The 'social scene'

This question was one of the many posed to me over the past two weeks by wide-eyed and curious prefrosh hoping to learn a little bit more about life on the Princeton campus. But it was the only one for which I didn’t have an answer at hand. I stared at him, opened my mouth to say something, and then closed it again, perplexed. I had always heard the term “social scene” but had never really stopped to contemplate its meaning or significance. Having finally done so over the past week, I found that thinking in terms of social scenes is utterly pointless. In doing so you are linking the social lives of thousands of people to a single location, something which simply isn’t true. Social scenes — however counterintuitive this might sound — are actually really irrelevant when it comes to people’s social lives.

Different people look for different things when it comes to being social. Some find it talking to their roommates late on a Friday night, others while powering through the latest chemistry problem set together. Some find it chatting over a meal in the dining hall, others while reminiscing over a weekend’s exploits on a lazy Sunday morning. There are an incredible number of times and places where people can be social. To ignore all of these instances and state that any one place is the defining “social scene” for a given population misses the point entirely.

There are two major implications associated with the idea of a social scene. The first is that socializing can be constrained so as to only occur at specific times and specific locations. This is, of course, nonsense. Human relationships grow organically and no one can ever say when or where they’ll choose to begin. Friendship and company aren’t things that you can just go out looking for. As long as you just live your life, both things will come to you. The second, and grimmer, implication is that you will be worse off if you don’t fit into a social scene. The focus on Prospect Avenue as a social hub implies that if it doesn’t work for you then there is something wrong with you. Again, this doesn’t make sense. People have a thousand different conceptions of what it means to be having fun and spending time with others. Who’s to say that drinking and dancing is the best way? By doing away with the idea of social scenes, you are recognizing and respecting this diversity of interests.

Of all of the many friends that it’s been my pleasure to have met since matriculating two years ago, I met almost all of them somewhere other than the Street. As far as I can tell, this narrative is not unique to me. So again, you’ve got to ask yourself, how important is a social scene? Most students tend to meet their friends through extracurriculars, classes or residential groups. People are meeting all over campus for all sorts of reasons, and all of it is social. Just because you don’t call something social doesn’t mean that it isn’t, and just because you call something social doesn’t mean that it is.

Humans are social animals, but we tend to spend more time socializing in smaller gatherings than larger ones. An overwhelming percentage of our time spent socializing will be with a very small number of people closest to us. These relationships are of the utmost importance when it comes to our social and, by extension, mental health. This fact adds even more evidence for the unimportance of social scenes to anyone’s social life. If most of your social interaction comes from only a small number of people, why would you need an entire scene? We create our own social circles based upon what kind of people we enjoy being around.

What it all comes down to is that human socialization shouldn’t be thought of or described using such terms. The best kinds of relationships are those that arise naturally and spontaneously. By thinking of one place or another as a social scene, you are removing that spontaneity and adding certain expectations to the whole thing. So, to answer the question that prompted the writing of this article, does it matter? You, my future Princetonian, will build your own group of friends and generate a lifetime’s worth of memories with them, regardless of what anyone says about social scenes. Your social life is your own to create.

Nathan Mathabane is a sophomore from Portland, Ore. He can be reached at nmathaba@princeton.edu.