Drinking dare ‘craze’ ends in two tragedies

Search ‘neknomination’ or ‘necknomination’ (spelling can vary) on Twitter, Vine, Facebook, or YouTube and you’ll find thousands of videos of young people speed-drinking vast quantities of alcohol in response to a dare from friends.

In some videos, it’s all about the excessive amounts of alcohol consumed in a short period of time, while in others it’s about what people do as they drink.

One Australian video shows two young men in shorts running towards a helicopter hovering nearby and grabbing on to its undercarriage as it takes off. They dangle precariously as the helicopter swoops over grassland and then, as it flies over a lake, somebody in the helicopter reaches down and hands each of them a bottle of beer, which they duly swig back.