It’s 25 years since the Budweiser ‘Whassup’ advert changed men’s friendships forever

I grew up without a television – or very many friends – so for me, the late nineties and early noughties were a series of solo card games and listening to Shaggy on repeat in my bedroom while writing journal entries about the girl I fancied.

Since then, I have still struggled to make friends, to connect with other men on any deeper level than going for a beer and talking about Liverpool’s attacking formation. Perhaps if I had had a television – and in 1999 seen the “Whassup?” adverts for Budweiser – things would have been different.

The advert is joyful. A man reclines on a sofa, sipping a beer, while sports commentary hums in the background. He gets a phone call and knows instinctively who it is: we assume his friend calls so regularly that there is no need for explanations or introductions. The friend simply asks, “Whassup?”

What follows is a sort of wolf call, as more and more characters are introduced through overheard conversations, three-way phone calls, and apartment intercoms. They all fill their lungs with air, then half croak, half howl, “Whaaaaasssssaaaaappppp!” letting it linger as long as they can in their throats. It is an advert presenting unashamed, silly, jubilant male friends calling each other for no other purpose than to talk.

Men are told we need to talk more. But before men can talk about something, we need to learn to talk at all. As a wordy, nerdy, and worried twenty-something, I didn’t feel I knew how to make first contact and become friends with other men.

That advert would have taught me that men need a phatic, silly expression like “Whassup?” to break the ice of a conversation. In cartoonishly or ironically asking, “What’s up?” the characters open the door to a longer friendship, to being confessional with each other, to the possibility of the question, “What might be down?”

In the years since that advert aired, others have represented this kind of male bonding: men sat shoulder-to-shoulder on sofas, roulette wheels spinning in their eyes as they leap around, asking each other if they have a WKD side.

I yearned for that sort of friendship, but at the same time, I found the laddish, adrenaline-fuelled sports camaraderie wasn’t enough. Sure, I could go to the pub with someone and watch a football game. But we weren’t going beyond that.

That’s because advertising isn’t really interested in promoting new lines of conversation between men, in saving us from our spiralling mental health conditions, or in making us feel less lonely. Most advertisers are interested in one thing: making money – and, in return, giving us a fleeting sensation of community by putting a bet on, drinking a beer or trimming our beards, even though we’re alone in our bedrooms.

So no, having a television as a child and seeing the “Whassup” advert would not have made me a more emotionally literate adult. What actually helped me is a combination of therapy and in-person bonding experiences: football teams, work meet-ups, the slow building of relationships.

Through all of these things, I have found friends. And yes, we watch football and put on silly voices to talk about beer and boring things. But we also do what the adverts never show: we answer the question, “What’s up?”

We talk about the difficult stuff: how Andy has to go to hospital next week, how I have a baby on the way, how Ant is a Man City fan. We ask each other how it is going, we show compassion and occasionally offer solutions, but most often, we just listen to what the other person is saying.

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