Often I think what it would have been like to have grown up in the '80s like my parents. Yeah, Thatcher was in charge and life in Scotland was pretty grim but the fashion, the films, THE MUSIC. On top of this, the '80s was a time where we weren't all completely dominated and controlled by the media and so, teenagers weren't a bunch of mindless morons! I was able to put up with it - the hashtags and slang was just times changing and the boyband craze has been around since the Beatles but over the weekend things have changed.
Before I start, I'm going to tell you that I like a drink and I do drink often. I'm not pretending for a second that teenagers don't sometimes binge on alcohol - of course they do and it is not a recent thing. Drinking alcohol underage is one of the first hints of rebellion and growing up in a teenager's lives but it gets to the point where is becomes ridiculous. I am of course talking about "neck nominations".
This is going to be short. I really don't understand it - PEOPLE HAVE DIED! Naively, I thought this was something that a select bunch of idiots did to make a tit of each other and that it would fizzle out in a few days like most Twitter trends. To a degree yes, it is a bunch of idiots making a tit of themselves and yes, this time next week it will probably be old news but I never thought that people who I'm friends with on Facebook would be stupid enough to do it. If you don't know yet, "neck nominations" is a current internet trend where people down a pint of an alcoholic beverage (originally beer) as quickly as possible and then "nominate" their friends to do the same.
These people on my Facebook are 16/17 and well educated individuals who surely must know that a pint of vodka, Budweiser, whiskey and cinnamon is so stupidly dangerous to drink in less than a minute..? Very stupidly dangerous especially when the news has been scattered with stories about how people have died as a consequence of doing it. To me, this internet trend has shown just how ridiculous social media has become and how easily led my generation has become. Where is the logic in the whole thing? 'OOOooh, my friend has tagged me therefore I must DO IT!' ??? Why do people crumble into peer pressure so easily? It's the stupidest thing to come out of social media EVER.
