A quick, special note for a new project 👀
HIP REPLACEMENT typically explores Gen Z, Milllennial, and Gen X cultural overlaps and differences, to help encourage more generational cross-pollination. The podcast mainly looks downward, speaking with younger guests to better understand what twentysomethings-ish are into, but we’re piloting a companion podcast that looks upward, bringing on guests over forty to share insights and advice on life stages. But! We need your help by sharing your thoughts on the stages of life, via filling out this form. It should take five minutes. Thanks for the support!
Do you know what a BORG is? For the unfamiliar it is a “blackout rage gallon,” a popular Gen Z college drink that sees a gallon jug mixed with water, a water flavor additive, and a liquor of choice. Thus, an all day libation.
BORGs were on the mind for Ben Dietz as he recently was visiting Campbell at college where he got to see the drink firsthand. Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick was familiar with them while our guest, Kate Daykin of Pulse Check, was new to this.
“Who needs a little flask when you can just have your gallon jug with which to get blackout raging?” Ben said, before admitting such an encounter was not something he loved seeing. “The whole thing as an indicator was pretty scary, to be honest,” he said. “When you’re young and your constitution allows it…I guess? But it it does it’s a real counter-indicator to this culture of moderation, dosage, so on and so forth.”
“Do I live under a rock? Is a BORG a thing?” Kate asked.
“Borgs are definitely a thing,” Kyle said. “People will decorate them. They’re very colorful. It makes this otherwise obscene thing really cute in a way…If I was in college now, I would be going crazy with a BORG but, no, it is a bit of a hellscape. It reminds — which is a tangent but related, but there is a conversation to be had about young people and drinking, not that I think they’re doing anything other than what any of us did — of this woman on TikTok who is getting attention for the ‘fifty day alcohol binge challenge’ — ”
“Bender!” Kate says, of the person doing the #50DayBenderChallenge on TikTok.
“It’s horrifying,” Kyle says. “There will be a conversation about young people drinking in the way there always is, for every generation.”
“What’s the 50-day bender challenge?” Ben asks.
“She just drinks a lot,” Kyle adds.
“In the age of the quantified self, I would think there’s some sort of metric you have to hit…Can we get any metrics in here?”
“I would establish a bender as alcohol every single day,” Kate says. “How I view it is you’re drinking every single day in some capacity to make it a bender.”
“I’m on a bender all the time in that case,” Ben says.
Naturally, this leads into conversations about monitoring health, which Ben raised and Kate brought back to how she doesn’t wear her Oura ring when out as it can be a bully. Listen to the full episode above, where we discuss flasks and pre-games trending because of the economy, cultural sentiments and thinking around AI, and why work “never stops” now. Catch the conversation on YouTube and Spotify as well!
Find more from HIP REPLACEMENT on YouTube, Spotify, and Instagram. Be sure to follow Ben Dietz over on SIC and Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick over on The Trend Report™ too.
