Why I say beer is bad (sort of)

First off, I would love nothing more than to know the thoughts of everyone who read this in reaction to the title of this. When I was a staff writer for my college newspaper and I had to produce mandatory articles to meet my quota, I was entertaining the thought of submitting this article just to rock the boat and I thought if I did, it would probably the most controversial article in the history of the JMU Breeze. I could write an op-ed article suggesting JMU put a ban on all Chinese applicants and that would probably get less angry responses than if I dared to attack the quasi-sacred status of the beer culture at JMU and the majority of large colleges.

All critical thought at college campuses and most young people nowadays stops at beer. If the point of college is to make us more aware and enlightened or to make us question authority more, that’s certainly not evident at JMU on a weekend. There’s absolutely no critical thought or discussion put into the question, “Is beer good for us?” or “Are you sure we should be drinking so much beer.”

Beer is unquestionably good and it’s a gold mine to some fat CEOs out there who run these industries. I didn’t love the beer culture at JMU and the one that exists today in our generation and I think I’ve gradually been coming to terms as to why I don’t like it and have enjoyed being able to articulate it better.

Recently, I was thinking about the 60’s and how into drugs the college students of those times were. Those were really great times in which the youth of America were really taking control of the country and leading it into a new direction, although I’m no historical expert. Those people did drugs to break away from their parents’ values which is a big part of the problem right there. When our parents did drugs they were making a statement: “We refuse to adopt the values of our parents’ generation. We are not only going to actively rebel against the notion that drugs are bad for us but we are going to openly question are parents’ values of racial equality and war.” When we drink beer we’re sending pretty much the opposite message: “The problems our current generation faces is too hard to deal with so I’m going to escape it by forking over large amounts of money to the beer industry.”

What’s worse, beer is our desperate need for an escape mechanism because we pretty much spend all of our time not drinking beer PLAYING BY THE RULES OF OUR OLDER GENERATION. A humongous percentage of us get college educations compared to our last generation, get jobs in some field that isn’t interesting to us but will make us money (hence people getting business degrees or going to law schools). A lot of us don’t pay attention in our classes and brag about how we forgot everything college taught us and are only looking to get the degree. Therefore, it’s uncool to talk about class at parties. It’s also considered inappropriate in the code for picking up girls to discuss politics and that is what nightlife is centered mostly on, so there’s very little discourse in our generation. I’m not incredibly attuned to politics, but I think at Woodstock, where those guys got high and talked about what was wrong with the world and I think that would have been a better place to be.

So to me, I dislike the extreme conformity involved in it. I have little problem with you all having your vices on the weekends but when you all mindlessly chose the same exact vice (alcohol), it gives me little confidence that my generation will ever amount to much. Seriously, there are plenty of other vices that are equally illegal and more dangerous in some cases. Try smoking pot. Try crack. Try sniffing glue. Develop an unhealthy addiction to video games. Hire a hooker. Bet illegally on sports games or just plain become a compulsive gambler. Join a cockfighting ring. How about drag racing? I remember there were some people in high school who reached speeds of 110 on 66 at 3 in the morning. Doesn’t that sound like fun? It doesn’t matter, but I’d have more confidence in your future if you actually did one of those things because you liked doing them and not because everyone else was doing them.

Those guys were counter-culture and the problem is we think we’re being counter-culture as well when we drink beer. This is why we advertise in our facebook pictures: “Look at us, we’re drinking beer. We are being original and rebelling against things we’re not supposed to do.” The main problem with this, other than the fact that you’re not being original when you’re doing something 99% of people at JMU are doing, is that once you reach the age of 21, you’re not rebelling anymore: You’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing and more than that, you’re doing exactly what some big corporations out there who run the beer industry want you to do and letting them define what’s cool for you. In other words: Just like any other trend or fad, there are probably some very brilliant marketing teams out there who have succeeded in making beer unquestionably cool. They are probably secretly employing those frat boys who ask you every ten seconds on a Saturday night, “Dude, why don’t you have a beer in your hand.” They have built a culture where we worship frat culture (was there really much of a plot to “Old School”?) and Animal House movie posters go on our walls. Everything in our generation from where we take vacations (i.e. Cancun, Panama City) to how we should go about hooking up with members of the opposite sex or impressing them or whatever, involves the purchase of beer. I don’t see any difference between my generation’s love for beer and 13-year olds splurging on Hannah Montana CDs. The generation above us wasn’t benefiting some major corporation when they did drugs and that’s what truly made them cool.