I legitimately don't know what Fraternity is and why it's normal in America and why these dudes are standing like this.
Watch the movie Idiocracy and you will understand everything.
this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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Looks like the last scene of the Blair Witch Project
Super real American anthropologist here. I have a degree on American culture, except don't ask to see it. The paper as well as the university that gave it to me fell into the ocean. I do not recall which ocean.
This here appears to be a form of trance that is induced by the consumption of an alcoholic concoction not too dissimilar to the baijiu we have in the civilised world (I believe they usually have something they call "Clamato" mixed with something they call "Natty Lite", but it can also be made with "Four Loko" and "V8 Vegetable Juice". The etymologies for all of these words are lost to time) during a coming-of-age ritual known as "hazing", believed to stem from getting into a drunken haze off of "moon shine" (also similar to baijiu) and shooting each other with flintlock pistols (which also produces a smoky haze) as a pastime in medieval America.
These men largely hail from villages and hamlets from the countryside (although not exclusively) and congregate around a "college" (which may be a loan word, it's uncertain if any education is mandated by these colleges, as the youth can simply threaten the shaman-tutor for being "woke" and "infringing on their beliefs" and automatically succeed in the class), whose main purpose is to produce (unpaid) athletes for the entertainment of the elders in a congregation called "March Madness", which I believe is an homage to an archaic custom where they forced their youth into the jungles of Vietnam and "march" forward into spike pits or develop "madness" from PTSD and the conscription.
Frats are gangs for jocks who want to pretend they're nerds
it's actually very funny that they refused to move because surely the cops were fellow fraternity members just also participating in the hazing 
the frat guy just continuing to drink a beer while very clearly trying not to get arrested for having 50 18yos standing shirtless in a dark basement.
one of my friends who rushed one of the party frats at the number 1 party school in our area used to tell me a story about how, when he was a pledge, they made all of them sit in their frat-house basement and listen to the chorus of Revolution 9 on repeat (which, if you don't know, is just 'number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine' over and over) apparently for hours one night. they had to keep drinking the entire time and weren't allowed to turn on the lights or use the bathroom & apparently several of them pissed themselves. i always believed him (because he was the type of guy who wouldn't lie if he knew he could get a laugh out of a true story)
anyways i'm like 99% sure they were doing some sort of even more heinous variation on that but it is extremely funny that they have SO MANY pledges in there lmao. like even my friend, the way he described it, it was only like a dozen of them for a single night - like 12 hours max. why why why 50 of them be in there and believe so strongly that the cops are also hazing them groupthink at its strongest
I don't think they think the cops are in on it I think none of them want to be the first one to break
Weapons (2025)
Europs and Britons when seeing a relic of distinctly European culture in the US:
Imagine a Hamburg steak...
- Seems like it's a relic of anglo culture more than "european" in general
- It's not common in Europe now, so of course that's how people would react. If you saw guys doing shit that was common 150 years ago, but hasn't bee around for your entire life, then you'd probably also be confused.
OP is indian
OP isn't the only one in this thread
you replied to op
I replied to the thread. It's a response to the topic at hand. It's not a DM to OP.
I don't think I've picked up on what a frat house actually is.
In Western Europe, fraternities shape about 70% of the political class. They break down your morals and make you do horrific acts so that if you’d ever betray the ruling class, they will have enough material to discredit you. They are not primarily social clubs. Their core function is to create an elite class that helps its members get in powerful positions and protect their financiers, the capitalist class.
This might actually be correct.
I've never heard of frats in western Europe akin to anything that the US has. England and some other places love posh boarding schools, which is not at all the same as a frat. It's shitty in other ways.
David Cameron fucked a pig in his frat, the event was called "Piggate" when it was leaked to the press. The European fraternities are just more up-market, called "societies" and "clubs" and styled in overtly upper class ways compared to what the americans style them as. It's the same thing though.
That's prob in the UK, in Spain i've never heard about anything like that
Compared to American frats they're quite different though. The societies and clubs like that (which are mainly an English thing) are more like an expanded skull & bones society, as far as I understand it. American frats, from what I know of them, are present at basically every college and much more accessible that the secret societies for the wealthiest kids in England - or whatever the variant is in other parts of western Europe.
I've never heard of Gamma Phi Delta in Berlin College (because I think colleges are very much an Anglo thing?) having some big hazing scandal or whatever.
If the argument is just "clubs for rich people exist" then yeah? But that's not really helpful for OOPs question.
Calling a toff club a “frat” sounds weird. It would be like if John Cena started talking about opening up the bonnet of his car.
Yeah it is weird using the same word but functionally they do the same things and serve the same purpose.
Aren't frats present at most colleges, and aren't they much easier to get into?
OP isn't asking about "clubs for rich people" which seems what you're reducing this to be. Frats focus much more on providing housing to members as well, don't they?
I don’t know how to respond to this, just because you haven’t heard of them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
I don't know, show me a french, a German or a Spanish frat that's similar to the American stuff. Calling the different semi-secret societies that exist everywhere the same as an American dudebro frat seems quite odd to me. They're not the same thing.
I don't see how the pigfucker club from Eton for England's wealthiest pricks is the same as an American frat, nor is it the standard of indoctrination for western Europe. I'm sure every country has some get together for rich and wealthy kids, but saying they're similar to the American greek frats seems incorrect on many levels.
I suppose you could respond by also explaining how the things you're thinking of are the same as an American frat. But I guess I'd start by just giving examples.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Sanda_Dia
The hazing was a ritual of the Reuzegom fraternity at KU Leuven
Also the reason why you don't see more German fraternities is WWII. They know it's not a good look: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/31/austria-dissolve-fraternity-linked-far-right-freedom-party-songbook
A group of young white guys networking, drinking, and hazing each other is not unique to the US and I don't even know why it's being suggested as such. At best they're not as common because people in Europe seem to have a sense of the common good and will ban them. But they do exist. It's not about them being the exact same because obviously cultural distinctions exist. Just because Burschenschaft dresses it up as Medieval sword duels doesn't mean it's not a similar thing.
Thank you for the link to Reuzegom. Again it seems like it's an outlier and not a common thing for Europe. Reading about it, it seems more like a studentverbindung than an american frat. But for some reason they're called the same thing. I found this list of frats and sororities in france, which, again, make it seem like not a very common thing. There it's more a product of french canadians, and even then the list is incredibly short.
A group of young white guys networking, drinking, and hazing each other is not unique to the US and I don't even know why it's being suggested as such
good thing that's not what I'm saying. I feel like I've made it very clear that's not what I'm saying.
Just because Burschenschaft dresses it up as Medieval sword duels doesn't mean it's not a similar thing.
I mean it does though? OP is asking about american fraternities and uses a picture of a hazing ritual. It's pretty clear it's not "hey do rich people meet and network in clubs at institutions for education?" Reducing it to "there are clubs for rich people everywhere" is inane, especially when american fraternities are - as I've already said - much more widespread and much more accessible to the common person.
Yes and dangerous hazing rituals exist in European fraternities. It may seem more widespread in the US because the US is more homogeneous than the group of European countries. Plus the media like movies and all push it to the front.
Why are you continually ignoring what I write?
I'm not ignoring what you write. You edited your post while i was writing the previous one. I'm not itemizing your posts and replying line by line. You said the OP is talking about hazing in a frat, I too posted about hazing in a frat. You said American frats seem more common and I said it seems that way because we're more homogeneous and the media focuses on it. I replied directly to what you said.
I said OP is talking about american frats and accompanied the post with a picture of a hazing ritual in an american frat. I then, in more than one post responding to you, mentioned how they seem much more widespread. I likewise said this initially
I don't see how the pigfucker club from Eton for England's wealthiest pricks is the same as an American frat, nor is it the standard of indoctrination for western Europe. I'm sure every country has some get together for rich and wealthy kids, but saying they're similar to the American greek frats seems incorrect on many levels.
As well as
I mean it does though? OP is asking about american fraternities and uses a picture of a hazing ritual. It's pretty clear it's not "hey do rich people meet and network in clubs at institutions for education?" Reducing it to "there are clubs for rich people everywhere" is inane, especially when american fraternities are - as I've already said - much more widespread and much more accessible to the common person.
Which was present before the edit. I'm sorry I edit my post for clarification, I don't expect immediate responses, and I don't have the good words ready from the start.
edit: Yet you keep returning to "there are clubs where rich people network and do rich people shit" which is incredibly reductive. I have said a couple of times that frats are also much more widespread in america and focus on housing as well as they are more available to laypeople. All of these things are true and do make them different. We've also strayed far from the initial part of 70% of western europes elite being part of fraternities like american frats. At this point we agree that the things are not the same. I don't disagree that at least 70% of all rich assholes everywhere are members of some sort of club where they do rich people shit, but, again, that seems incredibly reductive, and using the same word as for an american frat full of drunken daterapist dudebros seems counterproductive.
Let's start over but also this is probably my last post on the subject since I don't feel like having a drawn out argument about fraternities of all things.
Regardless of what OP posted, who OP is, what country they're from, where their allegiances lie, etc etc. I am arguing that Europe (France, Germany, Spain, UK) has scholastic organizations (ie organizations centered around school life) that center on networking, brotherhood, community service, and possibly spirituality or religion. That's their public face. In their private face, they have a lot of partying, drinking, drug use, sex, hazing, and general anti-social behaviors. What these orgs are actually called in their specific regional dialects I don't know. What percentage of the populations of each country is a member, I also don't know. I'm not the person who brought up the 70% figure but I agree that the vibe is "a lot." These European student orgs are comparable to American fraternities. The similarities begin and end with them all being student social organizations dedicated to networking, partying, and being a social terror wherever they are located.
American frats do not center on student housing a specific major goal. It's a perk of some frats to have a dedicated house on or off campus known as a "frat house." It's not a requirement that frats provide housing, free or otherwise. Students who stay at frat houses may still be required to pay for it or the rent may be covered by alumni. All students are generally required by universities to live on campus their first year or two, in dormitories provided by the school. Students pay rent for the dorms. I don't know if European schools work this way but regardless it doesn't radically change the other similarities between Europe and the US frats.
Frat is short for fraternity or fraternal order. There are non-scholastic fraternal orders in the US and Europe. I am not talking about those. I am specifically talking about university-aged people at a school. I do not believe in my heart of hearts that European teenagers at uni are less drunken daterapist dudebros than American teens. The attitude that, as a European, it's "their drunken dudebros" vs "our urbane students", is exactly the problem.
Just to add to this: in my city it is only possible to get housing in your first year as a student if you are either super rich, super lucky or you join a fraternity. These frats are very dudebro and there are countless examples of daterapes and other disgusting behaviour of these people. In frat houses you have to ‘earn’ a door to your bedroom by having sex in. Which means you first have to have sex in your room without a door (so your roommates can see and hear clearly) before you can assemble a door to your room.
My city is not unique, in fact, the frats here are not as ‘prestigious’ as in other cities. The political class in my country mostly originates from 2 frats in other cities. France has a slightly different system that I can’t really speak for, Germany is weird because student associations are associated too much with nazism so many people don’t want to associate with them (but they still hold significant political power). AFAIK UK, Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and UK are as I described or similar, and I assume Switzerland, Austria, Sweden and Norway are similar as well.
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a lot of the university experience implies living away from your friends and family for the first time. fraternities/sororities are a way for the affluent and generally disagreeable people to pay for instant access to a large social network of people from the same demographic (unlikeable, parents have money).
of course you can't only pay to get in, because then minorities might get in there and ruin the whole brand... so existing members gatekeep the "secretive" process behind made up rituals of humiliation to prove loyalty and drive out anyone who might have some self respect.
they are to be avoided like the plague. never join. never go to any of their functions. avoid their houses. every fucking year, kids die from alcohol poisoning due to their "brothers". not to mention all the sexual assaults. "greek" culture is a menace of elitism and sadism. and it's just politically connected enough to be constantly normalized while its excesses are covered up and ignored.
better to be a geek than greek.
better to be a geek than greek.
damn, I'd totally forgotten about this phrase but it's what everyone said at my university in Canada. Before I arrived the school had ended most of the frats because of the vile culture they generated, and the couple which were allowed to exist had to jump through hoops and had high public behavioural standards. Even then, everyone outside the frats hated them due to the whole '"greek" culture' you described
culture
See this is the problem with your question right here, 
doesn't have a culture
is a cult and once you understand that everything else makes a lot more sense
you know the epstein shit? frats are like a microcosm of that in every university across the country but they mostly assault their classmates or groom highschoolers.
It's where future Epsteins are created.
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