Losing Our Religion: The Cultural Collapse of Clubbing

Is there any ground more holy than the black vinyl flooring of the nightclub?

The drinks, passed hand to hand, like holy communion.

The hymns—bass-heavy, familiar—sung in sweaty synchronicity.

The bodies that sway, arms raised in conviction,

a congregation of strangers exalted by the rhythm.

At the pulpit, the man of the hour—clad in all-black vestments—delivers his sermon,

and we hang on his every beat. 

It is an ancient ritual, as intrinsic as breathing: to sing, to dance, to drink with one another. But it seems we have been led astray. With more and more young people opting to forsake nights out, the once-sacred liturgy of the nightclub is becoming lost to us. 

Will we lose our divine practices to the secular world? 

Is there any hope that we can be Born Again?

Genesis

The nightclub wasn’t born out of chance, but built by necessity— carved out by the people who needed it most. In the late 1970s, as disco lit up cities like New York, Chicago, and Detroit, these dimly lit spaces became sanctuaries. For queer and Black communities—so often pushed to the fringes—these clubs weren’t just places to dance; they were sacred ground.

Behind the throb of the bass and the glitter of the disco ball was something bigger: freedom. On the dance floor, identity could be tried on, performed, celebrated. No judgment, no fear—just movement, music, and the miracle of being seen. The club was a church of expression, a workshop of sound, a runway of style. A place where the outside world’s rules didn’t apply.

These weren’t just parties. They were acts of resistance—moments of joy wrestled from systems built to exclude.

It would be sacrilegious not to mention the most infamous discotheque of the 1970s: Studio 54. Though its guest list was notoriously elitist—boasting regulars like Andy Warhol, Freddie Mercury, Diana Ross, and The Rolling Stones—the impact it made in its brief three-year run was undeniable. Studio 54 didn’t just capture the zeitgeist—it became the blueprint, the myth that every club since has been chasing.

As disco fever shook popular culture—through chart-topping artists like Donna Summer, the Village People, and the Bee Gees, and movies like 1977’s Saturday Night Fever—the doors to mainstream clubbing were cracked open. And even as the music evolved—from house to techno to hip hop—the heartbeat of the club remained steady. Through the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s, the nightclub thrived as a space of communion, creativity, and catharsis.

The Gospel

Von Dutch, Juicy Couture, Paris and Nicole, The Jersey Shore. What more could you aspire to be as a child of the early 2000s? Nightclubs weren’t just spaces—they were scenes. Their mystique both surrounded us and slipped just out of reach.

Grainy paparazzi shots plastered across tabloids. Britney Spears over supermarket speakers. Glimpses of a glittering adult world we weren’t old enough to enter—but desperately wanted to. Life beyond the tinted windows and velvet ropes of the nightclub doors eluded us then, but in those glimpses, we saw an adulthood that felt promised.

It was that air of mystery that gave the nightclub its magic. When the only mementos of your night were an overexposed digital camera shot, a drink stain on your halter top, the faded ink of a stamp on the back of your hand—everything else was surrendered to the collective haze of a vodka cran. 

The ephemeral nature of it all—that was the invitation to lose ourselves. It released our inhibitions, let us get lost in music and light. For decades, the club had been a space for community, acceptance, self-expression.

What was our fall from grace?

Exodus

The promised land isn’t what we thought it would be.

Some left quietly—priced out by rising cover fees, ten-dollar drinks, and Ubers that cost more than the night itself. But others, like us, began to drift away for less visible reasons. The club stopped feeling like a sanctuary. It started to feel like a stage.

Everywhere you turn, flashes from iPhone cameras blind you. VIP tables are crowded with influencers on brand deals, adorned in the latest fast-fashion microtrends—clothes meant to be worn once, photographed, and forgotten. The dance floor, once a site of freedom and abandon, has become a backdrop for content.

And the music—at best, a remixed Black Eyed Peas song; at worst, a TikTok-speed version of a chorus that no one even knows how to dance to. There's no build-up, no tension, no communal release—just manufactured drops engineered for the shortest of attention spans.

People cling to the edges of the floor, shifting their weight from foot to foot, glued to their screens or scanning the room as if waiting for something better to happen. Some look anxious, some bored, some trapped inside their own curated image of a "good night out."

This isn’t a nightclub. It’s the idea of a nightclub—stripped of its spirit and pumped full of generic pop basslines and a sea of Y2K Shein tops. A simulacrum of community, soulless and self-absorbed.

The Second Coming

A lukewarm case of beer. The smell of a Marlboro Red. A sweaty mass of bodies kicking and shoving to the sound of an overly distorted electric guitar.

I didn’t find this catharsis under flashing club lights, I found it in the dirt lot of a local punk kid’s backyard.

While the club scene has grown increasingly inaccessible—priced out, staged, stripped of spontaneity—there is still something sacred being built in the fringes. DIY spaces have always existed, but today they are more vital than ever. As Gen Z’s attendance at traditional nightlife venues declines, we’re witnessing a parallel rise in community-organized music, art, and performance spaces—smaller, a little rougher, and infinitely more alive. Surveys (like the 2023 Eventbrite Gen Z Report) show that Gen Z prefers smaller, experience-driven, community-based events over traditional nightclubs or large-scale nightlife. 

These spaces are becoming increasingly more accessible and interactive through the connectivity of social media. Digital flyers, Bandcamp links, and online zines are all shared freely as effective ways to use your online platform to enhance your in-person community.

We aren’t reinventing the wheel. We’re returning to it. Relearning what our predecessors already knew: that real community isn’t manufactured. It’s made, night after night, dance after dance, noise after noise, by the people who need it most. Maybe there is no ground more holy than that on which we gather together, unafraid, and dance.