When Kitty Bernardo, bar manager at Paradise Lost, saw some industry friends walk into the bar at the end of their shift, they knew they were in trouble. You see, Bernardo had “iced” these friends earlier in the night. Yes, iced. Like from 2010s lolcat internet. “I remember seeing my friends icing each other in college and thinking, This is such a ridiculous trend that can’t possibly keep going on. This was right around the time other viral trends like the Cinnamon Challenge and Planking were happening, so I was convinced that this was going to be just another one of those passing fads that’ll be here and gone,” says Bernardo. And yet, here they were, icing and being iced in 2025, having the time of their life.
Icing was “invented” in 2010. The rules are simple: You surprise your victim with a Smirnoff Ice—the citrusy malt beverage—often concealed in some creative way. They must chug it on the spot, unless they have a Smirnoff Ice on their person to block the attack, in which case the original icer becomes the icee. It began on college campuses, where the enduring popularity of drinking games, a taste for easy-drinking alcopops and nascent visual social media platforms (you could already tag your friends in Facebook photos or upload your night to Photobucket, and Instagram debuted in July 2010) smashed together. Now not only could you prank your friends, you could post about the ever more elaborate ways you did it, inspiring copycats and competitors around the world. It was a meme, IRL.
“Was” is not the right tense here. Fifteen years after it began, icing has outlasted similar dated trends like the Ice Bucket Challenge and the Milk Crate Challenge. And why not? Icing is timeless, an “irreverent yet ritualistic handshake,” as Bernardo puts it, cementing that no matter how bad things get, you’re still committed to a good laugh. Even if that means you have to chug a Smirnoff Ice.
For some, the tradition has remained among family and friends since the 2010s (see: the wedding I went to where the bride was iced by her own mother). But others are new to the prank. TikTok is full of people far too young to have been around at icing’s inception, but still getting in on the prank, pulling it off at weddings and birthdays and family gatherings.
“My partner and I have created a multiyear tradition of icing their brother and his wife,” says writer Lindsay Lee Wallace. She never took part in college, but the opportunity for a low-stakes sibling competition was, well, intoxicating. “More recently we hid six bottles throughout their recently purchased home on Thanksgiving. One year we wrapped Ices and gave one to each family member on Christmas.”
Kian Sharafi, general manager of Mister Paradise in Manhattan, says icing has come back in a big way in some local industry circles. He claims it started when folks from Coqodaq, another New York restaurant, came to Mister Paradise and iced him while he was making drinks. “I actually had a reservation at Coqodaq a week or two after that,” he says. “So then I brought a whole six-pack to ice the whole bar team.” Now, he and Bernardo say, there is a “full-on ice war” among several bars in New York. “I will always be on guard at Mister Paradise, Apartment 5 and Coqodaq,” says Bernardo.
Sharafi has also iced customers with a stash that the bar keeps on hand, if they seem like they have the right vibe and want to join in. “Everybody remembers that this is just a dumb, fun thing to do,” he says. As pranks go, it’s a fairly tame one: “Nobody actually gets hurt at all. It’s low-impact and—I don’t know if ‘high-reward’ is the right word—but people are drawn to it.”
Bernardo says the resurgence, or continuation, of icing, plays into our current era of “ironic nostalgia.” But that nostalgia is showing its head elsewhere, and appears deeply sincere. It’s the same drive putting ’70s cocktails on the menu—yes, there’s a wink, but the fun is real.
“This is super cheesy, but running bits make me feel like my friends and loved ones will keep being around for long enough that I’ll get to ice them at their upcoming major life events, and they’ll ice me at mine, and that’s as beautiful as it is nauseating,” says Wallace. Icing has lasted because more than any other mid-2010s internet prank, you at least get something enjoyable out of it at the end. Bernardo echoes the sentiment. “If I ice you, it means I love you… It’s a sick and twisted olive branch that brings people together,” they say. “But it’s also just funny as hell.”
