The latest news from the internet suggests that getting blackout drunk is almost a thing of the past thanks to the millions of nightly Snapchat updates uploaded by member of the social network.
According to Dr Philip Brady, of the blackout memory clinic, incidences of blackout drunkenness are down fifty percent since the launch of Snapchat in 2011.
Wunderground spoke with Dr Phil earlier, “A lot of the time, blackout drunkenness can be completely reversed by even one small memory,” he explained. “A tiny window of memory can often open the floodgates to an entire night’s worth of lost memory, most of which will turn out to be totally embarrassing and cringe worthy.”
“Since the launch of Snapchat we’re seeing not just a tiny window of memory, but entire streams of tiny windows of memory, updated about once every fifteen seconds,” continued Dr Phil, “because of this, blackout drunkenness is becoming a lot less frequent, even people who aren’t signed up to Snapchat are likely to appear in other people’s Snapchat feeds, which will likely end in them being reminded of something they did or how drunk they were the previous night.”
Despite the fact that people are remembering drunken nights out more frequently, the disappearance of blackout drunkenness is not necessarily a good thing, according to Dr Phil.
“One of the things we associate with getting blackout drunk is the fear,” claimed the doctor. “That’s when you think you might have done something really stupid but you can’t remember it. While in some cases these really stupid things might not have happened, the majority of times they did so by jogging people’s memories we’re replacing the fear with the realisation that they definitely did make a fool of themselves, which is a far worse for an individual’s mental health.”
Dr Phil predicts that, at the current rate of reduction, blackout drunkenness could be completely alleviated by the year 2019, which could result in alcohol consumption increasing by anything up to “three, or even four, hundred percent”.
