The following article is a work of satire.

Speaking generally, the modus operandi of this column is trying to instruct our readers on how to have a pleasurable drinking experience at the cheapest cost possible. Frankly, we’d be remiss if we neglected to inform you of the easiest way to do this: steal someone else’s beer. The title of this article is, thus, sort of misleading.

We are not suggesting you buy your own keg. That, boys and girls, is known as a “sucker’s bet.” You can put your little empty Maxwell House Coffee tin on the counter, having written “donate to keg” on a notecard taped to it. But the reality is, this only works if people hang around long enough to either notice the tin or give a shit. Most Friday night party-hoppers are looking get in, get drunk and leave in search of someone reasonable looking to sleep with.

Any way you work it, you’re going to lose some money so that a bunch of assholes can get drunk in your house and try to steal some shit (copper wiring, covers to heating vents, doorknobs). You don’t want to be a liqour-provider. No. You want to be a liqour looter.

Here’s how you can best live off the fat of the land.

1. Be a girl. Sorry, don’t mean to be misogynistic. This is just how shit is. Ladies, look at it as the one time when our phallo-centric, paternalistic, gender-biased society sort of works in your favor… Sort of… Keep your hand over your drink.

2. Install a Vichy-Keg-Guy. You know your one friend. Real social guy. Loves to yuck it up with motherfuckers. Establish a small power base of overly aggressive keg-seekers, and rush the tap. Then give the tap to your friend. Nobody will argue with this chain of events, because partygoers have no allegiance to any particular keg guy. They only care about the guy who’s holding the tap right fucking now. As long as that guy’s your friend, you’re in the clear. He will ALWAYS hook you up.

3. Do not be the Patient Quiet Guy. Anybody who has ever been to a keg has seen him. He’s a nice guy, really. Doesn’t talk a lot in class, and is just kind of out because his dad told him to try make friends on the phone last week. He’ll do anything for you: hold a door, swipe you into Jewett, lend you notes. You know what nobody will ever do for him? Give him a beer. This guy will end up waiting around the tap for maybe 20 to 25 minutes before he sees drop one of Keystone. All the while your Vichy hook-up will have basically funneled four liters of beer into your stomach. Let’s be clear: The four-foot radius around the keg is basically the state of nature. The tap respects power and the will to power.

4. Find your in to the house. If you know someone who lives in the house where the kegger is being held: fucking milk that guy. He is your best in. How often have you seen a guy come up to a tap, swinging around a red cup like it was John Holmes’ dick, saying he lives in the house, all getting beer straight up no-questions-asked. You want your cup to be the cup in that dude’s other hand. He will take care of you because he likes the small amount of privilege and status afforded to him by the foolish decision he has made to actually throw down 84 dollars for a kiddy-pool of Busch Light.

5. Party a little crowded for your taste? Yell “Cops”: this might strike some of you as sort of callous, but we’re the type of the people who called the cops on keggers in highschool because they were charging five dollars a cup (fuuuuck thaaaat). This only works if you’re over 21, and you have no designs of sleeping with a freshman. Especially at the beginning of an academic year, it’s a surefire way to clear out a party of the riff-raff. This might leave a bitter taste in your mouth, but you can easily wash that taste out with: oh, I don’t know: a shit-ton of beer.

6. Claim you’re ‘with the band’. Don’t want to shell out your hard earned scrilla to quarterlife or some well-meaning cause? Us neither (fuuuuck thaaaat). We’re not sure why, but everybody wants to give musicians free liqour. It’s like everyone is imagining themselves as extras in the Led Zeppeling biopic. The key is to stick to your guns. Door guy says, “You’re not in the band! The band is playing right now!” Simply respond “OH FUCK THEY ARE GOING TO BE SO PISSED!” Eventually he will believe/tire of you.

7. Claim a false greek affiliation. If you’re at a house in which a number of people from a particular greek organization are in, and the keg is being manned by someone who is clearly not a member of that frat or sorority, claim you are a member of that organization. It’s as easy as just sort of casually saying that you’re a Beta, TKE, Kappa, DG, or whatever. If someone calls you out, say you just recently pledged and they were blacked out when it happened.

8. Check the fridge. People will be so distracted by the keg, often times they won’t be paying attention to the fridge. And what’s a college fridge without some keystones rolling around up in that bitch? Take it. What: are you too good to steal? You think you’re better than us? Fuck that. Besides, you can justify it to yourself as a social protest if the party is lame, or the keg is tapped.