is waif
ARKAY ALCOHOL FREE PARTY
Waif Magazine recently invited seven college freshmen to a party sponsored by Arkay Beverages - a company that makes non- alcoholic hard liquor. The attendees were told there would be free drinks at the party, but were not clued into the non-alcoholic nature of the drinks.
At 7:30, thirty minutes before the start of the party, the Waif Magazine staff conducted a taste test of the Arkay liquors to determine the drink menu for their guests. Upon tasting the alcohol-free gin, one staff member winced and described the flavor as lemon and cat-piss. Another member tasted the Whiskey-flavored beverage and noted that
it tasted nothing like whiskey, but had the spice of whiskey. There was a lot of trepidation surrounding the magazine’s ability to serve these drinks to anyone, but with the guests only 20 minutes away, magazine staff was assured that it was too late to pursue another option. The menu was set: the guests could choose between whiskey and Coca-Cola brand cola or a Moscow Mule. The staff washed every cup in the house and cut up four limes, set out popcorn, pretzel chips, and hummus, turned on some music, and took a seat in the living room.
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8 o’clock came and went - thank God. No good party starts on time. However, a simultaneous sense of skepticism began to wash over the room: would anybody actually show up? At 8:20, the buzzer rang. Waif Magazine intern, Joan, led a group of four friends upstairs to the party: Duvall, Hayden, Taylor, and Hayley. The staff led a few minutes of small talk, sort of breaking the ice, but not yet enough to dip a full toe into the water. After a few minutes of introductions and eating popcorn, it was time to make an announcement.
“Thank you for coming tonight! We run a magazine called Waif that documents and defines Waif Culture and tonight we are proud to present the Arkay Alcohol Free Party. As you know this is a free party and we are in partnership with Arkay Beverages to provide the drinks tonight. We’re making whiskey cokes and Moscow mules - would anyone like a drink?”
As it turns out, not many 18-year-olds know what a Moscow mule is, but once they learned that it was based on vodka and had ginger ale and lime, they were all really into the idea, except for Taylor who asked for a whiskey and coke. Everyone accepted their beverages and continued partying, blissfully unaware that they were completely safe from the dangers of underage drinking.
We asked each of the attendees to introduce themselves and tell us a little bit about their experience with the Arkay-infused, alcohol- inspired beverages.
Name: Taylor
How was your Arkay drink?:
The whiskey one tasted a little fiery. It was nice
Name: Hayley
How was your Arkay drink?:
I had the lime one, it was great, it tasted like lime and carbonation and it was an adventure
Name: Hayden
How was your Arkay drink?:
It was good, I mostly tasted just lime, it tastes like ice cream, it was just a very pleasant experience
Name: Duvall
How was your Arkay drink?:
I had the Moscow mule, it was really good, if I could describe it, it would be like a little bit of innocent foreplay on the beach: it was sweet but gentle, but like it’s a little dangerous
None of the kids had any idea they had been duped. Could it really be this easy to keep underage kids safe from the harms of drinking all the while exposing them to the thrill of it?
The night continued on; drinks flowed, jokes exchanged, Gwen Stefani’s ‘The Sweet Escape’ was blaring away, hitting a collective sweet spot for some of the older crowd. Then, magazine staff asked for everyone’s attention. “We have a confession,” they began. “This is actually non-alcoholic liquor. There is no alcohol in the drinks tonight.” This admission cast a pall over the room while Akon’s ‘woo-hoo’-ing echoed quietly in the background.
In what must have been one second but felt like twenty, everyone in the room stopped to assess the situation, except for Taylor who already knew what was going on. “I knew I was not feeling it because your girl’s a lightweight,” she retorted, proudly standing for her low alcohol tolerance.
“I knew something was up,” Duvall chimed in, “because not even Taylor’s drunk, and Taylor gets drunk quickly.”
“I get drunk so fast it’s sad,” said Taylor.
Staff passed around a few more bottles of Arkay brand beverages - tons of whiskeys of all varieties, rum, and even brandy. Arkay Beverages covers all the bases. The room expressed a genuine interest in the beverages’ shameless promotion of its zero- carb, zero-sugar, zero-calorie features. Waif explained that Arkay is looking to reach a college-aged market and wondered: "Is this something you would have at your parties?” Seeing as the guests were all under the legal drinking age of 21, most of them living in dorms where it is against the rules to have alcohol (let alone drink it!), and with only limited access to alcohol in the first place, it seemed like a good question to ask.
Taylor, the first to answer, said that she would definitely buy it if the label’s ‘alcohol-free’ warning were smaller. That way, she could serve Arkay to her guests and imbibe on her own. For that, Waif Magazine suggested the hashtag #GuardYourStash. Taylor also was quick to note the celebrity endorsement potential found in the likes of Cher and other famously sober personalities. “Hashtag be more like Cher,” she suggested. Magazine staff offered a combination of the two hashtags so far to create #CherYourStash - for when you want to Cher, but don’t want to share.
Other Waif staff members recommended a number of times throughout the evening that it would be smart to use Arkay as an alcohol substitute for your already-drunk friend who doesn’t like the idea of being cut off for the night. Further suggestions included giving the gift of Arkay Beverages as a gag gift, or to water down real alcohol and mislead your guests. This last option was popular among the group, likely because the prospect of saving money at a college age is promoted so heavily as part of student culture, but also because of the Arkay signature Burning Sensation.
Arkay touts the introduction of the W.A.R.M. Molecule that creates a burning sensation similar to that of alcohol. Taylor noted later in the night that, though Arkay does provide a burn, it stops at the bottom of your throat rather than spreading through your whole body -an astute and important observation, if you’re looking to trick your friends into staying sober.
With a few friends now over an hour late and yet to arrive, the group decided that they wanted in on the deception and hid the liquor bottles. Waif Magazine asked the group to participate in another photo series called “Still Sober After All These Drinks,” to tap into the fun energy of the room and portray Arkay as the marketable product it is. And hey, if it meant these near-minors got to be photographed having fun with what looks on camera to be an endless supply of hard liquor, they were all for it. Out poured the jokes about bringing the bottles to school, whipping out a handle of the driest whiskey in the middle of lunch, rolling up to a party double fisting Arkay. Duvall even texted his mother a picture of an Arkay bottle with the caption, “So drunk right now.” It seemed that the secret was out: deceiving your close friends and family is as fun as — if not more fun than — underage drinking.
Alexis and Marisa arrived a few minutes later, ready to party. The party guests from before quickly greeted the pair and shut up about the drinks as Waif staff began a truncated version of the Arkay drinking game.
Name: Marisa
How was your Arkay drink?:
She’s really fresh, kind of fruity
How does it compare to other drinks you’ve had?:
It tastes way better, I can actually drink this and not make a horrible face.
Name: Alexis
How was your Arkay drink?:
The drink tastes good, but it also reminds me of a flat ginger ale
How does it compare to other drinks you’ve had?: it seems less strong, but I’ve never had this drink before, it’s a different route.
This time around, the friends wanted to reveal the truth. Joan, the leader of the pack and Waif intern, revealed that she had catfished her friends by withholding information from them, whereupon Alexis said she, “thought so. I was like ‘Why do I feel like I’m drinking O’Doul’s right now?’” Marisa approached the drink with more optimism, thinking it tasted good, just shy of too good to be true. They agreed Arkay would be a great gag gift, generating the hashtags #GagOnArkay or #SomethingToGagOn. Other earned nicknames included “The Juul of Alcohol” because of both its similarity to and vast difference from alcohol, and “The Wasabi of Alcohol” due to its signature kick, the latter being accompanied by hashtags #NoBags (in reference to its ability to wake you up) and #ClearYourSinuses.
At the end of the night, Waif Magazine thanked the guests for drinking an unknown beverage and for being cool. The guests, delighted to be invited to hang out with older people and appear in a magazine, said that the staff were cool too. The experiment proved to be a great success as everyone learned that 1.) Teenagers drink underage to experience the novelty of lying; 2.) Ultimately, honesty is the best policy; and 3.) Under the right circumstances, teenagers can (and do) think adults are cool.