Necking Craze, the drinking game gone viral online,

Necking Craze

Neknomination

Necking Craze, the drinking game gone viral online,

necknominate

Well since this is a site dedicated to drinking I guess I should have a write up about what all the young ones are into at the moment – Neknomination. In case you live under a rock, Neknomination is a drinking game, which has already killed at least three young men in the UK and Ireland, originated in Perth, Australia, but thanks to social media it has since gone global.

The idea of the game is to neck your drink then nominate online two others to follow within 24 hours, ‘neck your drink, nominate another’, with an added stunt included and on and on its goes. All shot on the net and posted on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Strong peer pressure is exerted and if you refuse and break the chain you will be subject to online ridicule and shame.

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2550823/Two-young-Irish-men-die-weekend-taking-highly-dangerous-NekNominate-drinking-dares.html

What to make of it all? Of course drinking games and one upmanship have done the rounds since time immemorial. We all have liked to show off our drinking prowess and skills, show that we are a party animal always up for a laugh, the soul of the party. And to be honest some of the earlier nominations online are hilarious and a good laugh. But what makes this game particularly dangerous is that the ideas are getting weirder and weirder, and what started off as a joke has really got out of hand, with the competitive nature of the game encouraging nominees to go further and be more extreme in their videos. Youngsters are adding all sorts of connotations into their drinks and their stunts are becoming even more bizarre and dangerous. Car polish, urine, cat food, bits of animals, cigarettes, seems everything except liquor!

Necking Craze, the drinking game gone viral online,

The lads

One popular online video shows a bare-chested man emptying a bottle of beer down the toilet before two friends lower him head-first into the toilet bowl to lap it up.

Then there were the two mental 20-somethings in Cornwall who posted a film of themselves catching rabbits in traps, snapping their necks and then cutting them open and eating their livers washed down with a pint of cider. I seriously hope this wasn’t up too long on YouTube/Facebook?

Maybe it’s time to step back and take a deep breath. Remember your life is recorded online forever more, and what might be funny now will not be funny when you get much older.

Well of course a site about drinking and glorifying drinking and hell raising in general I don’t want to appear to be too hypocritical. I guess if I was that age this is exactly the kind of shit I might try, what with the life of a foolish teenager/young adult. Luckily, I was never much good at necking drinks and also would never be bullied into doing anything too stupid either, but then it’s harder for young people these days what with all the pressures from the media and internet to look right and appear “cool”.  So is it mostly an issue of peer pressure and the internet rather than alcohol?  What has social media done to our youngsters?

But on YouTube there are already hundreds of videos of people necking drinks, uploaded years ago. One would only have to look at the legendary ShoeNice to see there are enough drinking nutters on the web already.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13bkEASIp5s

What makes this different is that youngsters are peer pressured into some of the nominations, and deaths have arisen. I wonder if people hadn’t have died would it have made the news at all, just another internet fad that would fade away in time.

Should Facebook, Twitter and YouTube ban these nominations? I am not so sure, but they definitely could be a little more socially responsible. Some of the stuff that is banned on social media, fair comment and innocent photos for example, while beheadings and this kind of stuff is encouraged, is baffling.

I guess it boils down to the internet and how if you video it and it is mad enough then people will watch and follow. Wonder what the next craze will be, but just thank god there was no social media while I was a youngster!

Anyway having said all that, bet you will still be interested to have a view of it online, so here is the YouTube compilation!

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Beer drinker and all round annoyance. Likes drinking, football, cricket and having a good time.

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