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Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Will you drink the Kool-Aid?


This idiomatic expression has been going around the internets lately. It has been posted on Digg especially with regards to rabid Microsoft, Linux and Apple fanboys. And you may ask, what the hell does 'drinking the Kool-aid' means?

History

To give you a little background, according to wikipedia during the early 1960s a group of people called Merry Pranksters toured America and held 'Acid Test' events by drinking a LSD-laced Kool-Aid. Those who 'drink the Kool-Aid' upheld and accepted the LSD drug culture during that time.

'Drinking the Kool-Aid' is now closely associated with the cult mass-suicide by the people of Jonestown, Guyana by drinking grape-flavoured Flavor-Aid laced with potassium cyanide. Thus in the process 'Drinking the Kool-Aid' idiom becomes synonymous with unnatural loyalty and devotion.

Conclusions

Let's go back to all rabid fanboys out there. Say for example, when his Steveness at Apple announces a product every Mac fanatic will gladly embrace it and systematically bash other company's product. This is not just confined in Apple's world but also in Microsoft and Linux. This is clearly a manifestation of blindly following someone's philosophy. Clearly when someone does this you will definitely hear the phrase 'someone's been drinking Kool-Aid lately'.

So please use you mind and don't be a lemming. "There's a sucker born every minute" - P.T. Barnum.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

i don't want to be a "Kool Aid"

jan2x said...

Hahaha... is there a Kool-Aid available here?

Anonymous said...

i used to drink the real "kool-aid" when I was a kid....

jan2x said...

Never tasted it, but I do get my fair share of 'kool-aid drinking'.