Since I decided to stay in my college town for the summer, I spent the majority of my time that wasn’t working my serving job binge watching multiple TV shows on Netflix and HBO.
After watching multiple episodes of American Dad and HIMYM, I discovered a gem on the HBO network. That gem was Game of Thrones. Now unless you’ve been living under a rock somewhere, you at least have some sort of inclination as to what the plot line of GoT is. For those of you who don’t, I can summarize it for you in a few short words. Blood, violence, drinking, medieval times and nudity...lots and lots of nudity. As a sat and binged watched all of season one in two days (yes, I watched ten hours of TV in a 48 hour span), I thought to myself Greek Life is just like GoT. The uncanny similarities can be found throughout all four seasons. Here are some of the reasons.
Houses: You think Greek Life is the only place were people worry about whose house is seemingly “top tier”? Well Game of Thrones does too. No one wants to be a Frey (the Red Wedding people, look it up), but everyone wants to be a part of house Lannister (they’re all having insestual relationships with each other, beautiful and wealthy). Then you have house Stark, you know that house that tries every year to do great things. However even though they try their hardest, they still somehow fail? They’re House Stark.
Families: Everyone in Greek Life is part of a family. Some have bigs and littles, some have fathers and sons, mom and dots, the list is endless. We all strive to have one of the best Greek Families in your chapter and on campus. You have to have Kim because she was super cool in pref rounds, or you want Luke as your little bro because he was super chill at the intramural recruitment event. The characters in GoT want perfect families also, even if it means betrothing your daughter off to a sadistic fourteen-year-old heir to the throne. But she’ll be Queen so that makes it all right? Sure Ned Stark, look where that got you.
Philanthropies: Every chapter has a philanthropy. Some do bike rides, wiffle ball, Twister, the options are endless. Whether or not you're putting the philanthropy on or are competing in it, you all want one thing: to win and have fun. Competition is second nature in Greek Life; we all want to show each other what we’re good at. And while we're having fun and competing, we are also raising money to benefit some sort of organization or good cause. In the end, everyone wins. In GoT, they don’t quite have philanthropies. However they are competing (the war of the Five Kings for example), they’re all fighting for a good cause. I mean who wants the evil little tyrant, Joffrey Baratheon on the throne? No one, am I right? Not even his family wants him.
There you have it, a solid explanation as to why Greek Life and Game of Thrones are the same... Okay, maybe they’re not the same, but the similarities are uncanny. I mean, who doesn’t enjoy binge watching four seasons of a show during the summer and then coming up with reasons why it’s just like Greek Life at your school? Well maybe that’s just me too, but you know what they say: "When you play the game of Greek Life thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground."
