Bros Icing Bros: Understanding This Ridiculous Phenomenon

Have you heard of "Icing"? Icing is the new trend among frat boys, hipsters or really just anyone missing a chromosome. Made popular by the site BrosIcingBros.com (a site devoted to pictures of Bros getting "Iced"), Icing is a drinking game for bros (and chick-bros), where the point is to make other bros drink Smirnoff Ice "against their will, at ridiculously inopportune times." According to BrosIcingBros's Teddy Broosevelt, the rules are simple:

The Game It's a slightly more complicated drinking game than the ones we had when I was in college ("Hey look, a beer. Drink that beer." [And then whoever saw the beer drank that beer until there wasn't beer anymore. And then we either chased girls, ate Pop Tarts or yelled at the basketball players on our televisions.]), and it looks to be infinitely less enjoyable, due both to its association with Smirnoff Ice, as well as the fact that it has forced me to casually type words like "bro" and "Iced" an amount of times well beyond my comfort level. Essentially, at any time during any day, a bro can walk up to you with a Smirnoff Ice and you have to drink it in an accordance with the complex laws set forth by the Sacred Order of Elder Bros that governs all future bros for all broternity. Even if you have to go to work, or if you're about to give a big speech, or if you're delivering a baby, you have to drink that Ice if a bro ices you (during which he'd yell "You got Iced, bro," or "Ice Ice Broby" or "I pooped in my overalls again" or some such). If you aren't prepared with an Ice Block (why would you be?), and you don't drink that Ice, the bros will… fire you from brodom, or look at your butt or make you eat gay or… something, I don't know, I was never really familiar with Standard Bro Bylaws.

Still, it's shockingly popular. This How-to-Ice video has over 20,000 views and is steadily growing. Pointless or not, Icing is sweeping the nation for people both in

and out of college. So people with, like, jobs or families or whatever will still have to take a knee and chug some Smirnoff Liquid Urinal Cakes whenever they get Iced.

The Drink There's a reason Smirnoff Ice was chosen in a drinking game the object of which is not to drink: Smirnoff Ice is terrible. It is Limeade-scented Clown Sweat in a bottle. One flavor of Smirnoff Ice is just Sunshine Punch Kool-Aid mixed with farts. For Raspberry Burst Smirnoff, they put rubbing alcohol and Good n' Plenty in a blender and flushed it down a prison toilet. It's like someone wiped their ass with a pear and stapled it to your tongue. One time a convicted rapist fucked a produce section and the result was Pomegranate Fusion Smirnoff Ice. It's like someone force-fed a fruit cup to a cow and then took it back out four stomachs in. Smirnoff Ice tastes like someone dropped a tube of strawberry lipsmackers into a bucket of cologne. You'd think someone dug up Carmen Miranda's corpse and fermented it in an old paint can but it's actually an Ice. If Jolly Ranchers could piss, it would taste like Strawberry Acai Smirnoff Ice.

Smirnoff Ice is a bad tasting beverage. The Founders The only thing that might be more unsettling than Smirnoff Gecko Piss is the fact that it was founded by total tools. I'm not a snob. In fact, I'm kind of an idiot. On my best day, I am a series of grunts and mustard stains in a pair of borrowed underwear. It's not exactly like I have high tastes or crave sophisticated games, or anything. I love doing and making my friends do stupid things and lost all of my dignity at the exact moment I started my career in a field that deals exclusively with dick jokes. Icing is totally the kind of game I can get behind in theory, but the folks responsible for the game make that impossible. There's an interview with one of the founders of BrosIcingBros that both makes me hate this game unquestionably and confirms my suspicion that I'm the only good human left. Here are some highlights: "There is no form of Icing that is off limits; the more creative and less convenient for your bros the better. We've had bros getting Iced before going to work, at work, studying for an exam, right before an exam, at graduation,

while driving cars, before a soccer game, etc..." [Emphasis mine.] "The most creative that I've seen so far is Saran-Wrapping an Ice to the toilet of a hungover bro, or an Ice that has been tied to a dog and sent to see his broner (bro owner)." [Emphasis mine, retarded portmanteau his.] "Icing forces you to live in a constant state of fear of being Iced, but it is rewarded when you see the face of your bro when you block his Ice. I have personally found myself carrying an Ice just about everywhere, maybe even two - one so I can Ice a bro and another so I can block an Ice if a bro thinks I'm out." Never have I seen or heard "bro" used so often, so casually and with so much un-ironic pride. I tried to reprint the whole interview, but our blog publishing software refused to believe that a document containing 1,052 repetitions of the word "bro" wasn't some kind of virus or seizure on the part of the author. The game sounds like so much fun on paper, but as soon as you see videos of the morons who actually play it, you can't help but feel bad about yourself, the players and, in a larger sense, all of humanity. That video I linked is one of the most uncomfortable forced-Icings I've ever seen. It's like a slow, documented rape, except the dick is watermelon-flavored and we're all technically victims for having watched.

"Don't make this weird. You have to take the whole thing or we are going to have a problem. Just take it, deal with it, and move on."

Also, "Broner" was a word I came up for in the early 2000s that I used to describe an erection that two frat guys get when they wrestle each other. I am more than a little resentful that they stole it from me and repurposed it for their stupid game for jerks. Is This Game Worth It? That's the big question. There are so many creative ways to get someone to stumble upon Smirnoff Ice that it's almost a good time. The problem is, all of the fun is in the execution. If you win, you have to watch someone drink Green Apple Smirnoff Pineapple Shit, and if you lose,

you have to drink it. That's really lose-lose. The basic essential rule to any drinking game is that you should at least enjoy the drinking part. With Icing, you're just having a miserable time, but with rules. And as long as you're doing that, you might as well get creative. Which brings us to… Making Your Own Stupid Freaking Game Want to create your own pointless, nation-sweeping game? The ingredients are fairly simple: Impossibly Easy and Accessible Action + Objectively Terrible Punishment + Maddening System of Language - Any Previous Sense of Self Worth Your New Game! Once you commit the formula to memory, it's only a matter of filling in the blanks. I've created a few samples below. HOMIES BRUSHIN' HOMIES Walk around with a toothbrush in your pocket. When you see one of your Homies, shove that toothbrush in his face and tell that fool he got a BRUSH WITH GREATNESS. He then has to brush his teeth with toothpaste and drink a full liter of grapefruit juice. (If no one has ever had grapefruit juice after brushing their teeth, I'll tell you, it is the worst thing.) Check your watch, because it's time to get your Brush on! SHORTIES RICIN' SHORTIES When you see one of your buddies come up, raise your fist like you're about to punch him. If he flinches, it is time for that punk to get RICED! Basically that means he has to eat a Rice Krispie Treat wrapped in a condom. I hope you like your privacy because you about to lose a lot of friends playing this game! BEBUS SPOOKING BEBUS! OK, so this is a game for just you and your BeBus (totes short for "Best Buds"). You wait for your BeBu and, when he least expects it, you jump out and scare him, just totes supes scream in his BeBu face. If your BeBu gasps, or shrieks or totes completes yells or whatevs, then he loses! You done SPOOKED THE BEBU! His punishment? He has to kill one of his pets. But if he doesn't yell, then you have to kill one of your beloved pets. Get ready to feel totes like an elephant because you will never forget this moment. Bring a sweater because, after you watch a kitten die, you'll always feel cold. Forever. Totes Forevs Petocaust! DAWG NUT-BLASTERS Go up to your best dawg and give him a nice "Sup" head nod. If he says anything that rhymes with "nut," (like "what" or "butt"), then you get to punch him in the nuts and say "Nu-nu-nu-nu-NUT BLASTER." That dawg just got his nuts blasted! You don't have to worry about doing the Dawg Nut-Blaster to women because you don't know any. SOMETHING SOMETHING RAT POISON You call your friends "Dongmeister" and make them eat rat poison. This is less of a game for you and more of a way for me to THIN THE HERD OF IDIOTS ON EARTH, but that still shouldn't stop you from trying your very hardest. You can be the best!

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Daniel O'Brien is a Professor of Shorty-Ricin' at Columbia University.