North Florida Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
random thought re: book club/jonestown
Ever since I read that memoir, if I hear someone use the expression "don't drink the kool-aid" it kind of strikes me the same way someone saying "that's gay" does. Like hmm... maybe you shouldn't make light of that. I don't know, I guess people aren't educated about it, but it gives me the chills when I think about it and what those people went through.
Love 9.3.03
Marriage 12.1.07
Baby Carriage 8.3.11
Re: random thought re: book club/jonestown
I agree with jen... Yes, it's irreverent for something serious that happened, but it isn't turning someone's state of being into an expletive. Drinking the Kool Aid has come to stand for the entire experience of swallowing what they had to say, then following through with whatever they asked including killing themselves, not just the final act.
I have to admit, I use it myself when it's obvious someone isn't thinking for themselves to their detriment, although clearly not in that serious of a fashion. There was even a corporate HR woman that would pop up occasionally who acted like a brainless automaton and we nicknamed her Kool Aid. Rude, but it made us feel better when she'd start spouting corporate regulations and talking about how every day she woke up thankful to be working there.
It's just negative hyperbole.
But again, September 11 was something that was done to people. They were innocent victims. Whereas the people in Jonestown, besides those that changed their mind, were participants in their own demise, brainwashed or no. Like the people in California who did something similar thinking they were meeting their alien overlords (the purple blankets and new Nikes). It wasn't as large of an event as Jonestown, but people do joke about that.
Society tends not to be forgiving of people in that position.
That's not entirely true, and really proves my point of why it makes me feel sick to my stomach when people make the Kool-Aid joke! Plenty of innocent people were murdered in Jonestown. There were 33 infants plus numerous children who were injected with syringes in their mouths to swallow the poison. Also, there were many people who wanted to defect when the senator arrived, but they couldn't get them out in time. The security guards ended up shooting people or forcing them to swallow the poison at gunpoint. One mother slit her 3 children's throats with a kitchen knife at the house in Georgetown, and several others were found hiding, trying to escape. Deborah Layton says in the book that once people arrived, it was NOTHING like Jones had promised, and they were unable to leave. He kept people who wanted to defect in the infirmary under injected drugs so they couldn't leave or would torture them by keeping them in wooden crates... so while most people think it was frolicking in the Guyanese rainforest, it was a nightmare for most of the 900 people living there.
Well, I don't think anyone is making fun of the children involved.
I think there's an underlying fear in society that you will also be taken in by someone who doesn't have your best interest at heart, so people mock those that are as weaklings to differentiate themselves as not being that weak/stupid/whatever. And I do think that a lot of people know either generally or specifically what happened (I've seen the documentary) and it's horrible. But that doesn't stop them from cracking about it. Using your 9/11 analogy, I remember an interview recently on Howard Stern (can't remember the guest) where they were saying a bunch of comedians had talked shortly after 9/11, wondering how soon they could tell a joke about it. Some people think that it isn't truly funny unless it also makes someone uncomfortable.
If the phrase continues to be used in the future, though, as I imagine it will, our kids will probably have to be told what it meant originally.
I'm picking up what DP is throwing down. I'm trying to word exactly why, but I'm too lazy.
Word. Glad you see my heartless, unsympathetic light.