Eyeballing Vodka

[Humodour]

**** the media.

 

'Vodka Eyeballing': the Dumbest Trend Piece Ever

You think trend pieces in American newspapers are shabby? Try Britain's The Daily Mail — they specialize in scaring gullible suburban parents with stories like today's ridiculous and disingenuous 'expose' on drinking vodka through your eyes.

 

What the Mail have done is find one woman who damaged her eye while pouring vodka in it as a student stunt and convinced their readers that this is a sweeping trend and that Something Must Be Done To Stop These Kids and Their Wild Vodka Ways. They then get a lot of experts to opine on what a bad idea vodka eyeballing is, to fill out the story. And those experts are doubtless right that it is dumb as all hell to pour vodka into your open eye.

 

But the only evidence they have that actual people are doing this in significant numbers — and that this is actually a story — is 800 YouTube clips that come up if you search for it, and a few pop culture references. We conducted an equally rigorous journalistic examination of YouTube and found 722 clips on the topic 'punching yourself in the face'. Expect our trend piece on the latest trend sweeping Britain and America soon. It will be headlined: 'Young People Punching Themselves in the Face for Cheap Thrills'. No, in fact: 'Your Kids Are Punching Themselves in the Face RIGHT NOW'.

 

It's precisely the scare idiocy that was satirized by Chris Morris here. It is sad that actual politicians running an actual country (Britain) will probably get actual calls from actual concerned constituents tomorrow on this stupid non-topic that some Daily Mail editor thought would make a nice, scary story for the dull parents of Stevenage or Bracknell (suburban English towns, FYI) to cluck over. (Just wait till they hear about butt chugging.)

 

And before American readers get comfortable — as soon as it's been raised by a Member of Parliament in London, it gets the seal of authenticity. So the topic can easily travel over here, with its origins in the mind of a bored journalist in England forgotten. And thus a scare is born.

 

http://gawker.com/5540166/vodka-eyeballing...rend-piece-ever

Edited May 21, 2010 by Krezack

[Enoch]

Heh. Reminds me of the various media panics about "Pharm parties".

 

Trend pieces are among the easiest deadline-fodder that lazy journalists can do. Pick an anecdote, google it to get 2 other occurences, and you can call it a "trend" and write a story about it. Bonus points if it's a trend that angers or terrifies your core audience.

 

 

Plus, everybody knows that if your eyeballing liquor, high-proof rum is the way to go.

Edited May 21, 2010 by Enoch

[Walsingham]

The Daily Mail is a joke which sadly is lost on the readers of the Daily Mail itself. If I had an employee who read The Sun I'd assume they liked looking at ***s. But if they read the Daily Mail I'd assume they actually were a ***.

[Moose]

The Daily Mail is there for people that get through the day feeding on hate.

 

Like Sith Lords.

 

Bear that in mind if you see someone reading it Wals.