Meet My Hyperfixation: Shane & Liquid Death

For the last five years, I’ve been a devout disciple of a death cult. Not the kind that ends in a desert standoff or a true crime documentary — no, mine is carbonated. And comes in a can.

Behold: Liquid Death — the only water (or, depending on the mood, soda-adjacent fluid) that has ever made me feel alive.

✝️ The Origin Story: Hydrate or Die Trying

It all started the way most great obsessions do: in a haze of burnout, caffeine dependency, and aesthetic hunger. I was working restaurant hours and slamming energy drinks like my life depended on it — because, honestly, it sort of did. But the reaper came not for my soul…he came to murder my thirst.

Enter Liquid Death: the metalhead of the hydration world. The can design? Brutal. The flavor names? Criminally underrated. The cause? Righteous — fighting plastic pollution with every cracked skull-shaped pull tab. As a designer, that hit hard. We’re not just pushing pixels. We’re pushing waste into the ocean. (Watch Buy Now on Netflix and cry with me, you cowards.)

So I made the switch. Not just from energy drinks to water, but from mortal to immortal. From hydration to hydration with vengeance.

🪦 The Flavors That Keep Me Waking Up Screaming for More

If you’ve never tasted Squeezed To Death, Cherry Obituary, or the sweet, ripe regret of Convicted Melon, I feel sorry for your tastebuds. These flavors don’t whisper. They scream — mostly things like “get off the couch and start a revolution” or “throw your plastic Dasani in the nearest inferno.”

Each can gets the royal treatment: cracked open cold, swaddled in my Liquid Death brown bag can cooler, and consumed with a level of reverence usually reserved for sacramental wine or first-edition Yugioh cards.

🎈 Party Like a Rockstar. A Germaphobic, Sober Rockstar.

Every kids’ birthday party I attend becomes a sort of hydration pilgrimage. I roll in, rocking full Liquid Death merch, cooler in hand like a prophet with a mission. Why? Because the drink situation at these parties is a nightmare.

Here’s how it always goes:
There’s a cooler for the kids — packed with juice boxes, pouches, and those sweaty plastic bottles. But I’m not touching it. Not because I’m above a Capri Sun, but because kids are tiny, adorable germ factories who treat coolers like personal swimming holes for their sticky hands. That cooler is a biohazard zone.

Then there’s the adult cooler.
Which only has alcohol.
Which I don’t drink.
Which makes me... the only one standing around without a beverage, looking like I just lost my emotional support seltzer.

So I bring my own.
An ice-cold arsenal of Liquid Death in a soft-sided cooler of salvation. It sparks conversation. It raises eyebrows. It also ensures I’m not stuck sipping hose water while people pretend boxed wine goes with Paw Patrol cake.

🚓 The Law Can't Hold Me

Once, back before Liquid Death had really broken into the mainstream, I was outside on my break — soaking up a few precious minutes of non-service-industry oxygen — when a cop rolled up, eyeing my brown-bagged tallboy with suspicion.

He stepped out, ready for a citation-worthy encounter. But when I held up the can and he read the words “Liquid Death,” there was a pause. A squint. And then… a laugh.

Not only did he let me go (because, again: it’s water), but we spent five whole minutes talking about flavor profiles like we were sommeliers in a crime procedural. I even think I converted him to Convicted Melon on the spot.

🪦 Death By Stevia (But Not Yet)

In recent years, the brand has started putting stevia in some flavors. A betrayal? Maybe. But I’m not giving up the fight. I’ve been holding the line with fellow purists — the ones who remember the true taste before the world went soft. We are the Stevia Resistance. We are legion. We are the true Liquid Death fans and very well hydrated.

💀 Join Us

So, no, this isn’t just a drink. This is a lifestyle. A liquid lifestyle of death, design, and dignity.

If you see a man in Liquid Death merch cracking open a brown-bagged can at a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party, know that he is not unwell — he is simply waging war on thirst, microplastics, and lukewarm Capri Sun.

Join us.
Murder your thirst.
Respect the melon.
And for the love of hydration, stop using plastic bottles.