Nothing good happens online after 1 a.m.,” reads the homepage for Social Media Sobriety Test, a free Firefox plug-in that claims to put an end to embarrassment following regrettable, late night posts.”
I beg to differ.
If nothing good online happens after 1 a.m., sites such as My Drunk Texts, Texts From Last Night, and the drunk page on Failbook wouldn’t be worth maintaining. Without these sites, computer job goldbrickers like myself would have to reaffirm our moral superiority on sites such as TMZ – which isn’t nearly as effective as those losers are famous, and often rich. And obviously, if the Web goes dead after midnight, Webroot’sSocial Media Sobriety Test would be pointless.
As it is, Sobriety Test works for Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr and MySpace. (If you’re still posting on MySpace, drinking is the least of your problems.) Much like Mail Goggles, the drunk-protecting Gmail tool, users set Sobriety Test for the hours they expect to be under the influence. Any attempt to access the chosen social network during danger time is met with a simple test, such as typing the alphabet backwards (thus protecting social networks from dyslexics as well).
Fail, and not only does Sobriety Test block access to the social network you’re trying to get on, it thoughtfully posts this status for you: “(Your name) is too intoxicated to post.” Because, you know, that’s not embarrassing.
Aside from being free, Sobriety Test has little to recommend it and provides scant protection in real world scenarios. The add-on isn’t available for mobile phones, those bar-friendly tools on which the real damage usually takes place.
Sobriety Test might be appropriate for LiveJournal, if you could accurately set it for the hours you’re most maudlin. Though back in the day, it would’ve really sucked the life out of LiveJournal’s old Ambien forum, where non-compliant participants fought the sleep-inducing effects of their prescription so they could describe the colors they were seeing. But there again, what’s the point?
One might be tempted to point out, if you need software to prevent you from posting drunk on the Internet, you might want to consider friending Bill W. But that’s like saying everyone who’s 20-years-old has a drinking problem.
What’s more, if the David Fincher/Aaron Sorkin joint “The Social Network” is to be believed (it probably isn’t), without drunk keyboarding, there wouldn’t even be a Facebook to post drunk on.
Yeah, that totally just blew your mind – but it’s no reason not to drink responsibly!
Kim Z. for trying to convince us that she had a true ‘concern’ 
