Inspiration for Imbibation
November 5, 2013 8:42 AM   Subscribe

Some genius realized two great tastes that go together are Motivational Phrases and Alcohol Posters.
posted by symbioid (35 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
"If the bar's not bending, you're pretending."

Brilliant.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 8:44 AM on November 5, 2013 [7 favorites]


Problem: there are not many many more of these.
posted by Lemurrhea at 8:44 AM on November 5, 2013 [7 favorites]


more here
posted by bhnyc at 8:56 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]


I'm pretty sure this meme originated as a send-up of fitspiration (over-the-top motivational sayings pasted on pictures of people exercising) which was itself a response to "thinspiration" (motivational sayings pasted on top of pictures of thin people). Thinspiration is controversial because it is a primary component of pro-ana culture -- fitspiration was supposed to be the "healthy" response but as will happen with anything related to diet and fitness, it has in part been co-opted by some of the more extreme corners of the fitness (and cross-fitness) world.
posted by pocketfullofrye at 9:14 AM on November 5, 2013 [3 favorites]


I hate those goddamn motivational posters. They make me want to stop exercising and never leave my Cheetos-strewn couch again.

It doesn't help that they are very popular with the pro-anorexia types.

"Nothing tastes as good as thin feels!" The fuck it doesn't.

So this is the obvious and brilliant use for those things, and I applaud them.
posted by emjaybee at 9:17 AM on November 5, 2013 [5 favorites]


But holy crap, does bhnyc's link show adults getting a kid drunk? They....need to not do that.
posted by emjaybee at 9:19 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


emjaybee - never come to Wisconsin
posted by symbioid at 9:19 AM on November 5, 2013


(but more seriously - you're right).
posted by symbioid at 9:20 AM on November 5, 2013




This reminds me of one of my most-hated current commercials, which is for beer; as the visuals show happy people drinking, the band croons, "My body tells me no/But I won't quit/'Cause I want more." It strikes me as thuddingly tone-deaf, but I guess they're assuming nobody will listen to the lyrics. Pro tip: if your body tells you no, please stop drinking the beer.
posted by ilana at 9:29 AM on November 5, 2013


Thanks for exposing me to dangerousminds. Now I am browsing for a trout mask replica painting on ralf.com.
posted by oomny at 9:44 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


There is something really chilling and awful about these posters that I'm having a hard time putting my finger on.

Where if you surreptitiously give alcohol to undergrads in an experimental setting without their knowledge, all they really report is flu like symptoms and vague grumpiness, that is all alcohol really is without the culture or chemical dependence. However, if you give undergrads liquid that they think is alcohol but isn't in a mock up experimental bar, they start stumbling around, laughing loudly, and hitting on each other. On the other hand, you can experimentally track undergrads as they go through college on their own and show that undergrads who have existing symptoms of depression, undergrads with histories of alcoholism or mental illness in their families, undergrads who make friends that drink, and interestingly undergrads whose first introduction to alcohol was a goal oriented attempt to get over a natural aversion to alcohol will be more likely to develop serious problems with alcohol.

Its this goal orientation that is so artfully depicted in these posters that I think scares me so much about modern western drinking mores, now spreading around the world, and that is a large part of what so frustrates anthropologists if they are ever so foolish as to try to apply Western models of alcoholism to ancient societies. For example people who could be recognizably described as alcoholics were almost totally absent from Classical Greece. Sure there were people described as philopotēs, literally lover of drink, but the affliction doesn't seem to have been at all uniquely special in its ability to destroy men just like loving giving speeches or participating in religious sacrifices a little extra zealously and certainly not as dangerous as loving prostitutes or prostituted boys or fish a little too much. It had a similar weight to chocoholic or perhaps shopaholic today, but why?

Its not like they didn't like to party, here is a pretty fucking crunk account from Timaeus of Taormina,
"In Agrigentum, there is a house called 'the trireme' for the following reason. Some young men were getting drunk in it, and became feverish with intoxication, off their heads to such an extreme that they supposed they were in a trireme, sailing through a dangerous tempest; they became so befuddled as to throw all of the furniture and fittings out of the house as though at sea, thinking that the pilot had told them to lighten the ship because of the storm. A great many people, meanwhile, were gathering at the scene and started to carry off the discarded property, but even then the youths did not pause from their lunacy. On the following day the generals turned up at the house, and charges were brought against them. Still sea-sick, they answered to the officials' questioning that in their anxiety over the storm they had been compelled to jettison their superfluous cargo by throwing it into the sea." -Timaeus FrGrHist 566 F149
Indeed alcohol was strictly regulated, it could only happen in taverns or private dinner parties, people got obsessive about the shape and nature of the cups it was drunk from, it could only be drunk diluted to what was probably about the strength of beer, and everyone was strictly expected to pace themselves. However the prohibitions were all clearly geared towards governing the acute effects of alcohol and not any chronic ones. Its funny how, even though there are a wealth of surviving lurid moral tales of rich men brought low by their love for fish or free agent prostitutes and reduced to begging in the streets by their obsession, you don't see the same for wine.

I can't help but feel like this goal oriented culture of drinking that glorifies making it to the finish line at the toilet like that was somehow not a deeply unpleasant and literally shitty thing might have something to do with it.
posted by Blasdelb at 9:50 AM on November 5, 2013 [14 favorites]


On one hand, I like a drink and some of the best times of my life have alcohol involved.

On the other hand, these posters are gross, and esophageal varices are real.

Exceeding your limits is just going to make the party less fun for everyone.
posted by poe at 10:05 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


Blasdelb: "However, if you give undergrads liquid that they think is alcohol but isn't in a mock up experimental bar, they start stumbling around, laughing loudly, and hitting on each other."

Oddly enough, this is the only hazing activity that my fraternity actually did to us. They had a party, got a keg of O'Doul's, removed the label, sat back, and watched what happened.

Interestingly, the experiment only worked on the younger attendees who had never really been exposed to alcohol. I got pulled out of the "experiment" once the others realized that I was 22, and on to their game.
posted by schmod at 10:10 AM on November 5, 2013 [4 favorites]


LOLAlcoholism! Currently trying to reduce my own imbibing and these posters are actually helping to do just that.
posted by Caskeum at 10:22 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


this goal oriented culture of drinking that glorifies making it to the finish line at the toilet

It really seems like you are missing part of the joke here.
posted by RogerB at 10:30 AM on November 5, 2013 [3 favorites]


I'm reminded of Jim Carroll's classic line about heroin addiction: You just got to see that junk is just another nine to five gig in the end, only the hours are a bit more inclined toward shadows. After the thrill is gone, after the stuff stops getting you high or buzzed and only the side effects remain, after even the prospect of withdrawing doesn't seem to be so bad any more, you keep going because it's just what you do.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:37 AM on November 5, 2013 [3 favorites]




I hate those goddamn motivational posters. They make me want to stop exercising and never leave my Cheetos-strewn couch again.

It doesn't help that they are very popular with the pro-anorexia types.


UGH yes and they colonize almost any discussion of fitness online so you have to avoid them or you start thinking "Yes I really should stop eating for for a week and workout until I throw up every day all day yes this is what Serious People do and I am a Serious Person yes."
posted by The Whelk at 10:38 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


off their heads to such an extreme that they supposed they were in a trireme
--posted by Blasdelb at 11:50 AM on November 5

"I'm on a boat, mothafucka... a boat mothafucka!"
posted by symbioid at 10:39 AM on November 5, 2013


Your body isn't telling you
"I can't do this"
"I need to stop"
"It hurts"
"It burns"
"I'm tired"
Your mind is.
Shut it up with more.


This worked for about 15 years. These make me sad. I hope that was at least part of the plan with this and it wasn't all pointing and laughing.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 11:58 AM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


I thought some of these posters were funny. I like dark humor. I don't have a problem with people laughing at societal ills or the misfortune of others. Occasionally I can even laugh at the bad things that happen to me. It's how some people cope.

That said, I still think it's a bit revealing how we still put alcohol in this "other" category, because it's so ingrained in American culture that it become the one major recreational drug that prohibition didn't stick to in the 20th century. Even well-educated people still use the redundant phrase "drugs and alcohol". I guess if we don't sugar coat the reality that alcohol is not only a drug, but one of the most physically and mentally destructive drugs on the spectrum of societal harm, then the sheer number of bars and liquor stores in an average city starts to become a little depressing.

We're becoming more open to talking about things like alcoholism and acknowledging it as a disease, yet still lump it apart from all other drug addictions. Someone addicted to opiates or amphetamines is a drug addict. Someone who starts to have seizures if they haven't had a drink in the last couple of hours is an alcoholic, not a drug addict. They even have an AA and an NA, and these are supposed to be people who are well educated about addiction. I have to guess that the major driving force behind the existence of two different agencies is that most alcoholics would see it as degrading to associate with drug addicts.

Even though I know intellectually that alcohol is just another drug of abuse that happened to become more socially acceptable because it's so easy to make, I still would be lying to myself if I said I really see it as a drug. When I look at the words on these posters imposed against images of people drinking booze I still crack a smile. When I imagine the words superimposed on images of people popping pills or shooting up they don't seem funny at all.
posted by WhitenoisE at 12:51 PM on November 5, 2013 [3 favorites]


people who could be recognizably described as alcoholics were almost totally absent from Classical Greece

The same might have been said about modern Europe before the introduction of cheap distilled spirits. Some people drank a lot, but the capacity of their stomachs limited the amount of alcohol they consumed. Binge drinking would actually be the sign of someone who didn't drink as much as they could every day: alcoholics might be intoxicated, but they would hardly ever pass beyond their level of tolerance.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:02 PM on November 5, 2013


I really did laugh, and then I really did cry on reaching this one, because oh that's where most of my twenties went. A bit trite, maybe? But as I think about it, I wonder if I'm really crying at how easily it can be summed up. At the time it felt incomprehensible.
posted by forgetful snow at 1:50 PM on November 5, 2013


the capacity of their stomachs limited the amount of alcohol they consumed

There are highly functioning alcoholics who drink "responsibly" - only beer, only on evenings, not so much as to be visibly intoxicated the next morning. Over time they develop resistance and can consume this way easily as much as 200 ml of pure alcohol, every evening, for years. So limited drink strength and stomach capacity might have had saved people from quick and utter destruction, but not from alcoholism.
posted by hat_eater at 3:24 PM on November 5, 2013


We would define these people as alcoholics, but would people with a regular routine have been viewed that way in ancient times? They wouldn't necessarily have stood out if they got their work work done and participated in community life. In contrast, someone who got drunk at a party would be a cynosure and a scandal.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:49 PM on November 5, 2013


These posters are not earnest endorsements of alcoholism. They are parodies of "fitspiration" and "thinspiration" motivational pictures. Normally these phrases are plastered over pictures of sweaty tits in a push-up sports bra, an oiled up half-naked woman doing something to dumbbells, or a woman made of abs doing a bent-over stretch, artfully posed as to shove her impossibly toned butt into the camera (it is always a woman). The effect is to guilt the viewer for not looking like somebody who is "photoshoot ready". Photoshoot-ready means she has undertaken preparations that have likely shut down her social life for at least the prior 6 weeks (depending on her walking-around body fat levels), forced an OCD-like attention to her food and exercise plan, and have left her completely drained of energy. She is also likely to emerge from these efforts with some degree of eating disordered behavior and horrific self-image issues once she must inevitably relax her routine and the body fat starts to return to a more normal level.

So when you take those "inspirational" phrases and paste them on depictions of behavior that's more explicitly self-destructive when done to excess the effect is hilarious.
posted by Anonymous at 6:02 PM on November 5, 2013


Yay to Photoshop-ready models then.
posted by hat_eater at 6:24 PM on November 5, 2013


The backstory behind what the posters are parodying does explain things to some extent--but the thing I was most struck by, as I was looking at the posters in the main link and the bonus ones at bhnyc's link, is how much we as a society have a problem with women drinking. Nearly all of the images featured women and there was definitely a tone of transgression underlying the photos. This, to me, is far more interesting than the see-how-bad-I-am tone of the posters themselves.
posted by librarylis at 7:01 PM on November 5, 2013


One of the things I love about living in a culture that doesn't demonize the concept of enjoyment: it's okay to drink beer. It's okay to have dinner in a bar because that's something normal people do, and bars here serve good food because normal people come into the bar for a couple of drinks and also food.

Compared to trips home where I've been asked point blank (by a friend of a friend, usually) if I'm sure I need a second beer at dinner, even though I'm very clearly not driving. No, I don't need a second beer, but I did finish the first one, and we're not leaving anytime soon, so I would like another.

If alcohol wasn't so horribly demonized, so explicity considered evil, there'd be a lot less abuse of it the second kids went off to a place where they weren't supervised (i.e. college).

Also, I love these posters.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:01 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


The backstory behind what the posters are parodying does explain things to some extent--but the thing I was most struck by, as I was looking at the posters in the main link and the bonus ones at bhnyc's link, is how much we as a society have a problem with women drinking. Nearly all of the images featured women and there was definitely a tone of transgression underlying the photos. This, to me, is far more interesting than the see-how-bad-I-am tone of the posters themselves.

Women are chosen because the fitspiration photos overwhelmingly feature women and are overwhelmingly created by and distributed among women.

I think there is bean-plating to be had in the whole phenomenon of fitspiration itself, especially with the uniformity of body-types featured and severity of the messages. These parodies are a clever commentary on it. But I think the bean-plating direction people are taking this thread totally misses the point of the memes.
posted by Anonymous at 7:45 PM on November 5, 2013


So, I have a question.

Am I the only person in the world who feels worse when he exercises? Like, I keep doing it, and it never feels any better. I get sick more often, it lasts longer, and gets worse after exercise. Muscle soreness persists for weeks, and never stops happening. I don't noticeably lose weight (or gain muscle). I can run every other day for three months, and at the end of those three months, I've not been able to run a thirty minute workout without stopping and walking.

Diet is the only thing I've seen that affects me: eat healthy and I lose weight, eat junk and I gain.
posted by sonic meat machine at 7:46 PM on November 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


(it is always a woman)

I dunno, Maybe pinterest has skewed things some, but I feel like I've seen a good amount of beefcake "PAIN IS WEAKNESS LEAVING THE BODY OORAH MARINES" dudebro graphics on forums and the like, as well.
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 8:25 PM on November 5, 2013


off their heads to such an extreme that they supposed they were in a trireme

The secret origin of this.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:19 AM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


We would define these people as alcoholics, but would people with a regular routine have been viewed that way in ancient times? They wouldn't necessarily have stood out if they got their work work done and participated in community life.

Heck, ancient times? Try the seventies and eighties. It's only recently that most responsible, decent middleclass professional aren't routinely sloshed by the end of lunch.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:21 AM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


WhitenoisE: Someone who starts to have seizures if they haven't had a drink in the last couple of hours is an alcoholic, not a drug addict. They even have an AA and an NA, and these are supposed to be people who are well educated about addiction. I have to guess that the major driving force behind the existence of two different agencies is that most alcoholics would see it as degrading to associate with drug addicts.

Well, no. AA came first, and there was a lot of discussion about whether or not to let non-alcohol addicts take part, with the decision made to leave it up to each individual group to decide. And it wasn't necessarily because they didn't want to associate with those dirty drug addicts; early NA meetings were often targets for police making easy busts. Another distinguishing factor--and I think that you made this point yourself--is that alcohol is seen as intrinsically different from other drugs, because it's not only socially acceptable but socially expected, with the accompanying pressure of being able to "hold your liquor" and heavy drinkers (showing a tolerance for high amounts of alcohol, which is one of the signs of addiction) actually being admired. Lots of other addicts have problems staying clean due to the junkies that they know trying to pull them back in, but it's usually not, say, pressure at work to start shooting up because that's what everyone does to help seal a deal.

This differentiation is starting to lessen quite a bit--both with less tolerance and expectation of drinking (and even with some alcohol-related sentencing using SCRAM bracelets to monitor the probationer/parolee's sobriety) and with more rehabilitation-focused efforts--but there are still some AA groups out there that are booze-only, for whatever reason. It's not an organization-wide policy, though.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:28 AM on November 6, 2013


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