¹ Definition of 'Drink the Cool-Aid'. I love American English. It is an open-source, vibrant, constantly changing medium of communication. As such, it can be hard to understand even for native speakers. An obscure recent addition to the lexicon of the hipsters is the term "drinking the cool-aid" or "cool-aid drinkers". What's it mean? I've never seen a definition posted bearing any semblance of officialness so I'll publish my own here. I believe the term stems from the Jonestown Massacre in 1978. Paranoid cult leader Jim Jones ordered more than 900 of his followers (then in the jungles of Guyana) to drink cyanide-poisoned cool-aid. He told guards to shoot anyone who refused or tried to escape. The vast majority of his followers dutifully drank the poisoned cool-aid (even giving it to their children) and died. Thus, "drinking the cool-aid" means to blinding follow a mad-man or men. It means to turn off one's ability to reason and to blindly accept pronouncements of propaganda from those in authority. Additional link on the Jonestown Massacre.
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