Emer McLysaght: Social media is flooded with influencers drinking water 24-7. How thirsty are these people?

A friend’s preteen got an Air-Up bottle for Christmas. This is a vessel one drinks water from, while a cartridge near the mouth gives off a fruity or floral odour. “Scent-based flavour” is how the German-based company describes the effect. Presumably the idea is to encourage reluctant water drinkers to trick themselves into thinking they’re sipping down a Fanta.

Between this and recent viral videos of shoppers in the US snatching huge pink limited edition Stanley water flasks off shelves at Target, it’s difficult to predict how water consumption trends are going to go. Social media is awash with influencers toting drinks the size of water butts around, and you have to ask yourself: how thirsty are these people? And what of their bladders? How worried are they about their distance from a bathroom? I fear we have, once again, lost the run of ourselves.

When I think back to my childhood, there was nobody drinking water. It just didn’t seem to dawn on us. By my teen years, this had changed. Sometime in the mid-1990s there was a moral panic about newfangled “sports caps” on the bottled water for sale in newsagents and supermarkets. “They’re using them to do drugs!” was the top line of at least one afternoon of Joe Duffy, I’d wager. The “they” in question was young people, and the role of the bottled water in drug taking was to quench the thirst of these youths, who were out of their minds on ecstasy 24-7.

As the urban legend went, the sports cap was developed not with sports and ease of access in mind, but to appeal to ravers who were eager to guzzle water at a faster rate to avoid dehydration. This theory was hogwash, but it did no harm to sales of bottled water.

Emer McLysaght: Good riddance Operation Transformation. Here’s what RTÉ should put in its place

---

Every time I travel abroad I am gripped by the fear that Ireland is making a fool of me

---

Emer McLysaght: You’re going to see phones at gigs. Suck it up

---

I’d never wear my big straw hat on the streets of Dublin. Someone would call me JR Ewing

---

To me and my teenage peers, carrying sports-capped bottles became cooler than just any regular old vessel. We imagined it gave off an image of raving and good-time party girls, rather than naggins of vodka or going to see Titanic for a fourth time.

[ The best refillable water bottle? Here’s my favourite ]

The commodification of drinking water, specifically bottled drinking water, was in full swing by the 1990s. Perrier successfully marketed bottled water in the late 1970s and early 1980s as the height of sophistication, and by the early 1990s – with the help of supermodels and heroin chic – carrying a water bottle was a status symbol, especially if it was the right brand. The trend kept on trickling and by the new millennium even people who had initially pooh-poohed the idea of paying for something that comes out of a tap for free were probably at least part-time consumers of bottled water. We were being told that any less than eight glasses a day would lead to imminent death so grabbing a litre here and there on the go was unavoidable.

Around 2010 a collision of environment guilt and the wellness industry saw a switch to reusable water bottles. Hydration and saving the planet were definitely in, and trendy refillable solutions became the item to be seen carrying. You might remember the Bobble bottles, with the colourful built-in filter. Then came S’well’s sleek metal offering, gripped at the neck on the way to a yoga class or planted on office desks as far as the eye could see. But still, purchasing a water bottle was a one-and-done type event. By design, it’s a reusable object. Why would you need several?

Enter: Stanley mania. Stanley cups – not to be confused with the hockey trophy of the same name – are large, metal, insulated vessels. The most popular version comes with a handle and a pop-up straw. Social media is at the root of the brand’s popularity: a combination of aspirational wellness influencers with enviable built-in ice and water dispensers, a trend on TikTok called “watertok”, which started with alcohol-free Mormons dressing up their water with syrups and flavourings, and a viral video posted by a woman whose car went up in flames but whose Stanley flask survived along with the ice contained within.

The irony of a product born out of a desire to reduce waste now fuelling this level of consumption feels very 2024. Having a large collection of water flasks surely defeats the purpose. In highly developed societies we are never far enough away from a tap that we need to be toting gallons of water around with us. I suppose when the real water wars come and we’re fighting for our very survival, the Stanley cups will be useful and heavy weapons on the arid battlefield. A cheery thought!