r/todayilearned • u/Melenduwir • 7d ago
TIL the phrase "drinking the Kool-Aid", although associated with the Jonestown murder-suicides, actually originated in the Tom Wolfe book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" about Ken Kesey and the "Merry Pranksters". Jonestown actually used Flavor Aid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid83
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u/StoryAndAHalf 6d ago
"Drinking the Flavor-Aid" doesn't have the same ring to it. It's like Mr. Pibb to Dr. Pepper.
"Mr. Pibb is a poor imitation of Dr. Pepper. Dude didn’t even get his degree." - Mitch Hedberg
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u/burger333 6d ago
I’ll go the other way with an American Dad quote. “He's not one of those 'Doctor' sodas, putting on airs and flashing around his Ivy League diploma." “No, Mr. Pibb earns his paycheck. He's the kind of soda I'd like to have a beer with."
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u/Ok-Albatross8521 6d ago
I recently learned the background for the phrase “going postal” that certainly fits the theme
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u/HornedShoe 6d ago
Sinister means left-handed.
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u/TheMan5991 5d ago
Dexter means right-handed. Someone who is good with both hands is called ambidextrous because they have “both right hands”. Meanwhile, someone who isn’t good with either hand is called ambisinister because they have “both left hands”. That is also why we have the phrase “two left feet” to describe a clumsy person. Because they have no “dexterity”.
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u/Melenduwir 6d ago
Disappointingly, a lot of the nursery rhymes that people like to imply have dark origins actually don't. It's almost a shame. "Ring Around the Rosy" would be a lot cooler if it were about the Black Plague.
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u/Tibbaryllis2 6d ago
Also all the original versions of the Disney and Disney-esq fairytales.
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u/Melenduwir 6d ago
Most of them are incredibly dark by today's standards; of course, many of them weren't intended for children.
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u/Still_Want_Mo 6d ago
The electric kool-aid acid test is not a dark origin story, though. It’s the opposite.
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u/rankaistu_ilmalaiva 5d ago
Yeah, and the phrase ”drinking the kool-aid” already has a dark meaning of falling for propagamda to the extent that you’d participate in mass suicide.
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u/Still_Want_Mo 5d ago
No lol. That came after. It was originally about drinking the acid laced kool aid and listening to the Grateful Dead.
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u/rankaistu_ilmalaiva 5d ago
I mean as in how the term is used today.
but also, the way language works, and this is something people doing this ”originally it meant” posts online don’t get, is that a new meaning overwrites the old one. Nimrod was a great hunter in the bible, but because people mistook it for a word for idiot when Bugs Bunny used it about Elmer Fudd, now Nimrod means idiot.
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u/Still_Want_Mo 5d ago
Yes it has become that. It has evolved to have a dark meaning. It doesn’t have dark origins
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u/rankaistu_ilmalaiva 5d ago
please read my initial reply again
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u/Still_Want_Mo 5d ago
And read mine. I’m talking about the origin. You responded to me first
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u/rankaistu_ilmalaiva 5d ago
You: the phrase doesn’t have dark origin
Me: yeah but it has a dark meaning now
You: no, that came after
literally impossible to talk with some of you people
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u/Still_Want_Mo 5d ago
You’re stating the obvious by saying it’s meaning. Is. I have no interest in speaking on that. I think the origin is way cooler. That’s what I want to talk about.
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u/steve0suprem0 6d ago edited 6d ago
Rule of thumb
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u/waleMc 6d ago
... which isn't actually a dark origin, but about approximating lengths and widths using your thumb as a measuring device.
The folk theory about legally beating wives has no basis in reality, and the rumor only first started cropping up a century after the term had been in common use.
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u/RedErin 6d ago
In the following century, several court rulings in the United States referred to a supposed common-law doctrine which the judges believed had once allowed wife-beating with an implement smaller than a thumb.[5][11]: 41–42 None of these courts referred to such a doctrine as a rule of thumb or endorsed such a rule, but all permitted some degree of wife-beating so long as it did not result in serious injury.[3]
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u/AloysiusGramonde 6d ago
Its weird. I always thought it was the Ken Kesey thing and then was corrected. I want to find that person and say SEE I WAS RIGHT
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u/GreenNo2789 6d ago
Worth adding that most of the 909 people who died at Jonestown didn't drink voluntarily. Armed guards surrounded the pavilion. Parents were told to give it to their children first so they'd have nothing left to live for. People who refused were held down and injected with syringes. Calling it "mass suicide" lets Jim Jones off easy. It was a mass murder with a handful of true believers mixed in.
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u/blackjackgabbiani 6d ago
Doesn't everyone know that?
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u/Captain_Kuhl 6d ago
Probably not, because most people don't follow decades-old true crime. That's why "drinking the kool-aid" is as widespread of a term as it is while being as inaccurate as it is.
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u/BlackFenrir 6d ago
Unless you reframe the phrase as "drinking the Kool-aid rather than needing to be forced to"
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u/blackjackgabbiani 6d ago
I don't follow decades old true crime either but I still thought it was very common knowledge that it was a massacre.
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u/Captain_Kuhl 6d ago
The popular belief is that they were all indoctrinated into believing they were going to transcend to some better place, so they all willingly participated and chose to drink the kool-aid. More "look at those crazies" and less actually seeing it as a mass murder.
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u/blackjackgabbiani 6d ago
Again I don't really think that's the popular view when it's very well known that so many of then were murdered
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u/ChiefCuckaFuck 6d ago
It absolutely is the popular view when the entire point of the post is to talk about what "drinking the kool-aid" means and where it came from.
That phrase is used to imply that youve willingly fallen under the brainwashing spell of xyz entity. "Oh yeah dave loves his job at Capital One hes really drank the kool-aid he sings their praises day and night."
One doesnt use that term to imply what someone does when being forced against their will to do it, like the majority of the jonestown massacre victims were.
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u/trainbrain27 5d ago
It's a big hint that the phrase is usually used to imply that believers in [blank] would willing kill themselves, even though most of the victims did not..
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u/blackjackgabbiani 5d ago
It's used to describe people who have fallen hook, line, and sinker for some conspiracy. EG, the people who killed their fellow cult members.
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u/pbmm1 7d ago
What’s a merry prankster though?
“The first known use of the phrase was in a passage from the 1968 non-fiction book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe, where it is used by Clair Brush, who works for the Los Angeles Free Press, to describe an unsuccessful attempt to stop someone with a poor mental health record from drinking Kool-Aid laced with LSD, who then subsequently had a bad psychedelic experience. The Atlantichypothesized that this story, which caused "many Americans [to become] familiar with the idea of being urged to drink Kool-Aid containing ... unusual chemicals", contributed to the misconception that Kool-Aid was used in Jonestown.”
Oh interesting
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u/Quesabirria 6d ago edited 6d ago
The book will tell you much of the story of the Merry Pranksters, and their leader author Ken Kesey (one flew over the cuckoos nest). They drove around the country in a big bus turning people on to LSD. The Grateful Dead kind of started as the house band for the Acid Tests that were thrown by the Pranksters in the mid 60s.
EDIT: I should add, the Acid Tests were a series of events by the Pranksters held at clubs in California that purported to give you the LSD experience without the LSD (lol). Music, lights, trippy shit. But at the event they had two kinds of Kool-Aid and you were free to choose your path
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u/Beemerba 6d ago
When Kesey wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, He was a night guard at an insane asylum. He would take a bunch of acid, then go to work and type all night. When he went home and sobered up, he would edit the writing.
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u/Quesabirria 6d ago
I didn't know that, I'm sure there was a lot of editing, lol.
Used to walk by his house in Eugene OR in the 80s.
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u/Ent_Trip_Newer 6d ago
I live there now and have met a couple of the pranksters. Oregon Country Fair was started by many of them.
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u/thecravenone 126 6d ago
I've known some software developers that follow approximately the same regimen.
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u/AmigoDelDiabla 6d ago
And then 20 years later, a young James Hetfield would write an amazing song based on Kesey's book.
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u/casualmolly 6d ago
This is a fascinating book/story.
The counterculture of that era was absolutely wild. Hightly recommend the book. Tom Wolfe's writing style is so well suited for this piece of history.
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u/AmigoDelDiabla 6d ago
Wolfe talks so much about Kesey, I had to go out and get Sometimes A Great Notion.
It became my favorite work of fiction.
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u/ChiefCuckaFuck 6d ago
And the whole thing was subsidized by the CIA!
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u/rankaistu_ilmalaiva 5d ago
Not proof of that. Kesey participated in an MK Ultra test, but LSD was still legal at the time, and towards the end of the legal era, there were already underground producers, most famously Owlsley Stanley
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u/ChiefCuckaFuck 5d ago
There 100% is proof of it if you know where to look.
Start here and then go read weird scenes inside the canyon, and CHAOS.
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u/rankaistu_ilmalaiva 5d ago
I am familiar with conspiracy theorist recruitment tactics, thank you very much. I have been online for over 20 years and seen the ”here’s this real thing, now go read this bullshit conjecture, they are the same thing” about more things than you can imagine.
The most powerful psyop the CIA has devised is spreading the image if themselves as all powerful and everpresent, and to make everyone critical of US empire constantly be suspicious of each other because one person A like a thing that person B has been told is a psyop and person B likes a thing person A has been told is a psyop.
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u/ChiefCuckaFuck 5d ago
Jesus christ you could just read some books and make the decision for yourself. Or you could just stfu and say no thanks, but this dreck is insufferable.
Secondably, that second paragraph shows YOU are engaging in YOUR OWN criticisms by dismissing out of hand something someone else is offering to show you.
Also hilarious that you go "no proof of it" and i offer you proof and you go THATS FAKE CONSPIRACY THEORY STUFF
If you have no interest in a genuine conversation, then dont even start one.
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u/rankaistu_ilmalaiva 5d ago
I know enough about CHAOS to know a guy going crazy trying to prove his pet theory with scraps.
Oh there was a CIA guy working at the Haight Ashbury free clinic, and Mansin went to the clinic a lot? Yeah, maybe that has somethi g tl do with it being The free clinic for hippies in Sam Framsisco? No? Must be a conspiracy.
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u/These_Consequences 6d ago
That makes a heck of a lot more sense than the exclusive Jonestown sourcing, considering the way this phrase is actually used. A person who "drinks the Kool-Aid" at work doesn't commit suicide, but totally accepts to the corporate culture. I guess that lemming-like final step could fit, but mainly, it makes more sense to think of them as tripping.
I've been harboring cognitive dissonance all these years. Huh.
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u/Any-Ask563 6d ago
I think an important lack of context too is that the “kool-aid” drinking associated with Jonestown wasn’t consensual… most were FORCED to drink the, ughh, flavor-aid… were aware of the outcome and didn’t want any part of it. Speaks to the cult mentality of them losing everyone they know around them and social safety net… it was much more murder-suicide than mass suicide. Worth a read if you’re into the occult or just learning that pop-journalism usually only scratches the surface
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u/Complete_Entry 6d ago
Nothing occult about it. Jones was a ghoul, no fucking doubt, but there wasn't much mysticism in his bullshit.
He coopted good old evangelism.
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u/Archarchery 6d ago edited 6d ago
And communism. Whatever Jones could think of that would get people to obey him unconditionally. At one point in the late 1960s he got into some hot water after a religion reporter wrote an article revealing that he was claiming he could bring people back from the dead and some of his followers were worshipping him as God, so he did a hard pivot and started recasting himself as a Chairman Mao type figure and tapping into the left-wing radical scene in San Francisco. He'd lure in some followers with phony faith healings, while informing other followers that they were only using religion to lead poor people to Communism. He was an amazing conman.
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u/CosmackMagus 6d ago
If it's the part I'm thinking of: after getting to the Kool-Aid behind everyone's back, the woman was tripping so badly she ran out of the house naked, where everyone else was chatting with neighbors.
Great book. Everyone should read it.
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u/shawndw 6d ago
Jonestown actually used Flavor Aid.
Those cheap bastards.
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u/DoesntFearZeus 6d ago
People always say if you're going to mix drinks use the cheap liqueur instead of the good stuff. I say the mixed drink will taste better with the good stuff, so why cheap out? Especially if its your last drink ever.
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u/Harley2280 6d ago
Because the cheap stuff will cloak the flavor of the poison. The good stuff won't, and you won't even get to enjoy the good stuff because the poison will over power the taste.
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u/rifleshooter 6d ago
From someone alive then: No, it didn't. NOBODY used that phrase pre-Reverend Jim.
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u/Fluid-Bet6223 6d ago
Yeah and the Wikipedia backs that up. Using the phrase to mean “buying into a crazy cultish idea” definitely started with Jonestown.
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u/PokinSpokaneSlim 6d ago
Yeah, I'd like to add support to the historic records and agree with you.
This post was probably written by the Kool-aid man himself.
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u/jopnk 6d ago
I mean Wolfe has the phrase in the book, which came out in 1968 - a decade prior to Jonestown. Whether it was a colloquialism before Jonestown or not is irrelevant, the title of the post only says that Wolfe was the first person to use the phrase.
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u/PokinSpokaneSlim 5d ago
I assure you Kool-aid existed before that book
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u/jopnk 5d ago
If you read the book, you would know that the phrase “drink the kool aide” is used to describe pranksters in both a literal sense (they drank kool aid with lsd in it), and a metaphorical sense (they bought into the ideology of Kesey/the 60s), much like it means wrt Jonestown.
The phrase did not become a colloquialism for another decade in the aftermath of Jonestown.
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u/DizzyMine4964 6d ago
A lot of the people in Jonestown were forced to drink or shot dead. One elderly woman survived because she was asleep and all her friends had been killed, and the faithful thought that she was dead too. Yes, many of them chose to die, but there was absolutely no escape for anybody who wanted to leave - they were deep in the jungles of Guyana. No phones, no internet, of course.
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u/readerf52 6d ago
I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and trust me, no one would think “drinking the Kool-Aid” had anything to do with that book.
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u/fanamana 6d ago edited 5d ago
Yeah, no. It didn't have the same connotation at all . Yeah the phrase was written and uttered before Jonestown, but Jonestown is the genesis of the common uses.
A zealous act of disastrous gullibility. Total commitment to someone else's obvious horseshit. Dedication to a dumbass cause. That's Drinking the Kool-Aid.
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u/Vonneguts_Ghost 7d ago
The Kool aide related plot in The Studio is the funniest thing in the last 5 years at least.
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u/allthenamesaretaken4 6d ago
I want Scorsese to make it. As a goof or otherwise.
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u/Vonneguts_Ghost 6d ago
I couldn't help but feel that the whole time.
Either the serious Scorsese movie, or the shitshow corporate product ice cube version.
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u/EzmareldaBurns 6d ago
If that's true then it wouldn't have the meaning of "to be fully indoctrinated". The words may have been used before Jonestown but would not have had any particular cultural significance.
It's like saying people had said "get to the chopper" before the movie predator. Like sure, they probably did but that has no baring it being associated with Arnie
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u/onexbigxhebrew 6d ago
Jfc the only sensible answer, and a great analogy.
Also, flavor aid isn't the smoking gun here as OP thinks. It's just knockoff koolaid and they used both. To continue the anaologies, its like saying that someone that asked you for a keenex didn't actually ask for a kleenex because you have puffs.
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u/jopnk 6d ago
“Drinking the kool aid” wrt the merry pranksters has the same implication wrt indoctrination.
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u/EzmareldaBurns 6d ago
Not read it so I'm not sure but from the synopsis I looked at I got the impression that it was more literal, drinking the LSD lased drink
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u/Melenduwir 6d ago
That shouldn't really be considered a reference unless people say it especially with an Austrian accent (and they don't normally have one).
"Ged to da choppa!"
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u/insofarincogneato 6d ago
Flavoraid was the Kool aid we had at home, I don't know about you but we still called it Kool aid
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u/ggrieves 6d ago
I feel like Kool Aid could have done something sooner to distance themselves from that reputation because it's become synonymous in popular culture. I see why they wouldn't go near the subject and simply hope it fell out of collective memory but that obviously never happened.
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u/Melenduwir 6d ago
They may have feared what eventually became known as the "Striesand Effect", where reacting to a bit of bad publicity ends up creating more bad publicity.
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u/Complete_Entry 6d ago
Whenever someone brings up ackchually in the conversation I ask why they focused on that.
I once listened to the tapes for school. I really wish I hadn't.
It wasn't just the flavor-aid btw. Injections and bullets were on the menu as well.
Ironically, Jones whole position as a "race progressive" was entirely false. Without going into his foul personal history, there was a scam in California where you could load up a van with the disabled, take them to mcdonalds, and then bring them back.
At least four serial killers enriched themselves in that program. I used to have book on the program specifically but my grandma stole it and sold it on amazon, it was $90.
Still a little mad.
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u/PDXSeventySeven 6d ago
My subversive high school writing teacher slipped me a copy of that book when I was fifteen and it took my life completely off the rails. I never really got back on them.
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u/not_czarbob 7d ago
Kool-Aid is both a name brand and a generic term for flavored drinks of that type. Similarly, Kleenex is often used as a generic term for facial tissue, even though it’s a name brand. It’s a feature, not a bug, of English. You can find a list of these terms here: List of generic and genericized trademarks
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u/Federal_Shame_9074 6d ago
In the 90s it almost happened with Nintendo. Almost happened with my parents but I would very much correct them with Playstation and Xbox. Not everyone's parents got the memos, and grandparents were not spared at all.
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u/Lyra_the_Star_Jockey 6d ago
It’s attitudes like this why Google is a giant monopoly right now.
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u/sarcastic_sandman 6d ago
They also didn't necessarily willingly drink it either, a lot of folks were murdered that day.
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u/HarryB1313 6d ago
Jonestown was called a mass suicide but now more commonly a massacre as many of the deaths were murder, ie the koolaid drinkers murdered the unwilling.
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u/TheMan5991 5d ago
Today You Learned a lie. Wikipedia doesn’t even back you up here. All it says was that the phrase appeared in a book earlier than Jonestown. And the book is about Kool-Aid, so of course they are going to talk about drinking it at some point. They were obviously not using the phrase with the same meaning that we use it now. That meaning 100% originated with Jonestown.
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u/Invisible7hunder 6d ago
It doesn't really matter if the specific words were previously combined in a different context, with a different meaning.
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u/LandBetweenTheCakes 6d ago
My aunt bought a monkey from a young Jim Jones. I’m pretty sure he tapped that, cause why else would she always call him Jimmy?
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u/Beraliusv 6d ago edited 6d ago
Flavor Aid?? Jesus, just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse..
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u/Melenduwir 6d ago
"Why do people come to this restaurant? The food is terrible!"
"Yes, and such small portions."
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u/itsfunhavingfun 6d ago
It’s still hard to make a joke about Jonestown. The punch line is too long.
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u/Regalrefuse 6d ago
This post was brought to you by Kool-Aid
Kool-Aid: please don’t associate us with a mass suicide, oh yeah!
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u/Umikaloo 6d ago
I suspect that this narrative is a marketing tactic by Kool-Aid.
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u/Melenduwir 6d ago
I doubt it; if it were, it would only draw more attention to the concept and end up reinforcing it in people's minds.
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u/Krocsyldiphithic 6d ago
As a Deadhead, I've heard several people shocked to learn that people aren't aware of this. We kinda view the acid tests as the genesis of everything good.
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u/MrSaltntheWound 7d ago
Which is even more ironic because they actually drank flavor-aid.
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u/Vonneguts_Ghost 7d ago
I've often wondered.
Did they have someone on the board at flavor aide that had a long term vision and access to the best spin guy in the country?
Or did they just get lucky that no one knew the exact name of their rinky dink product?
Sucks for brand names that stand for the whole class of product when someone does something horrible with it.
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u/MrShake4 7d ago
Because Kool Aid was the generic term essentially. All sugary powdered drink was Kool Aid
If it was cola they would’ve said they drank the Coke or Pepsi, no one would’ve checked to see it’s actually Dr. K
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u/Vonneguts_Ghost 6d ago
I have no idea why I find it so amusing that Dr pepper might get blamed for a tragedy caused by Dr thunder.
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u/krectus 6d ago
I don’t know but Kool Aide remains the king so they someone still won.
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u/Vonneguts_Ghost 6d ago
Are they though? That crystal light poison made an inroads in the 90s, then Mio started selling food coloring pretty fast a little while ago.
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u/Melenduwir 7d ago
Yep. Flavor Aid really dodged a bullet there.
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u/Fluugaluu 7d ago
Eyyyy now you can join the club or people who say it right
I’ve been telling people they drank the flavor aid for decades and they tried correcting me. Vindication!
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u/nemoy2 6d ago
I’ve seen this posted on Reddit at least 3 times a year for the last decade, and not once in that time have I ever heard anyone actually use this phrase
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u/Vik_Stryker 6d ago
I feel like this is the second time I’ve seen this exact post TODAY.
I will say, however, I do hear that saying all the time. Incredibly common saying.
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u/nemoy2 6d ago
Maybe I don’t go outside enough hahaha
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u/Vik_Stryker 6d ago
It happens! My wife will say that she’s never heard a saying all the time and I’m flabbergasted. No judgement here.
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u/NonCorporealEntity 6d ago
It really bothers me when people use the phrase "I drank the kool aid" like it means you are loyal. It actually means your are blindly ignorant and references a horrible event where many children suffered before dying, but sure make it apply to your corporate culture.
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u/BrokenEyeReborn 6d ago
Technically Jonestown used both brands, because they couldn't get enough of either for their needs. They mostly used Flavor Aid, though.