The Best Cure For Your Twenties: Something To Look Forward To
Plus One Party, Rat Party, Charcuterie Board Party, Wigging Out, Murder Mystery, the list goes on of new quirky premises to surround the night around. The rise of hosting promotes community and connection to those around us, whether it be new or old friends, but this urge to gather may be indicative of a deeper yearning: The necessity of fun and community across campus. This sentiment is shared throughout campus, infiltrating an array of different groups. But how can we achieve it?
Aaron Busi, a student at the University of Oregon, founded Connect.UO to combat the current “shut in” culture that has held the university in a chokehold for the past few years. What started out as a networking organization made to connect students across majors soon became something more. In the beginning of the year, Connect.UO promoted a preformative male contest on their TikTok, Instagram, and anonymous posting app Fizz. In an interview with Align Blog, Busi states that the turn out was incredible: “... Tons of people showed up for that. We ended up doing more networking events but ultimately shifted to doing those community pop up events because those are much bigger and there's more opportunity.”Since fall term, Connect.UO has wasted no time tapping into the otherwise untouched market of popup events. Recently, they hosted a real life dating show on campus, which was arguably one of their most successful events yet. Aaron believes that a large part of its success was due to how out of the ordinary this concept is at the UO , unlike other schools such as USC and UCLA. When asking about his view on how social culture has shaped our struggle and set us aside from these schools, he states, “I think a lot of people at UO are not as ambitious and innovative, but I think that it’s on the right track to be more ambitious and innovative… and so I guess I just want to show everyone what’s possible, you know?"
While IRL turnout is important, there's no doubt that clicks are king. Virality, even on a local scale, is an extremely important piece in getting anything rolling. Performative male contests, insert-name-here look-alike contests, aura farming competitions, and other similar pop up events were recently popularized online and linked to both a need for third spaces as well as that yearning for connection. A big part of the push is Partiful, an invite and event tracking app that launched in the midst of the pandemic and somehow survived. This app has been utilized in promoting small scale gatherings as well as larger organized events, particularly in large cities on the east coast. Grownk1d is in a similar vein as Connect.UO, and is self described as, “A worldwide social club for 18-24-year-olds with weekly play-based gatherings in NYC.” They run similar events but are not tied to a university, and therefore are not held to the same limitations that Aaron and his team are. They have recently hosted a “Electronic Lan Party” where there was a dance floor in one room and multiplayer LAN games, collaborative games played through being in the same physical location, in the other with freedom to bounce between rooms. This event was incredibly successful in its goal to garner real life attention, internet attention, and most importantly create the play-based gathering that they are based around.
Though these three organizations operate differently and are geographically disconnected, the sentiment is nearly the same. Their wild success has only further proved the need for such organizations.
While getting students on board has been easy, the same cannot be said for the university. Aaron and his team have run into multiple problems while organizing events through U of O. During the planning of the dating show, they were hit with a large bill to host in Straub Hall, which was a considerably large road black and raises the bar of entry for anyone who would be inspired to host similar events. More recently, Connect.UO has been organizing a “Hackathon” with QuackX and wanted to host it in the Mo center. Busi says: “[UO] just could not wrap their head around, like, why we are trying to get five hundred hackers in one room to code. They’re just so behind on that. Same with events services. They just make it very difficult.” Currently, Connect.UO is creating a larger team with the aim to host events monthly. Their next big event is a Redbull Chariot Race, made possible by their partnership with Redbull.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there is a widespread and overwhelming call for community specifically centered around fun. These larger scale events put on by Connect.UO as well as a smaller scale action hosted by individuals (personal, intimate gatherings) is proof that in a post quarantine culture there is tangible change. Repairs are slow, but through a collective effort it does not have to be an inch by inch journey. Change takes people, and people must take action, perhaps the most difficult ask of all. After all, what is it that most often stops you from achieving what you want? Often it's the first step, the leaving of the comfort zone and conformity that halts progress. Aaron Busi leaves with a closing thought, “I want people to really reimagine what bringing people together looks like… There is so much more that is possible and I don’t think people are taking advantage of that.”
Go out. And if you must stay in, host.
About the author: Siena Beckett is a 2nd year student at the University of Oregon, majoring in advertising but very indecisive about what minor to choose. She enjoys getting overly emotional about strange topics, beating a dead horse, and the intricacies of the human condition. In her free time she sails for the U of O Club Sailing team and tries to come up with new and fun activities to host.
Sources:
Cover: Pinterest
Thomas, tomperrotttt. Function. Pinterest, 2026, https://pin.it/4rzWJ5K2s .
https://www.instagram.com/connect.uo?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==
https://www.instagram.com/grownk1d?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==
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