It’s not surprising that in a culture whose valuation of youth might be charitably described as “obsession bordering on psychosis, with a healthy dollop of vampirism for good measure,” we eventually get around to applying an age standard to everything. Given that our collective desire to place normative borders around every societal behavior and pathologize outliers falls somewhere between R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket and Bette Davis in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, it was surely only a matter of time before we turned our attention to deciding who was too old to go clubbing. Despite Craig Robinson having already broken it down for us, we still hunger for a more objective standard of when we’re allowed to openly point at someone and say, “Ew, gross, they’re too old to be here!” Happily, science has stepped in to fill that void.
In a milestone of human evolution first reported on by the bastion of science news known as the Yorkshire Evening Post, it’s been deduced that 37 is officially the age when people are too old to go out to a nightclub. Yes, starting three years before 40, humanity becomes a shriveled up husk of flesh and sadness, pitiably limping its ailing body from dance floor to dance floor, refusing to accept the Logan’s Run-esque reality that having fun via the act of dancing at night in public is for young people, still vibrant and possessing a shred of worth, unlike those gruesome 38-year-olds who may as well already be dead.
Not only that, but it’s been determined, via the highest degree of exacting scientific rigor, that 31 is the age when people officially begin to prefer staying in to going out. So not only are people 37 and older basically just decaying gasbags desperately trying to fulfill that foolish dream of “living a life,” but for six years—the six final years, really, before you’re shuffled off to the cultural equivalent of debtor’s prison—anyone going out at night is deluding themselves, refusing to accept the reality that they would rather be at home, ordering Grubhub and watching Netflix, regardless of what they may consciously think, the poor ignorant saps.
Luckily, this has now been settled, ending all further debate on the matter. And for that, we have the proud scientists at something called Currys PC World to thank, a doubtless reputable and elite think tank that is definitely not a British electronics retailer specializing in selling home entertainment equipment to consumers, and therefore deeply invested in convincing people to buy more things to enliven their stay-at-home lives. This study “recognises the fact that there comes a time when we appreciate our home comforts more than a hectic social life and it can often be a drag to play the social butterfly at parties and nights out,” says Matt Walburn, who is Currys’ Brand And Communications Director, which must be an honorific title awarded by the World Academy Of Sciences or something. Given that they achieved these results via the painstaking and methodical process of polling some British people, we can only assume a Nobel Prize is forthcoming.