White Claw Is What Happens When Being Cool Becomes Exhausting

Last week, the local police department in Portland, Maine, delivered a reminder to its community via Twitter: There are, in fact, laws when you’re drinking Claws. A few days later, cops in Kenosha, Wisconsin, did the same on Facebook. Authorities in Bath Township, Michigan, then took the warning one step further, eliciting more than 1,000 Facebook comments on a post that reminded people there are indeed consequences to getting “white girl wasted” on the popular brand of boozy seltzer.

In each instance, police were referring to a couple of months ago. And it’s only the most popular in a litany of White Claw–centric memes that have popped up all over the internet, as Claws themselves have made their way into the hands of beachgoers and cookout attendees across America. Even summer itself has become a White Claw meme. Instead of Megan Thee Stallion’s “,” seltzer acolytes have renamed the season “White Claw Summer.”