Bros Icing Bros Bites the Dust, But the Meme Lives On [Randomly Viral]

Yesterday was a sad, sad day for bros everywhere. No, the popped collar was not banned — the viral website Bros Icing Bros was shut down. If you’re one of the many currently drowning your sorrows (with a slowly quaffed Smirnoff, no doubt), we’d like to offer you a few alternatives.

If you’ve been slumbering under a stone for the past few weeks, you might have missed the icing craze — basically, it’s a prank that originated in South Carolina at schools such as College of Charleston and Wofford College. The concept is very simple: Present a Smirnoff Ice to a friend (in a creative manner, mind you), after which he or she must immediately take a knee and chug it on the spot. And… that’s basically it. That and the super fun alcohol poisoning.

The anonymous men (presumably they are men) behind the trend ran a site called Bros Icing Bros, which was shut down yesterday at the behest of Diageo, Smirnoff’s parent company. Now, the site is a mere husk — a white space reading, “We had a good run Bros.” The derision shown by Diageo seems to prove that the trend — embraced by everyone from Mark Zuckerberg to button-down bankers — was not, in fact, a marketing plot.

Although it’s admittedly a positive thing that rapidly chugging less-than-stellar liquor is being discouraged, with the website’s death we could be witnessing the demise of the newest up-and-coming viral meme: the bro. That’s right, in recent weeks, the beer-chuggin’, boot-cut jean wearin’, slow jamz-lovin’ bro has been making a more prominent entrance into a realm most recently populated by another subculture, the hipster. Like the hipster, the idea of the bro was becoming a viral craze all by its lonesome.

Whether it be blogs dedicated to everything that the White Hat contingent adores or videos of dudes slamming back girlie drinks, the bro seemed to be making a comeback. (Well, a more branded comeback, that is — College Humor and Funny or Die have been going strong for some time now). Here’s a few examples of the recent craze in action, which should serve as some cold comfort (hehe) now that Bros Icing Bros is no more.

Bros Like This Site

It’s kind of like Stuff White People Like, but with more chest-beating, drinking and F-bombs. I would post a sample below, but I couldn’t find one that could make it past our censors. Drag. Anyway, as we suspected, bros like hating hipsters — see what we mean about school-yard politics?

Bros Ponying Bros

Obviously inspired by Bros Icing Bros, this site is run on a similar — albeit less alcoholic — principle. Basically bros ambush other bros with the song “Pony” by Ginuwine, and said bros must dance. Check out the video above. (Note: The boy dancing does not, in fact, appear to be a bro…)

Look at This F*cking Bro

Because bros take funny pictures of themselves, too. Also, Tumblrs!

Iced You

And, of course, there will be copy cats. This site, which is basically the same as Bros Icing Bros, has cleverly removed the product name from the description, merely imploring Icers to present a “malt beverage” to fellow bros. Look, they even censored the label.

image courtesy of iStockphoto, ljpat

Tags: Bros Icing Bros, humor, pop culture, tumblr, viral video