James Joyce called Guinness ‘the wine of Ireland’. Now it feels a bit more like the Coca-Cola of alcohol – as much brash branding as beer. Once, it merely had an ugly logo and the rowdy promise of Emerald Isle hedonism which – I confess I have often thought – is crafted to appeal to simple people. For who, other than simple people, chooses Guinness in this day and age when faced with the proliferation of ales, IPAs, helles, sessions, Belgian beers and porters? The sorts of people who find the Irish pub in a Mediterranean town and hit it hard.
Guinness is taking on a strange new life
But now, Guinness is taking on a strange new life. If there’s one thing Gen Z can be relied on to do, it’s make things creepy and weird where they were previously straightforward and commonplace. Having weirded out romantic intimacy, they’ve come for Guinness. It has become so popular among Gen Z that pubs this December are experiencing a Guinness shortage.
Social media accounts like Shit London Guinness show drinkers criticising imperfectly poured pints. In a trend that is almost too cringey to watch, Guinness-related Instagram and TikTok posters perform the ‘tilt test’ to their presumably American tourist fans, excited to be unleashed on legal drinking after a 21-year wait in their land. The tilt test involves holding the drink at a 45-degree angle: if it has been poured correctly, it ought not to slosh out. Wow! Crazy, dude!
Then there is ‘splitting the G’, in which drinkers attempt a single first swig so the remaining liquid ends up intersecting the Guinness logo. It’s a trend that combines a lacklustre approach to downing a pint with something that sounds vaguely sexualised. No doubt we’ll soon be told that ‘splitting the G’ is problematic.
Sales of this bog-standard staple have been helped along by the sorts of influences (and influencers) that would have the dyed-in-the-wool pub-goers of old Dublin turning in their graves. Take Kim Kardashian and pop star Olivia Rodrigo, the former very publicly sporting a pint of Guinness while in London last year, and the latter wearing an excruciatingly uncool-cool T-shirt reading ‘Guinness is good 4U’.
The Guinness obsession is part of a wider fetishisation of the mundane. There are now TikTok accounts that teach women how to dress their boyfriends in old-people clothes, the so-called ‘grandpa core’ aesthetic. Young women are also increasingly searching out charity shop interior fittings, in the hope that a battered old lamp will help them appear quirky. For those not involved, it looks more like an attempt to intellectualise the boring task of filling your home or dressing yourself.
Part of the reason for this is the explosion in university education. Teach millions of young people to analyse their lives, and they’ll start treating everything as though it must be filled with meaning. Each decision is now part of an aesthetic, a conscious choice to be a ‘Guinness drinker’, which no doubt comes laden with semiotic irony, rather than choosing things because – you know – you like them?
That said, in an otherwise moribund economy, with the mood low and prices high, it is cheering to read of a business success story. But does it have to be this one? The jovial founder of Wetherspoons, the 69-year-old Tim Martin, is of course thrilled. ‘The gods of fashion have smiled upon Guinness, previously consumed by blokes my age, but now widely adopted by younger generations,’ he said.
One in every nine pints bought in the UK is now a Guinness. And Guinness is also boosting the Irish economy. Diageo, the drinks giant that owns Guinness, is pouring cash into the St James’s Gate brewery in Dublin, while also building a €200 million (£166 million) brewery in County Kildare. I wonder whether part of the appeal is that it’s cheap. You get to appear discerning – avoiding a low-status Madri in favour of something that appears like an acquired taste – while saving the extra quid on a genuinely craft beer.
In light of the recent buzz, I gave Guinness another try and found it just as unappetising as ever – filling when you want to feel light and buzzed, bitter when you want rich, and thin when you are expecting thick. Gen Z won’t be competing with me for their portion of Dublin’s wine.