ttpint.gifIn my research into nine­teenth cen­tury Cana­dian drink­ing habits, I very quickly learned that the tem­per­ance folks had a spe­cial enmity for the cus­tom of treat­ing. The cru­sade against this spe­cial social prac­tise informed much of the pamph­let­eer­ing and peti­tion­ing of legis­lat­ive bod­ies. You can see the threat: if you have a lot of friends, and the mem­bers of group want to main­tain the respect of their peers, the rounds just keep on com­ing. It was often the exuber­ant nature of the bar that so threatened the well being of the aver­age Cana­dian. The warm sur­rounds of the tav­ern, the good com­pany of friends and the intel­lec­tu­al­iz­ing influ­ence of alco­hol. The tem­per­ance folks figured that they might be able to some­how beat this cus­tom out of Cana­dian bar beha­viour. There are how­ever some cus­toms that simply do per­petu­ate and cer­tainly treat­ing is one of them.

So lets take that into the inter­net age…not con­strained by the need to be phys­ic­ally present, the Frog Pub chain has intro­duced TextToP­int. You can now pur­chase a round for your friends online. Its pretty simple. You pay for the round online and are provided with a simple code that can be text’d to your bud­dies and they can redeem it from their ‘gen­ial host.’ Bril­liant. Good for the pub. What will the tem­per­ance folks say???