‘What happens at Schoolies does not just stay at Schoolies’: Inside the wild first night
What happens at Schoolies stays at Schoolies. Well, not really — teenagers are revealing exactly what’s going down in very explicit detail.
What happens at Schoolies, stays at Schoolies. Well, unless you have a journalist there asking everyone questions.
Schoolies is always a chaotic three-week period when teenagers rule the streets with lanyards and vodka cruisers, wreaking havoc because their frontal lobes are not fully developed.
Most people couldn’t think of anything worse than finding themselves on the front lines, wading through shrieking, sweaty youths, but I bravely took one for the team and headed to the Queensland Gold Coast to find out what was really going on.
In the lead-up, there was a lot of conversation around Schoolies being tamer than ever this year.
Members of Gen Z are reportedly less sex-driven and alcohol-fuelled than Millennials.
So, was Schoolies going to be a snore?
Was it just going to be a bunch of girls reading their Kindles at cafes in low-rise jeans, while the boys streamed themselves playing video games in hotel rooms and wearing Adam Sandler style shorts?
Absolutely not.
The Gold Coast was swarming with teenagers singing, yelling, drinking, flirting with each other and partying up a storm.
While news.com.au was definitely prepared to go into the belly of the beast, we drew the line at attending any of the official Schoolies parties.
But on night two of Schoolies, we decided to ask the Gen Zers, “what was the wildest thing that happened on night one?”
And the honest answers were overwhelming.
One school leaver that news.com.au stopped to yap with broke the startling news that things were, in fact, getting pretty wild, like Gossip Girl season three wild.
“I heard someone had a threesome, already, on the first night,” she said.
Wow.
The teenager seemed far more staggered by which night during Schoolies week the threesome happened, and less that threesomes were happening at Schoolies at all.
So there is that.
Similarly, another guy in a Von Dutch hat (those are cool again) said he saw a couple having sex on the beach on the first night.
And, in case there was any confusion about where he was talking about, he pointed at the beach as he was talking. Very informative.
A girl in a cowboy hat, a common accessory as the second night was rodeo themed, revealed she had seen quite the startling sight at Schoolies.
“Yesterday I saw two women in PornHub body shirts with a big Pikachu walking around,” she said.
“I was like, ‘Is that illegal?’”
She then cheered, for reasons unclear, and then her friend asked me to answer, “Six or seven?” and when I said, “seven”, she explained that you’re meant to shrug and never actually answer the question.
Got it.
A young guy who had just broken up with his girlfriend two weeks ago, but who swore it
wasn’t because of Schoolies, revealed the wildest thing he had seen was a fight.
“We saw a lady at the tram just start hitting these two blokes,” he said.
“Literally punching them.”
His mate then put his little fists up and got some fancy foot work going and joked, “I was like, ‘bring it on!’”
Ah, male humour … as subtle as a brick.
A gaggle of girls revealed something far more scandalous had happened to them, they had actually been scammed on their first night of Schoolies.
One explained “getting scammed out of $120 dollars” had been as wild as things had gotten.
So how did they get scammed? Well, they were told if they spent $120, they would get free entry and free drinks to an event.
Great deal right? No.
“Everyone gets that,” she said.
“Scammed.”
Meanwhile, a young guy revealed the wildest thing that happened to him on the first night of Schoolies was witnessing an upsetting dance floor incident.
“I was in the mosh pit last night, I saw the shortest guy get pushed over, I felt so bad for him,” he said.
Did he help?
“I just left him there.”
Oh dear!
Depressingly, the most shocking thing that happened on the first night of schoolies was definitely a girl informing us that she was devastated that her mate got her drink spiked.
She did assure us that her friend had recovered, but obviously, a pretty terrifying thing to happen.
“She is okay and she is here tonight,” she said.
It has become uncomfortably clear that Gen Z are certainly not having a conservative Schoolies experience, by any measure.
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Originally published as ‘What happens at Schoolies does not just stay at Schoolies’: Inside the wild first night
