I assume a lot of people aren’t pretending, but as someone with smoker parents and in a rural, poor town I have absolutely 0 desire, attachment, or aesthetic appreciation for smoking or seeing people smoking. Probably one of the most depressing things to see outside, other than seeing homelessness and flesh carnage.
Smells bad too. The things people were doing and failing to do to hide the the fucking stains.The orange-brown piles of nicotine dust behind unmoved furniture. Awful.
same, its incredibly sad to me to see someone smoking. same level as seeing someone shooting up on a bus
Unfortunately vaping is so aesthetically horrible and culturally noxious that smoking cigarettes now just seems like a quaint old-timey affectation by comparison.
I am biased tho because I do enjoy having one single cigarette every 1-2 weeks
I’m like the only person I work with who doesn’t smoke. Having an excuse to take extra breaks is pretty cool tbh. I just hit the weed vape while they smoke though
Smoking and using the R slur are horrifyingly becoming normalized again. The Brooklynification of the world
99% of the time I think smoking is really stupid. Then 1% of the time I’m watching Blade Runner and Sean Young is literally the coolest person who ever lived.
one of my friends is quitting vaping and specifically cited the fact that he sees it as loser shit or somehow childish compared to smoking as one of his motivations. it’s obviously nonsense smoking has just been around for longer but it’s definitely an attitude that exists and not just online
i do personally love cigarettes but i think if i was to come out with some “smoking is cool/cinematic/romantic” type take it would just be a right wing or idealist nonsense opinion informed by my addiction
yeah, cigs stink, and vapes are lame; but an oral fixation is legitimately sexy.
I’ve definitely seen an uptick in the aesthetics of smoking being cool or tough. I found it kind of strange when some game had you playing in first person with a cigarette (RV There Yet) or when a youtuber lights up while chatting to camera.
As someone who grew up with heavy smoking parents/grand parent it would be enough to put anyone off. The reality of the smell, the stains on your fingers and how you smell like an ashtray. The aesthetics of developing a cough, taking a drag and coughing as you try to catch your breath. Along with all that 2nd hand smoke.
CW complications with smoking
Last time I seen my mother she had difficulty breathing but has continued to smoke. My grand parent did eventually stop but after smoking most of your life the damage has already been done and they developed lung cancer that was inoperable.
I won’t describe what it’s like to see a human degrade because of the cancerBut that’s the insidiousness of the propaganda you only see the cool kids with their aesthetic looks
I wouldn’t call it an “internet thing” when that’s a dominant cultural opinion that long predates the internet. I agree it is lame though.
What is weird about astroturfing?
I think there’s a semi organic (Semi organic in that it is organically inspired by older tobacco advertising) thing about cigarettes being sexy on the Internet, I don’t think it’s astroturfing. I don’t think all these queer posters are bought by Phillip Morris.
Semi organic in that it is organically inspired by older tobacco advertising
I don’t watch much broadcast tv so I can’t comment on it, but Netflix shows have been pushing smoking for a while. The latest anime season has a couple shows that put smoking at the forefront. It’s not just old advertising, the smoke machine is alive and well in modern media.
The latest anime season has a couple shows that put smoking at the forefront.
I’ve noticed more manga depicting smoking as “cool”, “mysterious” or “sexy” and like… no? That’s fucking gross no thanks. At least that chain-smoker catwoman anime seems to put it in a very negative light? (I forgot the name of it)
Yeah, it really does feel like it’s on the rise lately. Like an oftentimes unnecessary addition.
This has been a thing for a decade at least, I think what’s being seen is the dip in the vaping fad among tobacco users.
That’s because it isn’t. Well, at least it isn’t anymore or less than it usually was. Smoking has become a ‘hot-girl’ habit, something that indicates that you are ‘a mature adult’.
All nonsense, of course, it is just fun to rip cigs while drinking, and nicotine addiction fucking sucks.
The other day, I looked into who owns Fortune, who publish articles with a left-lib slant, using provocative language. Turns out it’s a holding company controlled by a single billionaire family with interests in agribusiness, among other things. They absolutely do believe in “no such thing as bad publicity,” especially when it sells, and are certainly mocking us.
If by internet thing you mean Mad Men, yeah. Watching Mad Men while trying to cut down on smoking was a bad idea.
Watching Mad Men while living in China while trying to cut down on smoking was an even worse idea. People just be handing you cigarettes. Even content creators like Ludwig and Michael Reeves picked up smoking when visiting China.
Didn’t help I had local spot in Wuhan that is a cat cafe that served single origin Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, Russian vodka and an owner that hands you a free cigarette for every drink. My routine was to get a double espresso and 2 shots of vodka (Chinese shots, so 50mL each), 2 cigarettes while petting a cat. Depending on if it was a weekend or not, I’d stay for the rest of the bottle. Then I’d stumble out and go down the street to get Uyghur food.
I miss home.
absent a public smoking culture these people mostly see it through media and fun public events, creating grains of postive association. it has novelty and doesn’t really effect them long term.
of course those of us living/working with heavy smokers are not so inured because it fucking sucks and is annoying on a regular basis—but since when were working class people the arbiters of taste? sheltered suburbanites who see cigs in movies and have one at a concert are.
I thought it was just a MAHA thing where they’re trying to spin nicotine as a “brain hack” or w/e
These are the same people spinning heroin as an ADHD hack.
Makes me wonder if the genre of “c-can yuo put that out on me…” posts idolising problematically older women is upstream or downstream of cigarette advertising.
We must put our finest queeroreticians (Theoretician but queer) on the case.
Uhh. In the jobs I’ve had going out for a smoke is more acceptable than going to use the bathroom, then again I had a manager that would hide a vape puff here and there on the job in the store when she thought no one was looking and I began picturing myself in a bingo hall in the 90s, especially with all the older disgruntled customers.
