weddings, the dance, if they even have one, is on a tiny dance floor, maybe even just a small part of their reception hall that they scooted the chairs and tables out away from.

And it turns out, many people simply don’t know how to dance. Sure, not everyone is a competitive ballroom dancer, but even my non-dancer friends in college would still go to swing dancing night and mess around on the dance floor.

Now, however, people just stand on the dance floor and sway or shuffle. I am loth to even call it dancing. It just seems like people are uncomfortable and not really having fun.

What happened? Did people stop dancing?

PS: Please check out the dance community for more dance related content. I just created it and would greatly appreciate some help with getting it off the ground!

Edit: “am loathe” -> “am loth”. STT is a b.

  • Bendersmember
    4•1 year ago

    I highly doubt were about to have a sad ending to Footloose take over everywhere. People probably dance more when they are happy or maybe when things are really bad as a way to cope. Things haven’t really been great for a giant portion of the population. Inflation, food/gas prices going up, interest rates etc. If things improve people will be happy and go dance. In the meantime I think people are pretty stressed and drained from day to day life. End of the day I just think you may have confirmation bias mixed with maybe a narrower world view on why people might not want to dance like you expect as well as many people feel completely opposite to you personally. To each their own.

    • Killakomodo
      2•1 year ago

      Yeah because tbh if I went anywhere and someone went “let’s have a line dance!” I take that as my cue to leave. I think there just may be less people into swing and line dancing then op wants to admit. I mean go to a club or the right type of bar and you can find dancing no problem, even line.

      Though every wedding I have been to there was at least some dancing, though I would guess it depends on the size and the people, if they don’t wanna dance they don’t gotta dance. Not to mention that in most weddings I have been to the music is more intended for couples dancing, which makes dancing even more awkward if you don’t have said couple to dance with, excluding a portion of people I would assume.

      • Bendersmember
        2•1 year ago

        I agree with you. Also an observation (not positive or negative in any way) a lot of the younger people I see under 20 persay are seemingly very quiet and reserved, that might be just a social thing and they are much more outgoing in other situations. I’ve heard that drinking alcohol is also much lower, so if you have quite a few people that don’t feel comfortable dancing, are more used to being social online, and drink less then I would assume that dancing might be a little more rare. I think op might just have been in a bit of a bubble growing up where culturally it’s was more open to dancing.