Hey everyone, this is T.
Two things:
1. Yes, I am alive despite not not posting since November. I personally blame my finals and my thesis paper, but that is besides the point.
2. I do not smoke. I have never smoked a cigarette, I have never smoked pot, and I never plan on changing this. I will admit that I've smoked cigars at most 6 times in my life, but these times have indeed been rare. I have also used a Blu e-cig from time to time over the course of a semester, but never felt the need to keep smoking, nor have I used one in over a year.
My decision to not smoke has nothing to do with moral self-righousness. People should have the right to make their own decisions and to live with the consequences of their actions. I honestly do not care if other people choose to smoke, except when they do it in my house, and only because the smoke affects my asthma.
What does bother me about smoking is that anti-smoking advertisements are intrusive in my non-smoking life. It seems that every time I want to watch an Adult Swim video on their website or a clip on YouTube I am forced to watch the same black actor pull his tooth out with a pair of industrial pliers. I am forced to see the human version of Hunger Team Hunger Force's Carl with a mullet act like a smoking habit. I am foxed to see the generic version of Saron's goblin army transform into mist and get absorbed into a teen's lungs.
I understand that every ad may not be target to me, I get that. I am also aware that the prevalence of smokers in the USSA has decreased over the last century. I am just tired of watching the same ads over, and over, And Over, AND OVER AGAIN!
At this point, the dangers of smoking have been publicly available for at least 50 years, and most likely have been available since the 1960's. If people still choose to smoke, I do not think that another ad of a woman speaking from a voice box will affect their smoking habit. Social "problems" (and I use this word loosely) can only be solved to a certain point. For example, there will exist into the near future people who go to night clubs on snowy nights without wearing a jacket. Some people will just reject reason.
Every time that I see these videos, I feel like a guy watching make-up commercials: I get the point, but my purchasing power will be just as influenced by not watching the commercial as it would be watching the commercial every 5 minutes for a whole year.
I just want a decrease in the amount of anti-smoking videos that I have to watch, or at least a 5 second skip button.
Until next time.
-T
