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 ‘Women across Australia are kicking back on the couch at night and downing glasses of wine at a higher rate than ever before. And those looking for encouragement to reach the bottom of a bottle needn’t look further than their Instagram feeds-a trend that has experts concerned,’ says a report by news.com.au.
Cute memes are posted late in the day as it gets closer to “wine o’clock”. (For a glimpse at some of them which one finds often posted on Facebook too, visit VinePair.) They’re colourful, clever, funny and shareable. It could be a Tinder screen showing a “match” that says “You and wine liked each other!”, or a cute forecast for the evening ahead that reads “99 per cent chance of wine”, to more blunt messaging: “If you have to ask if it’s too early to drink wine … You’re an amateur and we can’t be friends”.
 The most popular meme on vinepair attempts to make women switch from water to wine. It shows a woman unscrewing a bottle of wine with a message that says, “It’s funny how 8 glasses of water a day seems impossible...but 8 glasses of wine can be done in one meal.” Sounds cute but there is nothing funny about drinking 8 glasses of wine! Nowhere does it add that this is binge drinking and positively harmful for health if followed regularly.
Indian Wine Academy had recently conducted a survey on its Facebook closed group with restricted membership that runs around 5400, when it asked its members if they agreed that a glass of red wine in the evening (with an emphasis on drinking wine in moderation) was a stress buster. An overwhelming 90% agreed! They are still voting-but the pattern is clear-it varies from 92-95% members favouring a glass of red wine to relieve stress, many from their personal experience or that of close family members or friends. Nikhil Chawla, one of the members had an important counter point, ‘Alcohol is not the solution. First it's moderation then it’s a bottle and so on ...’ (The group discourages such Memes as they hardly ever stress drinking in moderation but since the page allows wine related Posts to encourage free flow of ideas, they are generally allowed to be posted –editor).
 A leading alcohol Aussie researcher Dr Janice Withnall says that when shared by influential opinion leaders with strong female followings, the message can be harmful. Women magazines, beauty brands, and popular media identities are among those sharing funny memes and, perhaps unknowingly, promoting and glamourising alcohol to their young female audiences which is one of the most vulnerable groups at risk of addiction.
“Using influential women is an advertising ploy that’s been used forever,” Dr Withnall says. She further adds, “This is progression of promoting women’s use of alcohol to fix a problem. It’s like the smoking cigarettes campaign where we’ve got to the point in advertising drinking, in whatever form, in social media, becomes dangerous. It will influence their behaviour.” The message is usually along the lines of, ‘we know how you feel, we’ve all had a hard day, we need a reward and let’s make that reward wine,’ she says.
Knowing the impact such suggestive memes make, there are hordes of companies that use Instagram to increase sales. There are social media specialists who take a slice of the advertisement budgets to help promotion, says a blog @getchute
Subhash Arora
To avoid the risk of sounding boring, pompous and pontificating, we do not always highlight it, but as often as we can, we at Indian Wine Academy emphasize explicitly to drink wine in moderation-editor |