Virtual Fools

Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film is now available for pre-order on Amazon. Our friend Joseph Maddrey, who we met while working on John K Muir’s The House Between, is a talented man. A fan of horror films, Maddrey wrote a great book on the history of the genre, which he turned into a documentary screenplay that has been quite well received. We’ll let the Amazon description do the talking:

Horror and sci-fi veteran Lance Henriksen (Alien, Near Dark) takes you through a fascinating look at the history of the American horror film, examining the earliest monster movies of the silent era up to the scariest modern-day masterpieces. Highlights include interviews with genre masters Roger Corman, John Carpenter and George A. Romero, plus clips from classic films like The Exorcist, Night of the Living Dead, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Hostel, Rosemary’s Baby and many more!

Not ready for the full purchasing commitment but still want to watch it? It’s available on demand and for download in numerous places including Amazon Video On Demand, iTunes, and perhaps your local cable provider.

The Internet is a strange place.

First, the original from the movie Despicable Me. Then, The Internet gives us its take.

“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.” – Joshua, WarGames (1983)

Surely by now you’ve heard of the odd phenomenon that is “Icing Bros.” At nearly two months old, it is has hit the long tail of late adopters and has generally fallen from popularity. It seems silly to write about it at this point, but today was the first day I was ever Iced. Or, supposed to be Iced, I should say. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

The basics of the activity (I will refrain from calling it a game) are relatively straight forward: if a person is surprised by the presentation of a Smirnoff Ice from another person, they are forced to take a knee and drink the bottle on the spot. However, it’s more complicated than that. Well “complicated” is perhaps a strong word. “There is another thing that’s not just that.” The rules are as follows:

You cannot refuse an Ice. If you refuse to drink the Ice, you are instantly excommunicated and shunned, and thus can never Ice another bro or be Iced.

If you are Iced by another bro, you can Ice block. When presented w/ an Ice, you can pull out an Ice of your own and reverse the Ice on your bro. The ultimate Ice insult.

Weeks ago I put up a wall against Icing. I explained to a friend that if anyone tried to Ice me, I would proceed to smash the bottle on the ground, embarrassing myself and everyone around me. I’m not the only one to think it’s a dumb activity, but enough of my friends have been doing it that I needed to be on my guard.

I tend to think the trend is not a viral marketing campaign from the Smirnoff company, but rather evolved naturally. I can’t help but image that the original persons who created the game were named Brent Peterson or Tad Williams. Having received their Bachelor’s degree in business, and newly started in the work world of a medium sized financial firm named after some old white men, Brent and Tad wanted to relive their frat days. Over sixteen Miller Lites one evening, Brent and Tad started making fun of Tad’s girlfriend, who was drinking a Smirnoff Ice. “Huuh, hey Tad. Tad. Drink that Ice! I dare you! Are you a bro or not?!” Tad, who always succumbed to peer pressure back in college, decided what the hell. As the liquid contents of flavored malt beverage passed over his tongue, Brent shouted out that his bro had been iced, bro.

The next weekend, Brent and Tad were having out with Cooper, and Tad whips out the single leftover bottle of Smirnoff Ice that had been sitting in the fridge since the previous Saturday. “Now you have to drink the Ice, bro!!” Cooper laughs and by laughing commits himself to finding this an amusing practice, opening himself up to be the butt of the joke in the coming days. The practice spreads among their group of friends and Cooper does it to somebody who works with him on Capitol Hill. Thus, Icing Bros gained traction through the unspoken agreement that it’s funny to make people drink “girly beer”.

But there’s another part of this that’s necessary for it to have become as popular as it did. Cooper’s friend Rachel iced her friend Jonathan who in turn Iced his old friend from high school Morris. But Morris wasn’t interesting. “What the fuck, man? You gotta drink it,” implores Jonathan. Rachel goads him on. “Yeah, drink the Ice! You have to!” “I don’t have to drink shit,” says Morris, sticking to his convictions. “Fine then,” responds Jonathan, “you don’t ever get to Ice anyone, then, and you will forever be known as a bag of douche.”

This fictional tale leads us to how we might have arrived at the corollary to the first rule. “If you refuse to drink the Ice, you are instantly excommunicated and shunned, and thus can never Ice another bro or be Iced,” implies that the incentive for playing the game is the ability to play the game. Bro Icing establishes a temporary magic circle of play where the participants must all subscribe to the same rule set.

As a participatory activity, it only works if the person being Iced understands the implications of the activity. Imagine if someone came up to you and told you to drink something just because you heard them telling you to drink something. Thanks to the Internet, learning the rules and bearing witness to an Icing in action no longer required direct experience. The activity spread virally through YouTube videos, a title and titular website, social medias, and numerous news articles describing the activity. Its wide distribution enabled those who had not been involved in public Icings to know what it was, and it thrived on an unspoken agreement that so long as you knew the rules, you had to play along.

The issue with the activity of Icing Bros is that it’s not a game, it’s peer pressure. It only functions properly if all involved agree to participate. But unlike the common college drinking games which take place in an existing context of imbibing, Bro Icing is about the element of surprise. Sure, you can Ice someone at a party. But is it more fun than getting them at the office? Or on stage at a concert? The shower? Your wedding?

And while its amusing to witness the humiliation of a person taking a knee and chugging a lukewarm gross alcoholic beverage, the fun is really in the dynamic of execution. Hide the Ice in a pizza box. Put it in a sock drawer. Hide it under a newspaper. The execution/consumption process reminds me of cutscenes in videogames: play something fun and get “rewarded” with a movie.

Accepting and refusing aren’t the only options, though. The Ice Block, as described by the second rule above, allows the Icer to get reversed Iced by the Icee. If presented with an Ice, the Icee can pull out their own Smirnoff Ice to force the presenter to drink the original Ice. Hoisted by their own petard! The Block is an insidious creature, however. The end result of Blocking is the same as refusing: you don’t have to drink anything. But what Blocking does is involves you directly in the game such that you cannot refuse in the future and are forever bound by its tenets.

Out of this rule, we see gameplay emergence. Ice Blocking can set off a chain reaction: Ice someone with one bottle, then when someone Ices you thinking you used up your defense, you present them with a Block and force them to take a knee too. Even Bernie De Koven would find this a well-played game. Except that the situation that leads to this is inconvenient to execute and results in an Ice Arms Race. There is something to be said for the playful nature in which an Icing can be executed. It is a rare occasion of people at play. It’s almost a kind of social game like mafia or  werewolf for the frat and professional crowd. I’m stereotyping here, of course, though drinking games do often appeal to a very specific group of people. Perhaps I would enjoy it more if there wasn’t a mean-spirited goal associated with the humiliation of the Icee.

But in spite of, or despite, my general distaste for the whole practice and the rules that govern it, I couldn’t help but chuckle at an Icing today. My friend Adam, who knew of my general refusal of the game, attempted to Ice me anyway. We packed up the cooler today and went down to the pool with two of our other friends. As we were laying out our towels on chairs and slathering up with sunscreen, my friend asks if I wouldn’t mind grabbing his sunglasses for him, which were wrapped in his towel.

“No no, I’ll get it,” says my other friend Jasper. He picks up the towel, brings it to Adam, and proceeds to unwrap it a bit. Though Jasper was in on the Icing, he failed to see Adam’s plan and ended up unfurling the package such that he presented the Ice to himself. “What did you do!?” hollers Adam as he motions for Jasper to take a knee and chug the warm drink. We all had a laugh, but I couldn’t help but thanks Jasper for accidentally taking one for the team. After all, Icing me would have resulted in a bottle smashed on the deck of the pool and I would prefer not to be evicted from my apartment.