Mark Zuckerberg's Guinness Sip Goes Viral as X Users Joke That He Looks 'Like He's Testing Human Food'

Mark Zuckerberg's attempt to drink a pint of Guinness on a podcast has become an unlikely viral moment, after X users seized on a 12-second clip of the Meta chief executive pausing, swilling the stout and moving the glass away.

The episode was recorded for Cheeky Pint, the podcast hosted by Stripe co-founder John Collison, with Meta's Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang also taking part.

The reaction was immediate. Viewers did not need a lengthy explanation for why the clip travelled. Zuckerberg took a sip, appeared to hesitate, then pushed the pint away from himself, and social media users filled the replies with jokes about whether the Meta boss had ever encountered a pint before.

One X user wrote, 'Zuck drinking Guinness like he's testing human food for the first time.' Another aimed at Meta's long-running virtual-reality ambitions, saying, 'Man bet the whole company on the metaverse and still can't commit to a pint.'

Why Mark Zuckerberg's Guinness Clip Spread

Zuckerberg appeared on Cheeky Pint alongside Wang to discuss Meta's work on artificial intelligence. The full conversation runs for 134 minutes, according to the source material, and the Guinness moment is only a brief interruption in a discussion otherwise devoted to the company's AI plans.

The three men raised their glasses at the start of the show. Zuckerberg then drank, hesitated and moved his glass away. The footage does not show him becoming ill, despite the way some posts have framed the moment, and it cannot establish whether he disliked the stout, was surprised by its taste or simply reacted to that particular sip.

That ambiguity is part of the appeal. A short clip offers just enough evidence for people to project an entire personality onto it. Is he unfamiliar with Guinness? Is he being polite? Or is this simply what happens when someone drinks a bitter stout on camera while trying to remain composed? The internet, inevitably, has opinions.

The clip was shared widely after accounts posted it on X. Mashable reported that one post sharing Zuckerberg's reaction had been viewed more than five million times, while other coverage said the footage had reached nearly seven million views on X. The differing figures reflect the speed at which the clip was still spreading, rather than a settled total.

The X Reaction to Zuckerberg's Pint

The jokes came quickly. One user wrote, 'I'd react the same way. * is this **.' Another said, 'Lol he better get used to it, if hes hitting the pubs in Ireland.' A third defended the drink, writing, 'Guiness is great, not sure why he is making that face.'

One commenter went further, asking whether Zuckerberg had never had Guinness before and adding, 'Lizard people confirmed.' It is the sort of remark that reflects Zuckerberg's long‑standing online reputation rather than the pint itself.

Not everyone was mocking him. Some viewers found the reaction relatable, with one user noting that it was 'the most normal thing I've ever seen him do, actually.' Another observed, 'Never seen someone try and chew a Guinness.'

There was also a practical point beneath the jokes. Guinness is an acquired taste, and Zuckerberg's expression does not prove anything beyond what viewers can see in the clip.

A Pint With History

The drink at the centre of the moment has a far longer history than the viral clip. Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000‑year lease on the unused St James's Gate brewery in Dublin in 1759, and the brand is now owned by the British multinational drinks group Diageo.

Guinness is made from water, malted barley, roasted barley, hops and yeast. The roasted barley gives the stout its dark colour and distinctive taste, while nitrogen, introduced by Guinness in 1959, helps create the creamy texture associated with a properly poured pint. Guinness Draught has an alcohol content of around 4.2 per cent.

Collison, the podcast's host, is an Irish entrepreneur born in Limerick in 1990. He enrolled at Harvard in 2009, left the following year and started Stripe with his brother Patrick in 2010. In 2016, an investment valued the payments company at $9.2 billion, making the brothers the world's youngest self-made billionaires at the time.

Collison launched Cheeky Pint in 2025 as a series of conversations with technology industry leaders. The format evidently includes a pint, which is where Zuckerberg found himself.

The whole thing is faintly absurd. A chief executive sits down to discuss artificial intelligence, takes one sip of Ireland's most famous stout and becomes the subject of millions of views, memes and questions about his humanity. Zuckerberg has not publicly explained the expression captured in the clip.