Years from now, when we're sitting in our old-people rocking chairs and fondly reminiscing about the memes of our youth, we'll be able to remember this weekend as the moment when Kool-Aid balls entered our national consciousness—shaping our eating habits for decades to come.
For too long, Hispanic Americans have been forced to tolerate a world in which artificial food products were not advertised to them with satisfactory ferocity. No longer. You Spanish-speakin' people want some dang Kool Aid? We gotcher Kool Aid!
"Drinking the Kool-Aid" is what Silicon Valley people say when they want to refer to an unquestioning acceptance of a particular corporate philosophy. It's used humorously, which is strange given that there are plenty of people in the Bay Area who remember first-hand just how that expression got started. So how appropriate is it that Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, was passing out free packets of Kool-Aid at a networking mixer called SF Beta here in San Francisco last night? On the back of each packet: "Come drink the Second Life Kool-Aid! Linden Lab is hiring!"
