twilight, zoomers, + the new party culture

In this blog: twilight, zoomers, party culture, cringe, surveillance, (post-)ironic enjoyment, nostalgia

In the 20+ years since the first Twilight book was published, the series has never lacked in the cult following department. Whether you were part of the earliest wave of Twihards, ironically touting your love of the franchise in the mid-2010s, or rewatching the films for the first time in over a decade in 2025, it’s pretty clear that something about the Mormon-coded vampire drama has captured our attention. And when I say “our”, I mean the people at the Twilight rave.

That’s right: last month I found myself back at Komedia, a cinema-cum-club venue in the heart of the Brighton Laines, this time to attend a Twilight rave a friend saw advertised on Instagram. As a November birthday boy, I was even eligible for free entry — and who could say no to a free vampire rave?

In preparation for the night’s events, I donned my best Bowie-in-Labyrinth-esque shirt, caked my cheeks in my partner’s sparkliest makeup, and even shot an impromptu self-photoshoot to generate maximum hype. A spritz of Toskovat’s Age of Innocence I bought a sample of this about a year ago after reading a description of the scent online and being haunted by it for months. It claimed the scent was reminiscent of a car crash at a funfair; they were right. When I wore it, I smelled like Pennywise. I abhorred the perfume for months, the mere suggestion of the petrol-y fumes making me feel nauseous, only to give it another try this autumn and inexplicably become obsessed with it. At any rate, it felt fitting. and we were ready to hit the town.

My partner Daisy and I grabbed a few drinks before meeting up with our friends Gee and Ramona the human. Gee is the biggest Twihard I know. On a more recent occasion, they came to our house after a night at karaoke and delivered a full PowerPoint presentation on the series. Though not quite as fervent in my love of Twilight, I did love the books and films growing up, and considered my return to the world of Bella and Edward to be sincerely motivated, if admittedly tinged by nostalgia.

So, the rave. We go inside, descend the stairs down to the event space, and enter into a distinctly purple room with a smattering of similarly keen party-goers dotted around the space. Some unnervingly sported paper masks with the likeness of popular characters on the backs of their heads. To the front of the room, a DJ commandeered the stage, adorned on either side by cardboard cutouts of Edward and Jacob. Fixed to the ceiling were a couple of TV screens which played Twilight film clips on a loop. The event page had touted a playlist consisting primarily of the Twilight soundtrack, though a generic club anthem was currently thumping away.

Ever prepared in the event of somebody needing a little sit-down, we set up camp at the side of the space, where seating ran the length of the wall. We claimed the area with our coats and bags, and began to survey the other club-goers.

It’s weird, at 26, to feel yourself beginning to age out of clubbing. It’s not a huge deal for me, I guess, seeing as I only go out past midnight a handful of times each year (and often regret the decision). But it’s true that, in our late 20s, we were some of the oldest people at the Twilight rave. This wasn’t a problem in itself — we were all brought here by our shared love of Stephenie Meyer’s machinations, after all — though we were struck by just how awkward the energy in the room was. No one was dancing, or really moving much at all. When they were, it was because a phone was pointed at them. I watched one girl dance unabashedly, illuminated by the light of her friend’s phone torch, for all of thirty seconds before promptly stopping and resuming her stance once the video had been captured.

I feel the need here to assert that this is not going to be a Kids These Days perspective. I was a Kid These Days until recently; in some people’s minds, I still am. It’s an Aren’t Things Fucking Weird At The Moment perspective. There has been no shortage of speculation on what killed clubbing after the height of the COVID pandemic. Is it that the youth of today don’t know how to let go and have fun? Is it the phones? Is it the kids and their phones? Which — okay — yes, it is in a way. But to claim that Gen Z (a group of which I am, technically, a part) are just… boring? Overly self-aware? Is missing huge pieces of the bigger picture.

There’s a lot of noise about phones and nightlife, with the rise of the phone-free night out suggesting people are craving real-world experiences without the worry that you’re being filmed. But sometimes we dance for the camera, not in spite of it. Dance like nobody’s watching? Or dance like everybody’s watching? By filming ourselves, we anticipate judgment in advance — and attempt to mitigate it.

Peer-to-peer surveillance is now as ever-present as CCTV. With everyone playing the dual roles of watcher and watched, shame is distributed horizontally. The punishment for being too different, or not different enough, is cringe. Foucault would be horrified.

And it’s not as if we are unaware of the effect this has on us, psychologically and behaviourally; it’s just that we don’t feel empowered to change it. Mark Fisher identified this phenomenon as reflexive impotence — a story we tell ourselves about our own helplessness that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When we act in a way that is cringe, it’s no longer just a matter of private embarrassment. Cringe has become a moral judgement from the collective. Being overly earnest signals naïveté, a lack of media literacy, bad taste. Sincerity, once protected by a level of plausible deniability afforded by irony, has destabilised, leading to a latent spike in irony poisoning. The safest way to move through the world has become: unaffected. Detached. Knowing. Minimally expressive.

The cultural arc of Twilight can be confusing, even to those who have been a part of the fandom’s culture from the beginning. What started out as sincere obsession gave rise to semi-ironic a lot has already been said about misogyny and excessive hatred for things young girls enjoy; the gendering of cringe is a whole other post hate, before later becoming a nostalgic reclamation. Loving Twilight now requires that one navigate the past layers and lenses of judgement.

The Twilight rave was a promise of release — come be cringe and silly with us — that couldn’t fully be delivered. The permission to let go and enjoy was still mediated by cameras, a distinct awareness that you were in the background of someone else’s Instagram story at any given moment. Post-ironic enjoyment comes with stipulations: you’re allowed to love Twilight, but only if you know why it’s bad.

At 26, I experienced a good few years of nights out before the pandemic hit and abruptly interrupted the usual transmission of social norms. I got to practise dancing, flirting, being stupid — and these are practices as much as they are instincts. People just a few years younger than me missed out on those early social opportunities to fail publicly and recover. What I considered a re-entry to nightlife was, for many others, an introduction to a whole new world — now freshly mediated by full algorithmic visibility. Something you watch rather than dissolve into. A party everyone is at, but not in.

In the end, the Twilight rave felt like a bit of an accidental mirror. A room full of people brought together by longing, standing mostly still under purple light, watching fragments of a story about desire deferred and bodies held in check. Twilight has always been about restraint — wanting something intensely and refusing, or being unable, to act on it. Maybe that’s why it still resonates. Not because it reminds us of an easier, more carefree time, but because it captures something uncomfortably current: the feeling of wanting to lose yourself, while knowing exactly how visible you are. The problem isn’t that people don’t want to dance. It’s that there are fewer and fewer places where forgetting yourself feels safe.

I don’t think this is the end of dancing, or joy, or collective abandon. But it may be the end of pretending these things emerge spontaneously. Dancing is a practice. So is letting go. So is being unobserved, or at least unafraid of observation. If nostalgia-centric events promise release and fail to fully deliver it, that failure is instructive. It tells us something about the conditions under which sincerity can exist now, and how fragile they are. The question isn’t “why won’t people dance anymore?” The question is “what would make it possible, again, to forget the cameras, the audience, and the archive — even if only for the length of a song?”