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-Aid
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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/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/0SmarterNameNeeded 6d ago

You are wrong

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u/blackjackgabbiani 5d ago

So again, how is that a very well known fact then?