The long history of drinking games | Hacker News Reader

The long history of drinking games

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32 pointspepys21 comments

> Yet it cannot be just a question of wine being harder to stomach in greater quantities than beer

I'd also say that pennying[1], a drinking game established at Cambridge/Oxford/Durham/St. Andrews (and others) and played almost exclusively with wine (or occasionally port), points in this direction.

[1] https://enacademic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/654919 - a particularly devious example is the engineer's penny, which is a penny that has been bent so that it will fit down the neck of a wine bottle, "obliging" (obviously not enforced on anyone) you to finish the bottle

> Professor Stephen Hawking is not to be pennied. This is not actually a rule, but is now widely accepted after two Robinson College students attending a Caius College formal hall were fined in excess of £50 and given a lifelong ban from the college for pennying his dessert.

Hah!

Everyone agrees alcohol is a drug like any other but then treats it far more tolerantly. Suppose we had cocaine snorting games or heroin smoking games. I like my drugs and believe they should be legalised but our socially sanctioned, even socially expected, abuse of alcohol is rather ominous.

Couldn’t agree more. Especially here in the UK where there’s a culture of basically getting as drunk as you can over the weekend and people sympathise when you come into work with a hangover

When I went to Ireland I found it kind of alarming how normalized alcoholism is there. We don’t have any shortage of a drinking culture in America, but from what I saw in Ireland it’s at an entirely different level.

> Suppose we had cocaine snorting games or heroin smoking games

Yes. Imagine.

i've played "ketamine chicken" with a partner and a long mirror before, heh

I honestly don't know if that's agreement, disagreement or something else.

> But in countries where wine is more popular than beer, such as Italy, France, Spain and Greece, bingeing and drinking games are rarer and generally frowned on.

Being from one of these countries I can safely say this is wrong on both counts. As a student I saw how popular drinking games were, and participated in many.

This is only a small part of the article, but it's always a bad feeling when one of the opening lines presents incorrect statements as facts. What else in this article is also completely wrong?

Are readers supposed to actively attempt to trigger the Gell-Mann amnesia effect to be able to enjoy an article?

Speaking for France, I agree with that original sentence. I played some drinking games while I was a student but it was very rare. Less than what I did on a single week when I visited a student friend in England. I asked my girlfriend (also french) and same thing for her - but replace England with Germany.

In Austria at least the alcoholic beverage used does not matter that much, especially in eastern Austria drinking games are also played with wine and must, not to mention that lots of drinking games everywhere are based on the consumption of spirits

I don't think I've ever seen anyone 'playing' drinking games in France, but binge drink and getting drunk sure exists

Should that country be Spain, I cannot but wholeheartedly agree.

> Beati Hispani quibus bibere vivere est

Playing the drinking long-game: with some help from the Templars, scattered Jaredites, and the Bavarian Illuminati, manage to get your drinking buddies' ode to wine, women, and song regularly played for olympic[1] podiums.

"And long may the sons of Anacreon intwine / The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine."

[1] the games wouldn't be revived until 1896, so that part probably took more conspiracy work than getting the tune used for a national anthem in the first place.

Bit of interesting history, one of the earliest examples we have of Greek writing is an inscription on an 8th century BCE wine cup found in Pithekoussai, referred to as Nestor's Cup.

Some scholars think the inscription on it is the result of a drinking game where writers alternated writing verses.

For the curious, the inscription says: Nestor’s cup, good to drink from. Whoever drinks from this cup, him straightaway the desire of beautiful-crowned Aphrodite will seize.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin it doesn't count as drinking if you drink less than a six-pack and drunk driving is still a misdemeanor.

Here's a bit I wrote about drinking games.

I enjoy drinking but I hate drinking games. I mean, talk about a way to disguise your drinking problem as laughing matter, as a veritable vocation of which to be proud. If you enjoy drinking games, that’s fine in the same way that it’s fine to have a drinking problem.

As I observe it, flip cup competitors are not so much vying for victory as they are crying for help. You have to hear the irony as they encourage their fellow addicts to, and I quote, “chug, chug, chug, yeahhhh!” All I hear is, “help, help, help uuussssss!”

So let’s reach out to this community with the love and support they need. In fact, let's advertise a support line for this troubled community with posters that read:

Do You Enjoy Beer Pong,

Quarters, And the Like?

Call Anonymously: 1-800-PONG-NOMO.

This comes off as kind of condescending. Clearly not everybody who participates in drinking games has a drinking problem, otherwise you'd see almost everybody who went to college in the US or several other countries (as evidenced by the rest of the comments here) would be alcoholics. Drinking games provide a social middle ground—everybody knows them (or the rules are simple to explain), they provide an opportunity to break the ice with new people, and some of them are just fun. There's no need to read so far into them as to say that everyone who plays drinking games is an addict.

That's a weird mindset. You enjoy drinking but consider having social fun while doing so a symptom of addiction?

What's the appropiate situation then to drink without considering it harmful? Gazing through a window with a nostalgic look?

> You enjoy drinking but consider having social fun while doing so...

He's talking about drinking games. He's said nothing about being against social fun per se, just a comment on drinking games.

>disguise your drinking problem as laughing matter

That's why I caught the implication of social fun while drinking != bad.

If it isn't the case, then I don't see what's specific about drinking games that makes them necessarily a drinking problem.

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