Terms Which Have Disappeared

[Inkstainedwretch]

I smoked off-and-on for almost 25 years before quitting for good in the late 80s. When I was growing up smoking was a rite of passage. Your elders rarely told you smoking was unhealthy, they told you "You aren't old enough to smoke." That made it even more attractive. Every teenager wants to be grown up.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^
You got a few years on me, but just a few.

I and many of my contemporaries saw smoking as a rite as well, and something of an identifier. We thought it was cool, and it was among the things that set us apart from the squares. (Among my friends and associates in my teen and early adult years, "hip" counted for everything. The marketers knew how to appeal to that sentiment. They played us like fiddles.)

 

[LizzieMaine]

I *was* a square, in the cultural sense, and defiantly proud of it. That was what helped me get wise to the Boys at a very early age -- I knew they were trying to sell me something that didn't interest me at all. The concept of "cool" as a consumer commodity is one of the most sinister marketing ploys of all time -- and it's just as counterrevolutionary now as it was then.

 

[tonyb]

There's a large and lucrative hustle happening over on the L7 side as well. Many hold themselves up as the antithesis of all that devil music and moral decay of the hipper quarters. You know, all that evil licentiousness.

Appealing to that sentiment serves agendas not necessarily apparent to the target audience. It's quite the sleight of hand, that getting people to do one's bidding without them even knowing it.

 

[Paisley]

You're drinking what they're selling!

 

[tonyb]

^^^^
Received wisdom has it that advertising is most effectively aimed at youngsters. I don't accept that entirely on faith, and if there's anything other than faith to substantiate that notion, I've yet to see it.

Still, intuition says there's something to it. Young people are forging identities, and it doesn't seem such a stretch to suppose that leaves them more susceptible to all sorts of influences.

 

[Zombie_61]

Regarding cigarettes and their promotion by The Boys From Marketing, I had a conversation one day with one of my nephews when the anti-smoking campaigns were becoming more prevalent here in California and he made a comment that I thought was a rather interesting perspective on the matter: "The whole time I was growing up they were shoving these things down my throat with their advertising, and now suddenly I'm the bad guy?"

 

[Stearmen]

I think that might be Hollywood shorthand for showing the audience that the character who does such an act is an arrogant jackass.

Cigarette smoking was never as universal as people remember it -- it peaked at just under 50 percent of the adult US population in 1965. But among certain demographic groups it was much higher. Men who served in either World War I or World War II were consistently more likely to be smokers than any other segment of the population, and this was largely the result of cigarettes being issued as part of the regular ration. Big Tobacco went out of its way to ensure that this was the case -- millions of men entered the military as non-smokers and emerged as tobacco addicts, and they formed the bulk of the industry's customer base for much of the 20th Century.

Big Tobacco was careful to look after these customers even after they got out of the service. In the 1950s and 1960s it was very common for tobacco companies that sponsored baseball broadcasts to award cartons of cigarettes to veterans hospitals for every home-team home run hit. "That's a home run for Hodges -- and another ten thousand Luckies to the VA hospital on Staten Island!"

Clear up through the 70s, it was common to be told in the service, "you can either stay here and police the barracks, or go out and have a smoke!" What's an 18 year old going to do? I understand smoking is up with young women, hope I'm wrong!

 

[tonyb]

As it pertains to the "terms which have disappeared" topic of this thread (it all comes back around eventually) ...

I recall cigarettes being referred to as "squares." I even used the term that way myself, without giving much thought to its etymology. I must have been nearly 30 when a then-acquaintance, on hearing me use the word in that way, said he suspected it came from the jazz scene, used to distinguish tobacco cigarettes, which is what the squares smoked, from the reefers, which they didn't.

By the time it came into my working lexicon the campaign against cigarettes was, if not robust, at least getting there. Health warnings were on cigarette packs by then, and the habit was becoming increasingly looked down upon, especially by squares.

 

[Fading Fast]

My employer doesn't allow smoking anywhere in their building or on their grounds. Partly, I think, it's because they make sports-related gear, partly because it probably helps keep health insurance premiums lower, and partly because the factory is so full of lint that fire is a serious hazard.

In Denver, it was odd to see smoking banned most places and pot for sale.

NYC is still struggling with how to control smoking in front of office buildings as that is where the remaining smokers go when they run out to get a smoke in. The result is the front of many office buildings are filled with smoke and smokers. Over the last several years, some office buildings have put up signs that say no smoking out front and some have even gone so far as to create an outdoor smoking area (away from the entrance) to encourage the smokers to stay away from the front.

One thing I'll say for the Boys From Marketing, their anti-smoking commercials are, IMHO, very good. I don't even smoke and they scare the bejesus out of me. I am not, in any way, defending TBFM, just pointing out that now that they have - by force - brought their impressive skills of emotional manipulation to the anti-smoking campaign, they have done it very well.

Stearmen, I, too, have read that smoking rates have increased amongst young women and, if NYC is any indication, I'd believe it. My completely anecdotal - non-scientific - survey is that a lot of young women smoke - more than young men for sure. I've been told they do it (1) to stay thin as it suppresses their appetite and (2) because some subset of the young set see it as cool, anti-establishment, etc. Whatever the reason, it's a shame as we all know the long-term results.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A *lot* of otherwise-intelligent kids are taking up the habit around here. I see them sitting on the sidewalk benches downtown holding their cigarettes in an extremely self-conscious way. It's that damnable "I'm Cool" thing again. Suckers.

 

[Trenchfriend]

As in all times, smoking teenage kids think, that they are looking cool and relaxed, but don't comprehend, that this affected behaviour looks just "vain" to us adults.

 

[Fading Fast]

A *lot* of otherwise-intelligent kids are taking up the habit around here. I see them sitting on the sidewalk benches downtown holding their cigarettes in an extremely self-conscious way. It's that damnable "I'm Cool" thing again. Suckers.

Unless TBFM are somehow subliminally doing it, these kids are smoking and thinking it's cool despite TBFM efforts.

 

[Paisley]

To me, it seems really un-cool to need something as discretionary as a cigarette. How often do smokers say they're dying for a cigarette and then (in certain places) trudge out to the social equivalent of Siberia to have one. So cool. Or skimping on this, that or the other thing for your family, but always finding money for smokes? Very classy.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Unless TBFM are somehow subliminally doing it, these kids are smoking and thinking it's cool despite TBFM efforts.

It's all part of the "culture of cool," the idea that doing such things somehow tells The Man where to get off. That culture is as heavily marketed and promoted commercially as anything else, in the guise of being "alternative culture." The Boys work both sides of the street, with no regard for contradiction.

You tell The Man where to get off by actually standing up and telling The Man where to get off. You accomplish absolutely no rebellion of any value sitting on your rear end inhaling poisonous stinking filth.

 

[Fading Fast]

To me, it seems really un-cool to need something as discretionary as a cigarette. How often do smokers say they're dying for a cigarette and then (in certain places) trudge out to the social equivalent of Siberia to have one. So cool. Or skimping on this, that or the other thing for your family, but always finding money for smokes? Very classy.

All valid, rational points that a world-weary adult or very mature young person would get; but the young people smoking today are not looking at the long-term picture, etc., just making a short-term feels good / looks cool decision. Very hard to change that behavior.

 

[Paisley]

One thing that really struck me as a kid, although I didn't see the argument used much, was how much a nicotine habit cost. According to this site, the lifetime cost is around $200,000. The book The Milionaire Next Door calculates that if a couple of a prior generation had invested their cigarette money in tobacco stocks, they'd have been millionaires. Or as James Powers here put it, tobacco looks a lot better on your balance sheet than in your lungs.

Having money always seemed cool to me.

 

[tonyb]

It's a human tendency to believe the laws of nature apply to everyone except oneself. Many of us here can remember when otherwise intelligent people poo-pooed the notion that smoking would have any ill effects on them individually. (Such people still exist, but the are relatively few and are rarely taken seriously.)

I'm confident that we'll look back on the present era and find numerous examples of willful ignorance. People don't wish to accept the best evidence when it might cost them something -- their money, their favorite habits, their most preciously held beliefs.

Magical thinkers? Yup, you bet we are.

 

[Fading Fast]

One thing that really struck me as a kid, although I didn't see the argument used much, was how much a nicotine habit cost. According to this site, the lifetime cost is around $200,000. The book The Milionaire Next Door calculates that if a couple of a prior generation had invested their cigarette money in tobacco stocks, they'd have been millionaires. Or as James Powers here put it, tobacco looks a lot better on your balance sheet than in your lungs.

Having money always seemed cool to me.

As a kid and then young man, having watched my grandmother and, only 14 years later, my father die from smoking-related cancers, I hated and feared smoking from a young age. Also, the smell and filth associated with it never appealed to me. The whole "cool" thing passed me by completely as only a small clique of kids smoked and I never thought they were cool.

 

[Paisley]

When my uncle came back from the army with a cigarette habit, my dad observed he (my uncle) wasn't able to keep up with him while hiking. My uncle ditched the cigarettes and my dad, an active, outdoorsy guy's guy, decided smoking wasn't for him.