Why Are We So Obsessed With Schoolies?

Every year, at the close of the year 12 exam period, floods of 18-year-olds embark on the alcopop soaked right of passage that is Schoolies. Sometimes it's called Leavers or Coasties, but it's always a loud, brash, exorcism of academic stress. Schoolies has changed a lot since it started in the early 80s, currently over 40,000 ex-students participate in it annually, generating over $100 million for venues across Australia. But one thing has never wavered—our obsession with it.

Before I turned 18 I had an understandable interest in what went on at Schoolies; it was a sweaty portal into the adult world. But that interest didn't ebb after my own underwhelming and sunburnt schoolies experience. Years later, I still spend November reading clickbait articles about the dumb things adolescents do when they're away from home for the first time. If anything my fascination with this right of passage only gets stronger the further I get from it.

I'm not alone. It's not just stressed-out parents reading the reams of articles punctuating news sites and papers each November. While most of us will consciously avoid any place that schoolies might turn up at, we'll still read about the security concerns or discuss the effectiveness of alcohol abuse warnings. Not many people were thinking about measles or what Queensland's fossicker community was up to until they were linked to the parties. We'll even read stories on Toolies (adult males heading to schoolies events in order to pickup young girls) which, it must be said, is a shitty thing to want to read about.

While working on this article I called several academics to ask why we're so collectively fascinated by drunk kids. Almost all of them offered the same response, they'd laugh and insist they didn't know or care. But a few minutes their reluctant fascination seeped out and we'd chat and joke openly about drunk 18-year-olds being dicks on the news.

While our interest is embarrassing, examining the cultural and media tropes Schoolies embodies it's hardly surprising. One person who wasn't ashamed of his interest was Dr Nicholas Carah, a lecturer in Communication at the University of Queensland. He suggested that while we direct outrage towards Schoolies, it's accompanied by desire.

"It's a space outside of ordinary, disciplined life," Nicholas tells me over the phone. "People are attracted to and fascinated by moments when people step outside the routine and expectations of work and study and just have a wild party." Whether we see them as the embodiment of golden youth or puking out of a cab, Schoolies participants offer us a brief chance to live through them.

It's not super surprising to suggest people like hearing about sex, drugs, and partying because they're not always that available to us. But Dr Dan Woodman, a senior sociology lecturer at Melbourne uni, pushes this theory further. When I asked him why adults pay attention to a tradition that doesn't involve them, he points out that Schoolies also embodies our anxieties, jealousies, and fascinations. By observing teens navigate this tangle of behaviours we're given the chance to draw our own lines around what is and isn't acceptable.

"Schoolies looks like fun, but we also use it to moralise what's good and what's bad. We used to turn to religion, but now we don't have that so much, so we turn to judging the behaviours of others online," he said.

His reflections give some context to the strange catharsism of judging people you'll never meet. But while on a subconscious level we may use coverage of Schoolies to map our own moral boundaries, there's no point denying our eternal attraction to that much skin. In a way, both the participants and the observers are celebrating youth. That's not to say that we find these munted teenagers overly attractive; rather any situation focused on young people can become a vessel for nostalgia.

As Nicholas points out, there's a reason the bulk of marketing is targeted to young people. Not only do they have disposable income, but people are innately sentimental about their own youths. "Schoolies is part of that frame, as we become more sidled with societal, family, and work expectations we look back to those rituals and rites of passage," he adds.

Running parallel to sentimentality and the joy of judgement is the undeniable appeal of watching drama and mayhem unfold. It's the "can't look away" story arc we've been consuming since news started. "Over a long period of time the media has crafted a frame about urban violence to fit into a preexisting story they're very good at telling," says Nicholas.

In short, give yourself a break. Part of the reason you're reading a lot about Schoolies is because people are good at reporting it. Within the news routine Schoolies is dreamy content, it's inline with the type of content we're conditioned to digest and love. Nicholas continues, "A lot of media framing and journalism is about continuing stories they're already telling, and Schoolies fits into a story that's already been told."

Another way to put it is that Schoolies is kind of the Travelling Wilburys of content; it brings together a lot of things we love to read and speak about. Dan explains: "Young people become the site of all our anxieties and hopes for the future and social change. What Schoolies gives you is an intense period of time where people come together to party, and you get great images for TV and a great place to send your cameras and reporters."

And then, as Dan lays out, there's Schoolies relation to the broader anxiety about social change. "The rules about how to behave do seem to be somewhat in flux at the moment. All of the things sociologists tend to focus on—class, gender, race—they all play out there."

We're obsessed with Schoolies because it's a perfect storm of things the news cycle has conditioned us to care about. It's crime, carnage, and nostalgia in a bikini. Hell, who could blame you for not looking away?

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