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Group of young people cheering with glasses of beer together at a brewpub
Some drinkers may joke about having a million beers when they’re looking to really get after it or recapping the damage they did after waking up to a particularly brutal hangover. However, we’ve been treated to a new trend courtesy of people around the globe who are teaming up in a quest to collectively throw back that many brews.
The average life expectancy in the United States is currently around 79 years. That means that if you waited until you turned 21 to have your first beer and had a single one every single day for the rest of your life, you would have consumed a grand total of 21,170 when everything is said and done.
I’m going to go out on a limb and assert there has never been a single person on the planet who has managed to consume a million beers over the course of their life.
If my calculations are correct, you’d need to drink around 47 every day for close to six decades if we were sticking with the same criteria. Even if you were able to stomach them, it is very, very hard to imagine you’d come close to hitting the cusp of 80 years old based on the toll that amount of booze would take on your body.
With that said, that number has united some people who’ve banded together to see how quickly they collectively hit the seven-digit mark.
People from around the globe are maxing out group chats on WhatsApp with one goal in mind: drinking a million beers
The modern craft beer revolution was made possible with the help of the internet, as millions of Beer Nerds rely on it to keep tabs on the best breweries and new releases while bonding with fellow connoisseurs they’ve never met (and usually never will) over their love of a cold one.
According to The Wall Street Journal, that includes the more than 1,000 people who comprise a WhatsApp group chat known as “1 Million Beers,” which, as the name suggests, has become a central hub for drinkers who are regularly sharing pictures of the ones they’re downing in the hopes of eventually hitting that number.
The group chat was hatched in a pub in London last August, and it took less than a month for it to hit a max capacity of 1,024 (the largest WhatsApp allows) after attracting beer aficionados from around the globe hoping to contribute to the cause.
(I should acknowledge I used “Dudes Rock” in the headline, and while there wasn’t any in-depth demographic info provided, I’m going to assume it heavily skews male based on everything I know about a hobby I’ve been heavily involved with for over a decade).
The group has already slugged back 100,000 beers that are tracked in a spreadsheet by admins who are also tasked with enforcing certain rules (for example, a Baby Guinness, a shot of Kahlua topped with Bailey’s, does not count as a beer). They are on track to hit their goal by 2034 and are currently led by Marcus Wright, a 31-year-old from Germany who averages the most of any member at 4.1 per day.
It turns out that’s not the only group chat with the same mission, as there is also one called One Million Beers Please that was nearing 112,000 earlier this year before it seemingly ceased posting public updates.
You love to see it.