
Taking a cigarette break on the smoking internet - allthebest
https://theoutline.com/post/2268/smokers-are-the-last-nice-people-online
======
derefr
Everyone here seems to be sticking on the specific example of smoking, but let
me generalize a bit: people who experience persecution and shaming for an
activity they can't help but take pleasure in, tend to be very friendly—at
least to those with the same "problem", but often to people with other such
"problems" that have put them through the same hardships. ("Problem" in
quotes, because these traits are called that by others, but almost never by
the person in question.)

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.)

~~~
flexie
Smokers have not experienced persecution. Please use this word more carefully
or we dilute its meaning. The shaming of smokers has little in common with
what Jews, homosexuals etc have had to endure. Smoking has not been made
illegal, smokers are not imprisoned, smokers are not attacked and beaten up on
streets. Smokers live in the same communities as non-smokers, are friends with
non-smokers, study with no-smokers, work with non-smokers, date non-smokers,
marry non-smokers.

The inconveniences and at times rudeness experienced by smokers doen't
constitute anything that resembles persecution.

~~~
throwanem
Homosexual smoker here. Can we not do oppression olympics today?

~~~
flexie
Nobody is doing Oppression Olympics. There is zero oppression of smokers, as
in absolutely none.

------
sverige
I'm old enough that I can remember smoking in movies, at the grocery store, at
work (in an office and in elevators!), on buses and in planes. I lived through
the systematic implementation of restrictions on where and when one could
smoke. The gradual increase of shaming comments from random strangers was also
unpleasant.

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.

~~~
tgarma1234
Not going to have the downvotes driving my profile into oblivion. I think
retirement sounds fantastic and it would be great to live to old age enjoying
personal programming projects. THX.

~~~
felipemnoa
If I were you I would pick a near impossible project and work on that. As long
as your mind is healthy you can always work, even if just on your own.

~~~
tgarma1234
Social inclusion is an essential part of life and it's completely closed off
from people who are "old" in programming. I don't think I am the only person
to note that.

~~~
chowells
Why are you looking for social inclusion at work, of all places?

------
keldaris
Before I moved to e-cigarettes (and when I still didn't hate travelling), I
had a memorable experience desperately trying to find a smoking lounge in an
airport in Prague with a friend before our connecting flight took off. Got
lost, stumbled into some desolate employee-only areas and barely made our
flight, but damn did that cigarette feel good.

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.

~~~
bonniemuffin
I wish society had more excuses to take a 10-minute break just to sit down and
talk to random people, without the dying from smoking part.

~~~
satysin
A little off topic but hey it's the weekend so here is a little story about
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.

~~~
bmelton
I'm glad you shared that. The perfect follow-on gift would be a silver coffee
stirrer.

------
olalonde
I quit cold turkey about a year ago after many years of a pack a day.

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.

------
roymurdock
Cool concept - finding a positive/supportive community online centered around
an activity that has been marginalized in real life.

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.

~~~
rishabhparikh
Agreed, very refreshing. Getting tired of the mental gymnastics that comes
with writers scrambling for a point at the end of a piece.

------
Aloha
I was a pack a day smoker - I quit a couple years ago.. well quit isn't the
right word - I transferred my addiction to another form of nicotine
(snus/dipping tobacco, as well as lozenges) - I think the part I miss most of
all is the social aspects of smoking, the enjoying instant comradere with some
people - it made me a better storyteller, a better and more eloquent speaker -
basically helped me to a great extent shave all the rough edges off I had as a
kid - it also gave me an instant social group to hang out with at work too.

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.

~~~
enobrev
I switched to vaping about 4 years ago. Even on nights that I forget to charge
and thus end up with a dead battery, I still go outside and hang with the
smokers every so often.

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.

~~~
Aloha
The hypocrisy of non-smokers still annoys me - the people who complain about
cigarette smoke, but bury themselves in cologne, perfume or aftershave for
example. As it turns out, I have an astoundingly strong sense of smell, or so
I discovered when I quit smoking.

~~~
nkrisc
Great, so you can understand where non-smokers are coming from. All my
neighbors smoke and I can't open my windows in nice weather because then my
house just smells awful and it triggers migraines for my wife. I don't think
they'd appreciate it if I left a bucket of rotting fish on _my_ porch.

~~~
enobrev
I don't like the smell of smokers or perfumes (of any sort), personally. No
migraines or allergies or hypocrisy; I just think they all stink. I don't even
like scented shampoo. My favorite deodorant now has an "Invisible" version
that's completely unscented. I gladly overpay for it - and very much need it
due to my own rotten scent after, say, 12 hours.

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).

~~~
allenbrunson
I have never smoked, but I had a similar revelation once.

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.

~~~
brianwawok
Same but mountain dew. Cannot drink one. Been 8?? Years

------
frgtpsswrdlame
Wew this article made me want to smoke. When they talk about cigarette reviews
it reminded me of a youtube vid I saw a while back where the guy is reviewing
an mre (from korean war maybe?) and smokes an old unfiltered cig and it almost
lays him out.

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.

~~~
paulmd
> When they talk about cigarette reviews it reminded me of a youtube vid I saw
> a while back where the guy is reviewing an mre (from korean war maybe?) and
> smokes an old unfiltered cig and it almost lays him out.

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...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA/videos)

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.

------
seibelj
I used to smoke half a pack a day throughout college, quit cold turkey and it
was a good decision. However, a few times a year I'll have a nice cocktail and
bum a cigarette. Something about them is just so nice with alcohol. Then my
wife complains about my smell, and I cough the next day, and I feel guilty,
and I remember why I quit. But every so often I fall off the wagon

~~~
johnvonneumann
2 weeks in atm, no intention of smoking again. But this anecdote resonates
with me. I think I've finally come to accept that that "Something about them
is just so nice with alcohol" is just your lizard brain screaming for more of
whatever you're on, it's all the same mechanism. It has a certain romanticism
that goes along with it. Sitting down with a beer, having a dart, chilling
out.

~~~
mitchty
What does having a dart mean? Never heard that phrase before.

~~~
johnvonneumann
Dart is an Aussie term, you probably wouldn't hear your standard upper class
snob say it. We have a variety of words for cigarettes. I would very rarely
use the term cigarette, too many syllables.

~~~
mitchty
Cool never heard it before and that explains it, thanks!

------
MarkSweep
This is a little off the main point of the article, but if you want to see
airports that are quite pleasant, check out Tokyo. Haneda and Narita rate 9/10
and 8/10 respectively. They have a smoking places all over the place: by
ground transportation, inside before security, inside after security, and in
some bars. My favorite place to go when I still smoked was to this one bar in
Narita where there would inevitably be some US military people to chat with.

~~~
icanhackit
There's a bar at Narita past security but just before all of the high-end
duty-free stores that I love to sit in because the smokers section, enclosed
in a glass cube, is usually empty and they serve 1 litre steins of Kirin for
not much more than the price at a Lawsons convenience store. Good way to chill
and fill the veins with nicotine before getting on a flight.

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.

------
paule89
I kinda understand what it must feel like to have the urge to just smoke a
cigarette. And also the social circle which together takes a 10 minute break
can be creative.

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.

~~~
adrusi
It is simply not true that the smell is disgusting for nonsmokers in general.
I know too many nonsmokers who _like_ the smell of a cigarette outdoors, and
will try to get closer if they see someone smoking as they walk by to enjoy
the smell. And I'm not a smoker, so it's not selection bias.

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.

~~~
rtpg
In Japan they still allow smoking in restaurants, and it's really common to
complain about the smoke stench that ends up on clothes or your bag
afterwards.

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

~~~
adrusi
Yes, agreed, indoor smoking is annoying. It also may have health consequences
for people who are constantly excited to it, like restaurant staff. It's
reasonable and in my opinion desirable for indoor venues to prohibit smoking.
I like the shell of fresh smoke, not stale.

------
whipoodle
An interesting assumption I've noticed is that someone smoking a cigarette
must be "a smoker", meaning, they are addicted and always buy cigs when they
run out. As if drinking a beer implies you're an alcoholic.

------
dogruck
Reminds me of this chestnut [http://www.businessinsider.com/liberals-can-win-
if-they-stop...](http://www.businessinsider.com/liberals-can-win-if-they-stop-
being-so-annoying-2017-7)

------
reilly3000
Most of the smokers I've met are generally clever, creative folks. It seems
there are more software developer smokers than the general population _. Does
the work beget it?_ obvious filter bias

~~~
paulmd
Nicotine is a stimulant, and coders are known to have affinities for many
other stimulants.

~~~
tradersam
Hurray for cocaine!

I mean, uh, coffee really helps _me_ get going in the morning.

------
rdiddly
It's because a smoker, you can be pretty sure, is someone who knows how to say
"Fuck it." Oh I'm shortening my precious, precious life on this wondrous
planet? Fuck it! They are adherents to not-caring or at least to not-caring-
overmuch. Disciples of doing what you want, not what you're supposed to.

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.

------
dasil003
I think the angle about how they don't get trolled is super interesting. It's
like they have more troll antibodies than the hardest core 4chan user because
they're one group (at least in San Francisco) that is openly reviled and
people actually have the guts to troll in real life.

------
forgotmypw
>Fortinet Secure DNS Service Portal

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