🎁 It’s my birthday, and you get a present!
Your fearless Fingers editor—me, Dave Infante—turns 38 tomorrow. To celebrate, I’m doing a subscription drive and giveaway! Score your first year of Fingers for a big ol’ birthday discount:
That’s less than $50 for 12 whole months of independent journalism about drinking in America! It’s one of the biggest deals I’ve ever offered, but the b-day fun doesn’t stop there. Move fast, because there are boozeletter birthday gifts up for grabs, too!
Here’s how it works:
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Fingers is 100% reader-supported, totally AI-free, and read by thousands of industry insiders and outsiders each week. Every subscription really counts. Help celebrate my 38th birthday and treat yourself to this gift of a deal:
The quicker you upgrade, the better shot you have at a sweet hat or sticker pack! And the more readers that upgrade overall, the more ambitious and adversarial journalism I can do about the business, culture, and politics of booze. Hope to see you on the other side of the paywall!—Dave.
A tipster recently reached out to let me know that Phusion Projects, the parent company of Four Loko, had posted a job listing for a community manager role. Today, I’m humbly throwing my hat in the ring.
Why? Well, for one thing, the media industry is in a state of accelerated collapse, and ditto the written word writ large. More than half of American adults read below a sixth-grade level these days, man. Not great! I also have a deep and enduring personal connection with Four Loko, having come up through the heady days of the late Aughts with its caffeinated formula coursing through my 20-something veins. Most importantly, though, the brand is a #whitespace innovator, a marketing juggernaut, and a malt-liquor comeback story the likes of which the beverage-alcohol industry has never seen. As I wrote in early 2023 (emphasis added throughout):
Coopting and commodifying something as fluid and fragmented as internet culture is not easy, but done successfully, it pays off […] Four Loko in particular has done a great job of parlaying its black-sheep image offline—earned via horrible headlines and regulatory pressures—into a freewheeling social media powerhouse. (For example, the FMB brand used its niche Twitter account to distribute branded STD kits this past June, an upsettingly obvious and therefore brilliant marketing stunt.)
This may not sound like your cup of tea. And it shouldn’t, really, because it’s not tea at all. It’s artificially flavored riot punch packed into radioactively labeled cans found in the flickering cooler at the back of every casually cleaned gas-station in the country. But don’t get it twisted: Loko is lucrative. It closed out 2025 as the 14th-largest “beer” supplier in the country in the off-premise universe tracked by market-research firm Circana, even though it only really does serious volume in the c-store; through mid-June, the candy-camo “brand family” is up 5.9% dollars and 4.5% volume in that channel alone, racking up more than $75 million. (Overall beer is +1.2% and -0.8% respectively over the same period.) In other words, behind the high-octane malt liquor and low-brow shitposts stands a serious business.
Now, Phusion Projects—which recently licensed the brand out to a company called Chuck It LLC (lol) for a THC-infused nonalcoholic extension called Nine Loko (lmao)—is hiring for a community manager to be:
the voice of Phusion’s brands in the wild – shaping how consumers experience Four Loko, Overtime, and our broader portfolio in real time. This role owns every direct interaction across social platforms -- direct messages, comments, and customer service channels, ensuring each touchpoint reflects the brand’s voice, energy, and culture.
Does this sound like a nightmare? Yes, a little bit. But when you think about it, aren’t nightmares just dreams that need to be reformulated to achieve broader market acceptance? Exactly. I can do this. I’ve recovered from getting rejected for White Claw’s marketing lead, and am ready for broader job market acceptance. To demonstrate my self-starting work ethic, disdain for pencil-necked frivolities like “norms” and “processes,” and middle-aged white-man confidence, I’ve bypassed the application portal in favor of openly posting my cover letter to co-founder and chief executive officer Jaisen Freeman below. Resume available upon request. Hire me, Four Loko.
[Urgent - Please Read - Attention Required] Hire me, Four Loko
To: Jaisen Freeman, co-founder and chief executive officer
CC: Phusion Projects recruiting team
Date: July 15th, 2026
Jaisen,
What’s good, king? I hear Phusion Projects is on the hunt for a new community-management maestro. Well, you can cancel the search, Jaybone, because I’m your huckleberry.
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