Wine In An Age of Humiliation

A partial explanation for wine's decline

Imagine deciding you need to moderate your drinking because you realize “images/videos can very easily be posted online, so want to stay in control, and moderation strategies help this.”

This is essentially the millennial/GenZ version of the “I don’t want to make a fool out of myself” reason for drinking less. It’s also one of the explanations that IWSR, a drinks data firm, gave to explain the impact that moderation trends are having on the worldwide “structural decline” being experienced by wine.

I recall waking up on a Sunday morning in 1985 in my small dorm room at Humboldt State University and realizing I did not remember much about the previous night, how or when I got into my dorm room, and whether or not I made a fool out of myself. I would have had an inkling of a cocktail of Humboldt-grown cannabis, beer, and warm sake being the culprit for my confusion. But what I could not know was whether I made a fool of myself in one way or another due to the extreme intoxication.

Today, there is almost no chance of waking up and being in the dark as to potential image-damaging or reputation-demolishing acts carried out in some sort of stupor. The evidence would surely be in your texts, on Instagram, or TikTok with your handle tagged. You’d know immediately how bad the damage was.

In my college days, the threat of humiliation was at least contained the relatively small group of friends and friends of friends who may have witnessed some deed or heard about it from a witness. Today, It’s not impossible that video evidence of your humiliation has passed before the eyes of thousands of people if not tens of thousands.