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Trick Question


Being against evil doesn't make you good.

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Jan
1st
2018

Victims · 6:49pm Jan 1st, 2018

Recently, horizon made a post about the likely attempted rape at Bronycon. Everypony has been signal boosting this thing except for me. I needed time to think.


This is an actual nonconsentual alcohol reference from the show.

First, this didn't happen at my room party.

A lot of people seem to think it did because horizon wasn't specific about the where and who, and I held two super-large writer room parties at 2017 Bronycon. This particular incident happened at a smaller party held after one of my parties, in another hotel.

That said, I was pretty dismissive about the possibility that this actually happened after hearing vague details about it—even though I heard these details directly from the victims. Reading horizon's blog now makes it clear that this was probably a real event rather than confusion on the part of the alleged victims or a simple misunderstanding.

Thinking back to the event where I heard the victims tell their story, I am forced to wonder why I was so skeptical initially.

Please note, I'm not saying "you should believe the victim is true regardless as to the data", because that isn't wise either. There are several reasons for me to be skeptical in this case, which I think are valid considerations:

* Prior probability: this is a (thankfully) unusual event for a con.
* Alcohol experience is subjective and people react differently at different times.
* I've never had alcohol, so I don't know what it's like to be tipsy.
* If you may be a victim, you're likely to jump to negative conlusions to be safe.
* It was very late at night, so tiredness plays into self-perception.
* Self-perception in general is notoriously unreliable.

There's also a reason for me to be skeptical which is not valid:

* The victims are women.

Obviously, there's no way to know for certain. But as I play back the event in my mind, if the victims were three men rather than three women, I think I would have been far less skeptical. This isn't because I consciously believe that women are less reliable witnesses or prone to hysterics, however.

It's because I subconsciously believe it, and before you point a hoof at me... so do you.

It doesn't matter if you're a man, or a woman, or even one of the victims. We all grow up in a culture where we learn negative stereotypes about women, and this is true in the States more than most other Western nations. By the time you're old enough to talk, it's already a part of how you think and some of it is impossible to shed. There are oodles of psychological studies demonstrating this to marked effect.

The only way to counter this perception is to be mindful about it: to ask yourself whether the way you feel is logical, or if you'd feel differently if the tables were turned. What if the person were female? Black? Straight? Christian? Liberal? There's undoubtedly a difference, but pretending you're above this does nothing to counter it.

I spent a year working with a man who spent his entire life studying prejudice and discrimination. Most of what you believe about prejudice is false. It isn't learned at home: there's no correlation with family and almost no correlation with peers. I know what you're thinking, somepony raised by the KKK will be prejudiced, right? This is only true while they're in that environment; it doesn't count as prejudice if they would change their opinion in the presence of new data (if they were able to see the world without the cult in the way).

To clarify from the comments, note the difference here. Prejudice is mostly innate and set at a young age. Stereotypes are taught, but largely taught culturally rather than consciously/directly by your parents, and is also set at a young age.

There are remarkably few correlates of prejudice and discrimination. His whole life, this professor only found three or four of them. One of them is authoritarian personality (positively correlated), which indicates prejudice is mostly set by the time you can talk. Another is eclectic religious views (negatively correlated).

But one correlation that might surprise you: people who are highly prejudiced don't believe in stereotypes. It's because they lack the ability to self-examine, and consider their judgments to be an accurate portrayal of the real world.

Do yourself a favor and look inward from time to time. Especially when the matter at hoof is serious.

Comments ( 47 )

We're all raised to believe negative stereotypes about women, especially in the States.

I'm sorry, but the only valid response I can conceive of is to call bullshit.

Speak for yourself, not for others.

4764659
This is actually a good illustration of point.

Oh, do go on. This ought to be good.

I dunno about "all raised to believe negative stereotypes about women"; I think I hold a lot of negative stereotypes towards men: lazy, unreliable, only care about sports hunting and drinking, excessively violent, etc. I mean, I was raised by my mom and sister, and my father was kind of an ass.
I honestly can't think of any negative stereotypes about women that I believe. maybe something about bathroom habits, but that's just because I work as a custodian in a country club.
does that mean i'm prejudiced against men or women? I'm a bit confused about that part.

Well... I mean... to be fair, you did just contradict yourself, Trix.

We're all raised to believe negative stereotypes about women, especially in the States.

It isn't learned at home: there's no correlation with family and almost no correlation with peers.

'Being raised' explicitly implies... you know... learning stuff from your parents, etc. So... Also, that quote kind of implies that our parents raised us wrong, and I can see how that might be offensive.

That being said, I get your ultimate point. That we're all just humans and our views are inherently skewed and there's little we can do about it, save to try and work around that.

But I will call one thing BS - it's not especially in the states. Saying that makes it sound like we Americans are a bunch of sexist pigs. Well that's exactly the kind of misguided attitude that we really don't need dividing this country anymore. No, we're not perfect, no one is. But there are still plenty of other places on the planet where the people are far more sexist, and sexist in more than theory, but actual practice, than America. Clearly you've never been to India, Nigeria, Saudi...

Lastly, Horizon makes a compelling argument. However, I will say this. At the party they all did two things very wrong: playing a drinking game, and sharing drinks. Now, I'm not saying that's directly the source of the problem, but what it is, is an indicator that those particular people in the room weren't the most experienced, educated drinkers. A drinking game with a bunch of people you don't know is asking for trouble, sharing a drink with strangers is just... no. Whether or not any Mickey's were slipped is beyond the point, now. Educating people about proper public drinking habits is more important to prevent any future occurrences.

4764723
I don't think it's especially in the States, but it's here more than it is in Europe. Among Western nations, the only country more gender-divergent than the US is Japan.

4764723
I misstated the point, though.

Stereotypes are indeed taught, and impossible to fully get rid of. Prejudice isn't taught, and at present it's also impossible to fully get rid of (though it can be modified to an extent).

4764723
I posted a clarification to the blog which should make it clearer.

4764723
I think the real problem was that it was open for all to come and go as they wish. Thats the impression i got at least.

That makes it quiet easy for something like this to happen. No idea how they knew all of the people were actually involved in bronycon and some random person didnt just drop by when it was off site in another hotel. Or maybe i got it wrong and they knew all involved.

But that just makes it worse ugh.

4764721
With stereotypes I'm talking about subconscious concepts that shape our opinion and judgment. Prejudice is more of an innate inflexibility marked by heavy-hoofed authority acceptance, an inability to self-examine or acknowledge stereotypes, etc.

4764729 See, me personally, I understand your point. I'm just noting that it's an inaccurate statement and it's gonna piss someone off. Oh wait...

4764659
I don't mean consciously believe. I mean that stereotypes guide our opinions whether or not we realize it.

I used to research prejudice and discrimination. I'm not pulling this out of my ass. People who score very high on measures of prejudice and discrimination also score very low on ability to self-examine or acknowledge how stereotypes influence their behavior.

4764737 I mean let's be honest, the host/hostess should really be noting who comes and goes. But yes. It does make it worse. Mistakes were made, people need to be more mindful and educated more about public drinking.

4764723
I agree there could be more care taken with the drinking games, but horizon is very responsible and I don't think any of the actions the people took were particularly dangerous outside of someone trying to poison the women.

4764659
I'm with Trick on this. It's pervasive in American pop culture and the social milieu. It's essentially unavoidable. That's not to say you can't get around it but it is to say that the "raised to believe" characterization is almost inescapably true, unless one somehow manages to completely avoid participating in one's culture. And yes, you can be raised with (ETA: exclusively) positive stereotypes for women, too—but it takes a hell of a lot more work, because it essentially requires substantial parental curating, given the pervasiveness of the negative stereotypes.

This is one of the problems researchers on expert systems are having to deal with now. If you just train an expert system to make the same decisions (e.g. hiring/promotion) as an organization has previously made, which is a pretty standard way of teaching expert systems, you're almost certainly using a biased training sample and that bias necessarily carries over into new decisions made by the expert system. If you judge new actions based on their agreement with past actions, you simply design a system to partially replicate past actions, whether or not those actions were good.

Bias self-perpetuates. Media portrayals of women as unreliable, untrustworthy, and driven by emotion rather than reason are nearly inescapable. If you participate, you have been "raised to believe" those negative stereotypes, regardless of whether you've worked to self-correct.

4764758
It's worth mentioning that when I say stereotypes in the blog post above, I mean both positive and negative ones.

Amusingly enough, highly prejudiced people believe positive stereotypes too. Many of them are convinced Asians are innately good at math and being Jewish makes you a better lawyer, and can't be convinced otherwise. I remember a racist post on Tumblr by an student where I teach where she used racial slurs against a woman with her toddler she saw on campus (just saw them, didn't even interact)—and she ended it with, "and he (the toddler) probably already gets A's in calculus, FML".

4764742 It's still a vague and grossly inappropriate generalisation.

We may absorb negative stereotypes about women, but even that would be misleading by omission. We pick up stereotypes of all kinds of all sorts of people (and other creatures, to be fair), so to specify one group without defined purpose seems disingenuous, to me. It also doesn't mean we are raised with any of those stereotypes.

Wisdom has been said to start with knowing what you don't know, and this still looks like falling at the first hurdle.

4764750 I suppose it just bothers me a little that you're decrying all these social ills that we can do little about, and placing most of the blame with a person who may or may not exist, and who may or may not have done something bad, instead of reinforcing the notion that everyone is responsible for safety when drinking in public. I'm sure Horizon is a responsible person, but when everyone else in the room is being reckless, it's a moot point.

Just to reiterate: playing drinking games and sharing drinks with strangers is NOT OK.

WATCH YOUR DAMN DRINKS, KIDS. (I mean, they LITERALLY taught this in school, how could you not know?)
DON'T GET SHITFACED IN PUBLIC WITHOUT A FRIEND WHO'S AT LEAST SOMEWHAT MORE SOBER.
DON'T PLAY DRINKING GAMES WITH STRANGERS.
DON'T SHARE DRINKS WITH STRANGERS.
DON'T DRINK ON AN EMPTY STOMACH.

I'm in a circumstance where there are several issues about what happened there-

1)There was no police report, no forensic evidence, no toxicology report from the people involved, nothing that would be pointed at and said "these are solid facts." Yes, there are people's opinions and what they saw, but there's no facts.
2)What details do we know about the girls? How old are they? How long have they been drinking that night and what have they been drinking? Have they ever drank at a con?
3)Every con I've been to with an after-hours party, unless you request otherwise, they mix the drinks strong. On the scale of about 1.5 to 1 or more than what you would get at a "regular" bar. They could have believed that they had "only" two rums and cokes, but in terms of alcohol content, they had three or four.
4)Allergies. Kid you not, I have a friend that can do tequila shots all day and all night, but a shot of whiskey will cause him to projectile vomit all over the place. Does our "previously roofied" subject have an allergy they don't know about?
5)Alcohol affects women differently than men. The guys could have been thinking that they were okay, but the girls reacted differently.

So...here's my issues. All I have are people's stories.

There's tragic stories, horrible even.

But, I have no facts.

ConOps should have contacted the police-at the very least to get the drinks for testing, interview the people involved, and get the paperwork going. I recognize that everybody involved might have felt embarrassed and silly, but if an actual crime took place, the process needs to be started now. The facts need to be gathered, while the memories and the evidence are still fresh in people's minds.

And, if the facts show that a crime had been committed, the process needs to go to that next step, because there are facts.

But one correlation that might surprise you: people who are highly prejudiced don't believe in stereotypes. It's because they lack the ability to self-examine, and consider their judgments to be an accurate portrayal of the real world.

Fuck.

But I still have a question: how to discriminate this explanation from, for example, that these guys were regularly getting in trouble somehow with their prejudice some time ago and now are trying to signal that they are not prejudiced? (yay, behaviorism!)

4764774

(I mean, they LITERALLY taught this in school, how could you not know?)

I never learned that in school. :rainbowderp:

4764758

Media portrayals of women as unreliable, untrustworthy, and driven by emotion rather than reason are nearly inescapable.

Not trying to quote mine, I just wanted to focus on the thing I thought was most relevant.

If you'd just asked me, apropos of nothing, if I thought this was a common stereotype of women in media, I'd have said no. With some context, it occurs to me to ask if you don't think these are exactly the traits more commonly associated with men in media?

And this is kind of my point. As someone who has been studying this sort of phenomena for years now (an unfortunate necessity, given my mental health work), I would suggest that cultural indoctrination (that's really what we're talking about, isn't it?) is actually the exact reverse of what TQ implied, and proper self-examination has revealed this to me.

And if I were to be specific, given that TQ didn't initially provide a frame of reference, I can so that I was 'raised' to think the exact opposite of what you've suggested and have dedicated a great deal of effort towards undoing it. Further, I have spent every bit as much time helping others undo similar cultural beliefs, and that's for both men and women – more like boys and girls, if I'm honest.

4764813 Well that's unfortunate. It's part of health class here in Chicago anyway. And here, they hammered it home hard. They went over all sorts of ways someone can slip you a mickey, the different types of drugs, and how you should always watch your glass and not let strangers pour you a drink. This is an important thing to learn, but I suppose it's like sex ed. Some people think like teaching you about it is teaching you to do it. But the hard fact is - you're gonna do it anyway! Might as well be prepared.
4764795 Pretty much. For my part, I honestly don't think anything happened. But I wasn't there. And whether it did or didn't is irrelevant. Public drinking is like driving a car. If you're gonna do it, it's your responsibility to be educated and to practice it safely, otherwise someone will get hurt. Simple.

4764974
That, and also there's an additional responsibility by you and your friends that if something goes wrong, you get help. "Help", in this circumstance, is the police.

4764659 I suspect the two of you are interpreting that sentence differently.

Trick says, "We're all raised to believe negative stereotypes about women, especially in the States," meaning, perhaps, "We're all exposed to stereotypes about men and women, and some of the stereotypes about women are negative. Some stereotypes about women are good; some stereotypes about men are bad. I am at this moment talking about a common negative stereotype about women, not claiming that women are seen more negatively overall than men."

Scot hears, "We're all raised to believe that men are better than women are."

Different things.

Peek-a-boo!
I can see you
And I know what you do
'Cause I do it too.

(Dig those cutting-edge 1982 computer graphics)

Nothing personal, I was just reminded of the video

4764723

Lastly, Horizon makes acompellingargument. However, I will say this. At the party they all did two things very wrong: playing a drinking game, and sharing drinks. Now, I'm not saying that's directly the source of the problem, but what it is, is an indicator that those particular people in the room weren't the most experienced, educated drinkers. A drinking game with a bunch of people you don't know is asking for trouble, sharing a drink with strangers is just... no.

I'm not sure you actually understood the idea of the sumble ritual. The communal drink was poured in view of everyone and passed around the circle to mark who was the speaker and who should be paid attention to, so it was always under everyone's constant supervision; it would have taken, like, David Blaine to dose the communal glass, and even if they did it would have hit basically everyone and that would just have led to massive awkwardness and unwanted attention rather than victims to woo. Also, the communal drink was drained at the end of each round so during the break periods it was just a normal party. And while the ritual was going on, everyone was either participating, or out.

You probably also heard "drinking game" and thought the object was to get wasted. No. The object was to share in the ritual. Everyone had a total of three glasses (ETA: not required to be alcohol, and encouraged to lighten up or switch to water as you went on to avoid overconsumption) plus a few sips: you got a single drink at the beginning of each round and slowly drained it over the course of the time that the focus passed around the circle.

It was mountains more regulated than any room party with an open bar.

If, on the other hand, you're saying that it's irresponsible to drink in a room where strangers are present ... uh, good luck with that.

4765191 Hey I wasn't there. I'm only going by what you said. And you clearly missed the point I was trying to make, I'm not claiming the alleged drug was distributed in any certain way, through a drinking game or shared glass or whatever, merely that on the surface, it sounds like the party-goers could've practiced more caution - IN GENERAL. Still, though, why the hell would you share a glass with a bunch of strangers? I wouldn't, I don't want herpes. Jesus, even the catholics use paper cups now. Also, you can call it a ritual, but the point of literally every drinking game is to get wasted. Still, I'll take your word for it that it was well regulated.

However, I'm still standing by my opinion that a good number of the people that I saw were simply not very experienced drinkers. :unsuresweetie:

4765095 Sort of, but no. What I hear is "we are raised to believe false negative narratives about women". After all, you can be exposed to positive and negative stereotypes about women, but you can't really believe both as it somewhat negates the concept of a stereotype – those would be opinions (not that stereotypes aren't opinions, but tires are circular but not everything circular is a tyre).

Also, no comparison to men was offered or implied at any point, so I had no reason to consider that.

4765228

Jesus, even the catholics use paper cups now.

Quick interjection: I'm Catholic, and this is not a thing I've encountered. Like, ever. Standard practice everywhere I've been is just for the minister of the Eucharist to wipe the edge of the chalice and rotate it as each new person approaches to receive it.

</tangent>

To the topic, I will say that I'm willing to believe this happened - I have no reason not to believe it, and I tend, whether this is a wise approach or not, to believe people when I can see no reason for them to be deceptive. I wasn't involved and I don't know the people who were involved, so I further have no reason to step in on anybody's behalf, in terms of character assessments or judgments. I will say that regardless, if somebody even feels they might have been the victim of such a thing (even if they are mistaking it for tipsiness or whatnot), I can't at all fault them for speaking out about it, nor anybody else for seeking to assist them. But I do see the points presented in the original post, and why they may be cause for skepticism.

I'm pleased that whatever happened, nopony that I have heard of was apparently the worse for wear at the end.

4765191
4764974
Mm, I dunno if I would think it so hard to adhere to the idea of not drinking in a situation where strangers are present. I suppose it's one thing if you frequent bars (I don't), where it would be nigh impossible to drink without somebody you don't know in the room, but in the sense of a party or other atmosphere you can't necessarily trust to be regulated no matter what others present claim, it wouldn't be beyond perception to simply not imbibe. Unless you feel you need alcohol to have a good time, which bespeaks of an entirely different problem. By the same token, unless you're prone to losing your senses over just a single drink, you can certainly still enjoy up to the limit you know your tolerance to have. I wouldn't drink out of the same glass as a stranger personally (or for that matter even somebody I know), but that's a matter of preference.

This is notwithstanding the possibility that the drinks may be drugged. Certainly I would never drink anything at all if I had reason to believe something like that was occurring, but that was hardly common-knowledge before the fact at this event. I can't see any problem with sharing a drink with others under the pretext of the way this ritual was carried out, if it's to your preference to do so.

I personally might drink around strangers, but it would be no more than a trifling amount unless I had somebody there I felt I could trust, or the venue was familiar, or something else of that nature. Something to hold onto. But I'm the wrong person to ask given I very rarely imbibe - almost nobody I can be in the physical presence of these days for any significant length of time drinks, and I never drink alone.

4765334
4765095
In case it wasn't clear, Bad Horse is right on the money.

4765458 To be fair, a huge problem is that a LOT of people, especially younger people, don't even know their limit, and many that do, don't bother stopping at it. Like I said, when I was there, there was certainly a good number of drinkers with questionable drinking experience.

4765339 I mean... ok I guess. But seriously, the fact that germs exist has been common knowledge going on 100 years now. I'm not pointing fingers at your church specifically - there are plenty of other instances - but it does bother me that there still exist such ways to spread disease that can be rectified SO easily, yet haven't been. Like passing a drink around at a party. :unsuresweetie:

4765988
Yes, this is a thing people worry about. But the consensus seems to be that there's really very little to worry about.

I think you might be a little overly health-panicky on this topic.

4765888 Then I was right to call bullshit because what you said was completely unreasonable.

But to push the point, I want to pick up on another thing that you said because I'm getting the impression you don't really get how other people think:

But as I play back the event in my mind, if the victims were three men rather than three women, I think I would have been far less skeptical.

I am absolutely stunned that anyone thinks that way, and I'd be equally stunned if you weren't in a significant minority with that kind of view. Aside from my anecdotal take on it, this reaction also flies in the face of more or less all evolutionary psychology – certainly everything I've read and everyone I've heard speak on it regarding gender norms and development, at least. Men are biologically predisposed towards looking favourably on women, which includes believing them as the default position and having the instinct to defend them. The term 'White Knighting' exists for a reason; it's a biological imperative.

As such, I repeat that I would be stunned if more than a tiny minority would be more sceptical of the same story about men.

4765984
Well, there's also the idea that alcohol seems to have become an integral part of certain recreational events. I dislike beer and I don't see the point in drinking harder alcohol unless I intend to get a buzz from it (since alcohol tastes like fire to me no matter what you mix with it), and thus I very, very rarely drink anything more than a pittance. People have made rather odd assumptions about me due to the above - everything from assuming I have some sort of religious or moral temperance-based hatred of alcohol (not at all), or that I'm somehow stuck-up and judging them because they choose to imbibe (ego-based judgment error on their part).

But I wonder if perhaps some of that derives from how my senses perceive things. I don't drink coffee because no matter what flavors you try to cover it up with, I can still taste the natural bitter unpleasantness of coffee beans. I don't drink unsweetened tea because no matter what kind of tea it is, I detect no flavor at all without a sweetener to bring it out, and feel as though I'm simply drinking scented hot/cold water. I find cigarette smoke disgusting and am of the impression that "flavor" in it is an addiction-based myth, while pot provides me with nothing but a headache and a bad taste in my mouth (never experienced any sort of 'euphoria' from it). Beer I can derive no flavor from either - it all just tastes like watery alcohol to me, regardless of brand or ingredients. The same for wine.

Soooo...it just doesn't occur to me to ensure alcohol is present at a social event, where to many others, it not only occurs, but is found strange when absent.

4766181
In my experience, it's pretty common in fandom for fans to not drink. It might be more common among furries than bronies, or maybe it's changed over time.

4766210
It may be. I don't get to spend much time with fandom folks in my daily life though, and the people around me seem to enjoy their alcohol quite a bit, be they acquaintances, co-workers, so forth. I guess I'm used to the idea that more people drink than not. That, plus folks seem to automatically think I have an agenda when I refuse a drink. Oh well I guess.

4766181 There's nothing wrong with not drinking, it's simply strange because drinking has become so ingrained in most societies around the world, over the course of literally thousands of years, so much so that several races have actually evolved to be better at it. Alcohol is literally one of the defining parts of human culture. If its absence is odd, that's why.

Of course, you could say that speaks ill of us as a species. Let's not kid ourselves, people drink because life fucking sucks, and it's nice to get shitfaced and forget about that for a while. :yay:

Alcohol IS an acquired taste, nobody really likes the taste of it, itself. They just like the effects of it. Everything else is pretty much secondary. Why else would we try to mask the flavor any which way we can? Beer still befuddles me. I've had one or two tolerable tasting beers, the rest are all piss water. Give me hard liquor any day, it gets the job done quicker, and without me having to suffer through at least two bottles of piss to get the same effect. I do enjoy cider though, it's like apple juice. Wine is ok when it's sweet. Can't stand a dry wine.

I'll also agree with you on coffee and cigarettes. Tea? Maybe.

But anyway if anyone gives you shit for not drinking, just tell them you're the designated driver. Or that somebody has to watch over the rest of their sorry asses when they get shitfaced. :moustache:

4766103 Well if the common consensus thinks that you can't spread disease by sharing saliva, the common consensus is dead wrong. To be fair, it's not like I'm worrying about spreading the common cold or something that is otherwise communicable through other means, or otherwise fairly harmless. I'M concerned that one day when there's an outbreak of polio, or an actual bird flu, or the zombie virus, THEN there will be problems. And then it will be too late.

And I'm not kidding, there is a very real possibility that there will be an outbreak of something sometime. And just pretending like that's not a possibility won't help.

4766685
A reasonable proof of alcohol is automatically sterile because it depolarizes cell membranes, destroying bacteria or viruses which are surrounded by it. It doesn't kill us because our outer layer of skin is already dead, and our mouths and throats are covered in mucous membranes, but pour alcohol on a cut sometime to see what I mean.

So you can't catch a disease from the drink itself. Catching a disease from using the same rim of a cup is negligible. Yes, you can catch a cold or minor illnesses from kissing people, but you don't die from kissing people and drinking from a cup is even less risky than a kiss. Even if you did get sick, any illness you get would be minor con crud (that I tend to get every time I go to a big convention anyway).

I guess unless somepony had mono or something, you could catch that, but it isn't deadly. Deadly diseases easily caught are the ones we take vaccines for.

4766692 Like I said. Something, sometime. And it's this kind of attitude that'll help bring about the zombie apocalypse.

4766671
To me, "race" is a combination of genus and species, but that's an entirely different discussion :raritywink:

I would most definitely argue the idea that alcohol defines human culture. At one point in history people drank more short beer than water because the water wasn't safe to drink, but I think there's something to be said in the modern era for learned behavior. I suppose there must be some people who drink for the taste...I can't really understand any other reason to drink anything, alcohol or not, if you don't like it. (Except water, which is something your body needs whether you like it or not.) Others do it because they were raised seeing all the other adults around them doing it and they figure they ought to, or that escapism thing you mentioned. I can't say that I never need a break from life, but as far as drinking because "life sucks," well...my life doesn't suck. I have troubles like anybody else does, but I refuse to think of life as something that is generally awful. Thus escapism isn't one of my reasons for imbibing.

Nobody gives me shit for not drinking, just they find it odd. The other day a friend of mine had me sample half a dozen wines and various alcohols (one mixed drink too), hoping he could find something I liked. Some of them had somewhat different odors to them, but they all tasted the same - like fire. Even the ones I'm told are worlds different in flavor. One of them supposedly had grapes in it, which I'm told is a prominent part of the flavor. I was amazed to hear that - I certainly did not taste grapes. Just fire. It might be my palette.

Alcohol technically being a topical anesthetic...I sorta wonder who originally thought to pour it down their throat!

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Alcohol technically being a topical anesthetic...I sorta wonder who originally thought to pour it down their throat!

It's believed that originally, hominids developed the ability to process alcohol because it allowed us to eat rotten fruit. Evolution basically turned a poison into something less poisonous due to food shortages. Since people would eat rotten fruit, the properties of alcohol as a painkiller and mild euphoric were well-known, and we eventually learned how to make alcohol more safely.

Some other animals are capable of drinking alcohol and getting tipsy. You can't get horses drunk, though. They'd need more alcohol than their stomach capacity, so even if they drank liquor daily I don't think they'd get drunk. People sometimes feed them good beer as a treat.

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Alcohol technically being a topical anesthetic...I sorta wonder who originally thought to pour it down their throat!

Ok, first of all, I'm pretty sure you meant antiseptic. Second, alcohol wasn't even 'invented' first. Rotten water, "beer," and rotten juice, "wine," were invented first. I suppose drinking rotten water just must've seemed like a thing to do for someone at some point. Just like some caveman though that bees were hiding something delicious, or that drinking cow titty juice would be good for your bones.

Also, while googling the first distillation of alcohol (which I remember from school some Arab alchemist a long time ago distilled wine) I found this, which is slightly relevant:

There had been prior evidence of crudely distilled alcoholic beverages, liquors made from things like rice and mare’s milk in Asia as far back as 800 B.C.

https://vinepair.com/spirits-101/history-of-distilling/

:pinkiecrazy:

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Point. We can totally get little ponies drunk, though. :twilightsheepish:

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I was referring to the concept of drinking 'short beer' in the European middle ages. Admittedly I didn't think the one comment was worth deeper historical research.

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