If you’ve been reading The Rectangle a while, you might remember my interview with Jon May, the man trying to drink 2,000 pints in a year.
Well, friends, you’ll be glad to hear that he achieved his goal — and did it even quicker than planned.
He began the challenge at the beginning of April and managed to get the last of the 2,000 beers downed on the 21st October.
This means, roughly, May drank 9.8 pints every 24 hours for the duration of the challenge, which came to about 204 days.
Although his fame has skyrocketed since his original appearance in this newsletter (May has been covered by a number of outlets since, including Vice, TalkSport and LadBible), he found time to catch up with me about his challenge.
After this momentous occasion, I had to find out how he was doing.
The first thing May tells me is how “amazing” it is to finish the 2,000 pint challenge.
You know what? After that many brews, I can only imagine.
The next thing I asked him about was his health. In the original piece, I raised the concerns of drinking so much, as that level of alcohol consumption can massively increase the overall risk of death.
May was relatively unruffled, telling me that although he “put on half a stone,” there was “nothing too major otherwise.”
It’s surprising he packed on so few pounds considering he consumed about 362,362 kcal of beer over the challenge, averaging out at 1,821 kcal per day.
Thankfully though, he assured me he’s tapering off the booze and then doing a “Friday to Friday sober” spell.
That’s better than nothing, I suppose.
Another point I raised to May was the cost of this challenge. He tells me he spent £7,964 throughout it — which, honestly, is a substantial chunk of change.
May tells me this was only achievable due to his account’s success.
“I’ve been able to quit my job and solely do TikTok,” May says me. Effectively, he earns around £1 per every thousand views, and, because of this, he’s making a living form the platform.
And paying for all those drinks, of course.
Despite that, not everything is rosy within this tale. Although there’s an amusing element to drinking 2,000 pints in around 200 days, it’s something that can harm both May himself and the audience that’s having this level of drinking normalised.
When you combine this with a social media platform that rewards creators for views, it creates a maelstrom of attention, one where you’re encouraged to be provocative to make money.
This is something that May has encountered himself.
“Social media is mad,” he tells me. “It can give someone like me a job and earn good money from it, but the hate that comes with it can be overwhelming.”
That’s exactly what these companies and their algorithms want: engagement. Whether that’s making someone laugh or get enraged, social media is geared towards extreme reaction.
Yes, it can give people a dream job, but that often comes with a hostile public — something that often increases as the need for engagement can encourage creators to dabble in increasingly dangerous behaviour.
Thankfully though, May isn’t getting sucked into this.
He’s already announced his next challenge: cycling 2,000 miles across the breadth of width of the UK to raise money for charity. Here he is talking about it:
Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
A noble goal and interesting pivot, but we all know one thing for sure: he’ll be stopping for some pints along the way.