arctangent

Software, hardware, wetware

Drinking Games

In other words, the frat boys drinking in a bar on a Friday night don’t have to be loud and rowdy. They are responding to the signals sent by their immediate environment—by the pulsing music, by the crush of people, by the dimmed light, by the countless movies and television shows and general cultural expectations that say that young men in a bar with pulsing music on a Friday night have permission to be loud and rowdy. “Persons learn about drunkenness what their societies import to them, and comporting themselves in consonance with these understandings, they become living confirmations of their society’s teachings,” MacAndrew and Edgerton conclude. “Since societies, like individuals, get the sorts of drunken comportment that they allow, they deserve what they get.”

Drinking Games at gladwell.com

It would seem that alcohol is not the problem; cultural norms and expectations of behaviour whilst drunk are the problem. Really interesting long-form article and well worth the read.