Bruce Kerr: On Neck and Nominate, a Dangerous Concoction?

It’s the game taking the youth of the world by storm. North to South, East to West, rogues, renegades and vagabonds can be seen engaging in the phenomenon known as Neck and Nominate or #neknominate if you’re into that sort of thing. I know I #am. I use the word game in the loosest sense it could be used. To those who don’t know what this game is, essentially one must drink a pint of liquid, and then nominate friends to do the same. This said I don’t know how you couldn’t be familiar with it given that the filmed efforts of my Facebook cohorts have invaded my timeline like a particularly contagious bout of herpes. 

But the act itself does not make you a man. The general mantra of the game seems to be ‘Speedeth and grossness maketh man’. If you can’t pour that pint down your gullet quickly, you are clearly not a man. You are a shell of a man. A fraud, a phony. And as such you better be ready to drink something disgusting to make up for it. It’s all been done; listerine, eggs, absinthe, human excrement and various other toxic ingredients that are almost indefinitely detrimental to human health. But we’re men so we just say #YOLO, and down that urine and rum in one ginormous gulp.

So far, one might reach the conclusion that I’m not a fan of the game. But they’d be wrong. My humorous side is frequently tickled by the efforts of my most creative friends seeing off a strange drink in an even stranger environment. My safety-conscious better half however fears for the safety of almost every teenager in this country as they neck yet another pint of Cillit Bang.

While this duality within me wrestles with the concept of neck and nominate, it certainly has its pros and cons. Firstly we get to prove to the world what men we are whilst additionally encouraging our friends to join us in our pilgrimage towards manliness. We also get to satisfy that 21st century urge to amalgamate as many likes on Facebook as possible, a temptation so insatiable almost no human can resist. I’m almost certain this #neknominate extravaganza is the stuff Mark Zuckerberg’s dreams were made of way back when.

However I must also recognise the undeniable idiocy of this newfound creation and I’d strongly encourage readers to follow some basic etiquette to remain safe. First of all, let’s all recognise that the warning sign is not meant to be an advertisement. The glaring yellow sign of fury is just a friendly way of companies who make products such as bleach to say ‘Hey, don’t drink me, I’m definitely not for consumption, and I’ll probably melt your innards’. Secondly is it really necessary for everybody to get their bodily juices involved? Quite frankly I liked my newsfeed when it was PG; more pictures, less piss.

In closing, I must confess that I did indeed get involved with this ludicrous game of shock and awe, and most of me does thoroughly enjoy it. But with my respects to those who passed the other day, I genuinely encourage all to be careful with this new fad, let’s make it fun and not fatal.