Taking a cigarette break on the smoking internet
theoutline.com
theoutline.com
Which is to say: a smoker, a frequent psilocybin user, a transgendered person, a furry, and an ABDL fetishist all walk into a bar... and hang out amicably, because they've all been through shit.
(One slightly annoying thing about this, though, is that this empathy-for-outré-groups-building effect stops happening as your own group becomes less outré. Homosexuality is accepted enough today that the newest generation of gay people are growing up just as intolerant of "deviance" as everyone else.)
There does end up being a lot of suffering comparison when there's confrontation of biases though. "That might affect you sometimes, but my thing affects me all the time" or the like.
I bet a lot of us would not consider "discrimination through elitism" to be a real problem but have probably seen people be scoffed at for watching Big Bang Theory or something.
The inconveniences and at times rudeness experienced by smokers doen't constitute anything that resembles persecution.
And what Jews in the 40s had to endure has little to what a gay person in e.g. Idaho in the 80s and 90s had to endure, which was 100 times lighter. It's still persecution of sorts though.
We shouldn't trivialize a word, but we shouldn't leave some words just for the hardest of cases either.
Aliens collect with aliens. Because of a shared experience. The shared experience is being alien.
Very specific but common example: A local telling a taxi driver a location "next to XYZ school that relocated a few years ago". That's pretty clear to a local.
However, "on the intersection of ABC and XYZ street" would be from a non-local.
Don't think of this example as in taking a taxi, or finding a place. Of the assumptions someone intimately familiar with something, assuming others are so too.
That's not true. You need to think and not, on un-thought assumption, not exclude.
I quit smoking last winter right before an ambulance ride to the hospital and heart surgery. (Heart surgery is no fun, thanks for asking.) I smoked and quit and smoked again and quit again many times. The last time I quit (before this time), it lasted over nine years. Then I picked it up again during a very stressful time at work.
Frankly, I miss smoking. I don't miss the health effects, but I miss everything else about it. I can't say I won't smoke again. I've said that too many times to believe it.
And I miss smokers, mostly. They are a friendly bunch.
I remember times scrambling around airports looking for a place to smoke. Most are outside, and many are situated such that you end up having to go back through TSA screening again just to have a butt before getting on a flight. I wish I'd known about this site back then.
You're still sucking down smoke, but at least there's no nicotine dragging you back, and unlike other herbal cigarettes they don't taste like ass. They have a campfire smell to them, so non-smokers don't mind them as much.
Nowadays, even though I consume nicotine via e-cigarettes (mostly indoors), the smoking break is still a lovely social habit, where a great many useful ideas are habitually exchanged with co-workers. I don't particularly miss cigarettes myself, but I will greatly miss smoking breaks when the last holdouts finally quit smoking.
I worked with a guy who used to go out for a "smoke break" every few hours with the others but never smoked. He used to grab a coffee and put the little white plastic stirrer in his mouth so he felt more a part of the group.
Anyway he got to retirement age and at his leaving gathering management presented him with a beautiful silver cigarette case. Turns out the only people who knew he didn't smoke were the smokers. He had never actually ever put a cigarette in his mouth.
I'm not sure why but I really love this memory. He was a great guy, full of funny stories and great life advice.
I remember when I first set foot in China, I smoked a cigarette inside the customs building while waiting for my visa to be processed. Over half the men are smokers in China, it is the norm.
Fast forward a few years and I move to San Francisco. One of my strongest impression was how I was perceived and treated as a smoker. It probably contributed to my decision to quit, so I'm selfishly grateful for it. But man, it is a harsh thing to experience.
I'm not sure it's a good thing overall. There are a lot of smokers who do not want to quit despite the risks. I personally try to be tolerant with them, live and let live.
I thought the article would be about internet addiction and taking "draws" by hitting social media or forums a few times a day, which seems like an apt analogy from my perspective.
The ending was kind of abrupt...no moralizing or drawing of conclusions really from the author. Kind of odd but also refreshing.
I dip now, which is a slightly more exclusive club (there just seems to be fewer of us) but there is subreddit for it - that is just as supportive and friendly as r/cigarettes though - r/DippingTobacco posts are a bit weirder.
I still appreciate the reset from the conversation at whatever social place / gathering I'm at, as well as the switch in context and opportunity to meet others. And generally, smokers don't care whether you're also smoking.
I also take the equivalent of smoking breaks while I'm working. I can vape at my desk for hours, but I like to go outside for a bit to spend 5 minutes away every so often.
It's one of the few positive (and free) habits I got from being a smoker for 22 years, and I'm not giving it up.
I smoked in my tiny 1 bedroom apartment for quite a few years. I Never smoked in the bedroom, but the rest of the apartment was open-season. I'd quit smoking in that apartment about a year before I moved to a new city. Two years later, as I was packing to move to yet another city, I realized there was a box beneath my bed I'd forgotten about. After opening it, I realized it was a forever-unopened box, full of [washed/folded] clothes that I hadn't seen in nearly a decade.
The whole apartment suddenly stunk like a bar at 10am in the nineties. It was awful. The smoke had seeped into the closed bedroom, into the closed closet, into the taped-up box and had completely saturated the clothes. It took 3 days to air out the place, and I was terrified that my landlord would show up and think that I'd smoked in the apartment, which I absolutely never would have.
My [now] wife and I looked at each other completely grossed out, with the realization that we smelled like that at all times for 22 years before we'd quit (much less than that for her).
Up until I was about 35 or so, I went through a 12-pack of 12-ounce cokes in a week. I reached that inevitable point in life where my metabolism was slowing down, and I was gaining weight. I decided to go cold turkey on the cokes, as that was pretty much all of the empty calories I consumed at that time. I figured it would be tough to quit such an ingrained habit, developed over the course of 20 years or so, but it wasn't. I switched to water without incident. My weight gain stopped.
About six months later, I was eating at a restaurant, and decided to order a coke, for old time's sake. I can have one every now and then as a treat, I thought.
Good god. It tasted awful. The most sickly-sweet disgusting thing I'd ever had in my mouth. I couldn't even finish that sip, let alone the entire drink.
That was over ten years ago, and I haven't touched a single drop of any carbonated sickly-sweet beverage since then. I can't believe I ever wanted to drink something so disgusting, for so many years, in such great quantities.
I assume my sense of smell was worse as a smoker, but I don't know that for sure. It feels more like it was a filter. This was what I smelled like, so I couldn't tell when others smelled that way. Much like dog-owners can't smell a dog in the house, but as a non dog-owner, I know the previous owners of my house kept their dogs in the basement. I'll be removing the carpet next spring because of it. Oddly, my wife can't smell it, but it's pungent to me.
And I'd say the writer is correct about the shared persecution or shame. There are subs on reddit devoted to drug-addiction and alcoholism which aren't about recovery, just a place to post and lounge and they're similarly nice.
This is without a doubt one of Steve1989MREInfo's videos. Probably one of the strangest channels I've ever subscribed to, I guess you'd describe him as a connoisseur of the most heavily processed and packaged form of food that humanity has ever created. And of course back your ration would come with a pack of smokes, so he tries them out too.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA/vid...
It's weird how mundane and yet hypnotic his videos are, and judging by his subscriber numbers I'm not the only one who feels that way. Probably something to do with his voice, he'd make a killing doing ASMR or something.
I'm not sure I could enjoy drinking without tobacco. They just go together, at least in my mind.
Don't get me wrong, I'll smoke a White Owl, if offered, but I much prefer better cigars. I'm not brand-specific, and I'll even try different styles and sizes. I don't always buy very expensive cigars but I do splurge sometimes. (I am trying to avoid recommending specifics, I probably shouldn't be suggesting people smoke.)
Speaking of Kirin, I'd say the Kirin pubs/bars are the nicest places for smokers out there. Some of my favourite times were just sitting there eating various plates of meats (partner is vegetarian so I enjoy it when I can), sipping their excellent ichiban shibori stout and smoking while reading the newspaper, hiding from the stinking hot summer weather. I'd say I like the one in Namba, Osaka the best because it's dank like an old English pub and has cool L-shaped tables fixed to the wall so you can stand around smoking, talking and drinking in small groups. Cozy.
But for me as a non smoker it is so often annoying. Going to University and often is somebody walking in front of me smoking and I walking directly into it, with no way to avoid it. Waiting for the train and the smoke blows into my direction. I am glad that vaping is getting more and more established. No annoying smell for me. And yes I may be downvoted into Oblivion. But for non smokers the smell is just disgusting.
So I am still greatful for smoking areas. Because it contains the smoke to certain parts of the building which I can avoid.
Some people are genuinely sensitive to the smell, and will be inevitably replused by it. This isn't that different from people who are especially sensitive to fragrances and get a headache when someone wearing perfume walks by. But I suspect that many more people have simply been conditioned to find the smell disgusting.
It's like beer. Most people don't like beer the first time they try it. Some don't find it disgusting, even at first, but no one likes beer at first taste in the way that people who like beer like beer. But imagine if you were told that beer is disgusting, that it will kill you, and imagine if you were constantly shown pictures of the organs of people dying from beer drinking. Imagine if the people you saw drinking beer were largely delinquents. It would be entirely different, and you would be much less likely to come to appreciate the flavor of beer.
I can admit to mostly liking cigarette smell, but I'm not a fan of carrying around the smoke on my body afterwards. Especially in smaller restaurants where there's just no escape.
It's like people listening to music without headphones. I might like the beats, but other people might not. The easiest thing to do is ask people to think of others
I mean, uh, coffee really helps me get going in the morning.
- I grew up poor, and everyone in the community smoked, kids/teens included, and I'd bet you wouldn't describe us as "clever, creative folks."
> "It seems there are more software developer smokers than the general population. Does the work beget it? obvious filter bias"
- Definitely filter bias going on here.
They're also practiced at sharing and sharing alike, and the social rituals that go with it. And they know man is powerless - the addiction teaches them that. They become Zen masters by accident (the best way).
The ones who insist on a measure of control, eventually quit.
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