(This one's long!)

Jump to: DTL Jan 2020 / May 2021 / August 2021 / June 2022 / August 2022 / Jan 2023 / Tips for anyone organizing a DTL / Theme ideas / A Reflection

My friends and I do something called a Drink Talk Learn once or twice a year. A DTL is an excuse for us to get together for drinks (whether in person or virtually, but usually the latter since some of us live in other countries now) and each do a presentation on a group-voted theme.

The mechanics have been laid out by Michal - whose DTL on Shadow the Hedgehog's moral alignment went viral¹ - but we customized them, as I assume most friend groups who adapted this practice have.

Some changes we made:

• 3 minutes is crazy short. We do 5-7. (Most of us go way over it, still.)
• Heckling is fine in person, but virtually the delay makes it awkward. We're also a fairly polite bunch naturally, so death by screech doesn't super work.
• Dress code depends on the theme we decide for that hang, and is not always biz cazh.
• We had a bunch of awards the first time and then never did awards again. Not for any bad reason - it was just a bit of a hassle.

It's a whole lot of fun! All my friends are funny and have strong feelings about things and I love watching them present. In general DTL combines a number of things I like: being with my friends, thinking hard about my obsessions, pseudo-intellectualizing them for fun, and using Powerpoint. (If you haven't yet learned how to use the Morph transition, I am telling you now to learn it.)

If you're at all interested in trying this out with your group of friends, I highly recommend it. You can look up "Powerpoint Party" for ideas if you don't know where to start, but I'm also going to lay out previous themes we've tried and presentations I've done, because this is my blog.

(I won't list all my friends', since we've done this six times and we're like nine people. That's too much.)

Here we go!

👯 january 2020: the inaugural DTL

Since this was our first DTL, we went all out. We had a rubric and shit that we co-designed on Google Docs. We had so many awards, which I'm copying from the doc and pasting here:

• Best presentation: highest total score among all presentations
• Most creative: highest creative score among all presentations
• Closest to 7 minutes without going over: yeah!
• Closest to 5 minutes without going under: yeah!
• Best topic: people like your topic
• Most controversial topic: people have strong feelings about your topic (alternatively, you got asked a lot of questions, whether or not you also earn the title of Best Grilled/Charred)
• Best griller: asks the most/the hardest questions (either/or)
• Best grilled: best defense during Q&A
• Best charred: had a tough time defending, poor kid
• Best visuals: people like your powerpoint/prezi/what have you
• Best dressed: people like your OUTFIT
• Most sober: you seem like you have your shit together/you’re intelligible

My topic was "guessing who my friends' biases² in Seventeen³ would be if they chose to stan" and I theorized that they'd either like someone similar to them, similar to their friends, or similar to their type.

At that time I was crazy into Seventeen and was very familiar with their (public) personalities. It was also just a fun excuse to call my friends out or indirectly compliment them.

A couple of us weren't able to make a presentation in time so they were in charge of tallying up the points.

🖥️ may 2021: try to care about something new

On our second DTL, we switched things up: Each person provided a list of 3-5 things they could give a presentation about, and we drew each other's names to see whose topics we could choose from. I have to say, this one was much more fun to watch than work on. One of my friends did a presentation on Fire Emblem, which she knows nothing about but three of us love.

I think it was more of a struggle for me because I'm unfortunately a person who thinks anything that's not in my realm of interest is like pulling teeth... I don't want to be like this but I am lol. Thankfully the friend I drew said on their list that they'd like to see the presenter go through their MyAnimeList, which seemed like fun!

I went through and gave some first impressions based on the above parameters, and later ended up watching one of the animes on her list that I ranked highly based on said parameters. (It was Kaguya-sama: Love is War.)

The person who drew my name ended up getting sick and not being able to attend or present. I was pretty bummed out by that, but everyone else's presentations made up for it!

🖥️ august 2021: life updates

This one was a bit more chill. Since we were still in the middle of a general quarantine and unable to really meet up or catch up, we thought it might be fun to do something more simple like a life update. Not much to say about this one! It was nice catching up, especially since my friend group is so low-communication lmfao.

Here was mine.

👯 june 2022: i was sick

We usually hold in-person hangs at my place, but another friend was hosting this one because it was her farewell party before going to grad school in Canada. This was a week after my trip to the US, where the mask policy was already pretty lax, so after two years of safety I got Covid LMAOOO. Anyway, I didn't go, but my friends looked like they had a good time. I don't think there was a theme? One of them assigned us to different characters in the Barbie Cinematic Universe (BCU).

🖥️ august 2022: whatever you like!

There wasn't a theme for this one either! I think this one was the most enjoyable, actually.

My topic was something like "which of my quarantine blorbos could I actually date IRL" - which was truly just an excuse to a) think about my blorbos and b) break out a spreadsheet and metricate the very un-quantifiable process of finding a partner.

A preview: a slide on things that I consider a plus.

Some of my friends' presentations included:

• Recipes for drinks that taste good but hit hard
• Mapping [the presenter]'s compatibility with their biases based on astrology
• A tierlist of all the Ghostfaces from the Scream franchise

👯 january 2023: powerpoint karaoke

Three out of three of the friends who lived out of the country were visiting for the holidays, so it seemed as good a time as any to get together in person and do our first complete, in-person DTL.

HA. Do you know how hard it is to get a group of nine people to all be available on the same day? As the group's unofficial organizer, I was tearing my hair out. Someone could only be there in the morning, someone only in the evening after the presentations, and someone was sick. I don't blame any of them for having work or, god, for being sick – but as a neurotic animal, it was such an effort to stay gentle with myself and everyone else, lol.

ANYWAY. The gimmick for this one was "make a Powerpoint and have someone else present it on the spot." (I've since learned that this is called Powerpoint karaoke?) It was a challenge to design the Powerpoint in such a way that would be fun for a) the presenter and b) the audience, but we were successful. (And also sufficiently tipsy.)

My presentation asked the presenter to swipe left or right on the characters of Fire Emblem: Three Houses based on their background knowledge and basic info I provided (+ Tumblr memes to give them an idea of their personality, if they totally didn't know anything about the character). I took into account the following when deciding on the info to include in the PPT:

1. Some of my friends played Fire Emblem and were super into it. ("If they present this, how do I make it not boring to them?")
2. Some of them had some familiarity with the characters, based on the tweets of those in our friend group who played the game. ("How do I not tell the whole story of the chara on the presentation, so the presenter can talk about their own impressions?")
3. Some of them know nothing about the game or characters. ("If they're presenting, what information will be useful to them to assess the characters? If they're listening, how do I help the presenter?")

The area at the bottom was for the person assigned to present this PPT to stick post-its that had the names of the characters in the appropriate boxes. I was taking advantage of the fact that we were in person and had a projector set up.

The person who got my presentation was my best friend Bee, who I'd place in the second category. They presented beautifully and hilariously.

The presentation I drew was "Pokemon Scarlet/Violet Smash or Pass," where I was... to play Smash or Pass with the Pokemon of the Paldea region. As a Pokemon fan, IT WAS SO FUN. I don't know if it was as fun for the people listening, but it was fun for me to do lol.

tips for anyone organizing a DTL

As the person who usually arranges our hangs, here is some unsolicited advice for anyone looking to do this.

Themes can increase focus AND excitement. Having no theme is nice and leaves a lot of room to do whatever you like, but sometimes that gives people choice paralysis. By setting a theme, you give yourselves an area to work with and take away some of that stress.

Crowdsource from the friend group for maximum fun. I made polls upon polls to make sure everyone was not just down with the chosen theme, but excited about it. The more excited everyone is, the more likely the event will be a success! This seems like common sense, but is easy to flub: Sometimes even choosing to have a theme can be a mistake, since sometimes people don't want a theme that requires Big Thoughts, so no theme or something chill (like life updates) is the better route. (I know I just said themes were good, but eh. Play it by ear.)

Don't let DTL be the only thing during the hang. The DTL is usually an excuse to hang out and play other games and chat afterwards. This keeps it from being too like work lol.

Drinking is optional. I know it's called a Drink Talk Learn, but eh. This should just be a thing in general. None of us have issues with alcohol, but sometimes some people aren't feeling it, and that should be fine. The hang should still be fun even without drinks!

Avoid presentation themes that involve assigning people to others unless you can do it the day of. Heed this rule especially if you know your friends are prone to dropping things.

theme ideas

• No theme - go wild!
• Present on something that someone else in the group is into
• Powerpoint karaoke
• Life updates
• Holiday-themed prezo (or anything relevant to the date/time period you're holding your DTL)
• Prepare a prezo for a specific person to present (but you won't know who you're presenting for until the day of)
• Presentation must be related to the thing binding your friend group together (all met in high school, at work, at D&D, etc.)
• Prezo topic must start with a certain letter (whole group decides on the letter)
• Prezo must be a list/ranking of things
• Prezo must be about the group (each person as a Sanrio character, etc)
• Prezo must require/involve audience participation (plus points if physical participation, if in-person)
• Prezo must be something you have no expertise on

a reflection

I'm so used to my friend group being hyped up and going all out on DTL that I forget most people don't get excited about making Powerpoints, lol. It's definitely a little nerdy, and best utilized by people who are very intense about small things, like myself and my friends.

But I recommend it to anyone! It's honestly just nice to let yourself feel as much passion as you do for something, no matter how small, and share it with people who encourage that passion regardless of how familiar they are with the source of that passion. And if you don't have a friend or two to do this with, I'll do it with you. I'm not even joking. Email me.

Anyway, while writing this post I felt the urge to organize another DTL with my friends, so I am going to go bother them now. Happy Drink Talk Learning to anyone reading this!

Yet to master the art of signing off in a cute and fun way a la my bud Kayla, but trying my best,

💕 Mei

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1. She also went on to later produce and develop a wholeass Sonic game. Isn't that wild? I love when people who make and do things out of love get rewarded with opportunities to do that Even More.↩

2. Favorite member of a k-pop group. See also: "ult," short for "ultimate (bias)."↩

3. A K-pop boy group.↩