Kool aid - can someone explain the origin please?

[WichBitchHarpyTerfThatsMe]

Been on these boards long enough to totally get what it means but what is the origin of 'drank the kool aid'?

Jim Jones wasn't it? Mass suicide cult.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid

An unfortunate reference to the massacre/mass suicide at Jonestown when people drank poisoned Kool Aid and died.

The documentary is one of the most harrowing things I've ever seen.

Ah, thank you all. I get it now. Horrible but effective term.

It is, actually now I think about it, an unfortunate phrase. We should stop using it.

It is in common usage all over places like Twitter though - perhaps we've been de-sensitised.

But it's come to mean "buying into and believing in a cult, no questions asked, no rationality needed."

Kool-Aid is a sugary powdered drink mix that's been popular in America for decades, mostly with kids.

In 1978, 900 members of a cult called the People's Temple died by suicide and / or were killed (almost 100 of them being elderly people or children) by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.

The leader of the cult was named Jim Jones and the Kool-Aid incident happened in a settlement the cult had established in Guyana, called 'Jonestown' (which you may have heard of?).

'Drinking the Kool Aid' is now a figure of speech meaning to be so brainwashed by a destructive idea that you can't see that it's destructive.