Neknomination; Time for ‘the Banter’ to Stop
Social media has great power. It has the power to inform, or rebel, to debate and to stir, to catapult people to stardom and to bring them crashing down. But it also has the power to make you look a bit of a dick; to highlight your misnomers and your stumblings and give them up for a whole new audience to see. Years ago if you tripped up the stairs on the school bus the three or four people who saw will have given you stick for the rest of the day. Trip up now and the clip will be uploaded to YouTube and Facebook, you’ll be a Vine and a Gif and a Meme, you’ll be hashtagged #fail and circle the globe in viral form as ‘Stair Trip Girl’ for days and weeks and months.
Social media sits at the heart of the relatively new and inevitably controversial craze of ‘Neknomination’ or ‘Neck and Nominate’ depending on how fussed your friends are over spelling. For those who don’t know what it is, neknomination involves filming yourself downing a drink – incorporating a needless director’s commentary of sorts as you do – and then nominating two or three other friends to do the same within the following 24 hours. They in turn will narrate and gurn as they down their chosen drink – attempting to be more outlandish than those who nominated them – and then nominate more of their social circle. And so the spiral continues; whirlpooling down a plughole of sanity.
Though the origins of the ‘craze’ (in both senses of the word) are hazy, it has been encouraged to spread through the laddish world of sports teams and old boys; it is LAD Bible banter innit? Down a drink to be a ‘proper legend’. Have you seen Phil’s neknominate? He did it bollock naked on Nelson’s Column because he’s a proper legend in the. That’s note, Daz is a true lad, he stirred diesel fuel in with his pint of Baileys and downed it dressed as a parrot in the middle of the M25, what a ledge, top banter, lol!
Social media will be blamed by many for the craze, because social media is an easy target. Neknominate didn’t exist in the 1950s, and neither did social media, and so that must be where the blame lies. Sir – no-one ever Instagramed a neknominate video on National Service or whilst being struck by the birch. This is no coincidence. High time we brought them back. Yours, Major Reginald Spencer, Banbury.
But it is not down to social media. Because social media has also helped to reunite friends, and to shed new light on Government and to form protest movements and give the under-represented a voice. Instead it comes down to peer pressure, to wanting to fit in, to wanting to be one of the in-crowd, to being afraid to say no. You’ve been nominated. You have to down a drink or you’re a loser, a gay, a woman. The derogatory terms of the lad, anything other than their chosen norm. Because hey if you won’t drink a pint of Caffrey’s mixed with Breast milk and Tequilla and then smash the glass on your forehead, you’ll be the weird one. Don’t be a dick. Just do it.
The truth is you don’t have to do it. You don’t have to drink anything you don’t want to. Not now, not on video, not ever. If you want to buck the norm you don’t have to drink whilst playing table tennis, whilst dressed as a Gorilla or whilst wearing nothing but a cheeky grin and a strategically placed sock. Instead you can just say no. Say sod off. Say you don’t care. Or just nominate two or three friends to grow up, and give them 24 hours to do so.
Neknomination has been reported as being responsible for two deaths in Northern Ireland in the weekend, but ultimately it is not neknominate that’s killed two people. It is the want to better what’s gone before, the warped perception of what will be rewarded that has brought these unfortunate ends. It isn’t neknominate that makes anyone down a pint of spirits, or jump into an icy river. You can stop the game but you can’t stop people. Rather than giving weight to the dangers of social media or of drinking games what neknominate is doing is highlighting the dangerously blurred lines of ‘banter’ and acceptability, and rather than picking off the easy targets it is this which needs to be addressed.
