We all know the situation. At a certain point in their life a person gets so lonely and desperate that they have to make a deal with the devil.
They get this insatiable urge to smoke cigarettes.
They absolutely know it's bad for their health,
they just wanna try it out... and maybe get to talk to that cute boy/girl that happens to be a smoker.
At the beginning smoking feels like a superpower. You get new friends, and can stick it up to the old boring ones with your new, terrific body-odor. You really feel like a part of something bigger than you. Something that always has a new task for your bored mind. Just smoke another.
Time goes by and you notice you've become ADDICTED. Smoking is now a solid part of your identity. you could stop, but you feel like even your parents won't recognize you afterwards. It took such a long time to convince them that this was something you wanted to do in the first place. All that effort for nothing? Not fucking likely!
So now you are trapped. Mistakes of yesterday have made you a just another fool in the losing end of the tobacco industry. You just don't possess the phoenix-like quality to take your life under control. So many friends suffer from the same problem that leaving them behind seems so cold you frighten yourself for even considering the possibility.
This is the dead end.
You won't change.
You won't escape.
There's one last thing you can do:
Try blowing instead of sucking.
You forgot to mention how cool smoking looks.
Shit, should I edit it in?
I would.
I took up a vaporizer. Not only do I miss the Great Morning Loogie (tm), but I also look like, 80 times the dork doing it. A truly 1337 way to alienate everyone. I think I could quit this without as many problems, I just, love my nicotine. All that said, it is important to remind people that the long-term effects haven't really been tested for and could be eleventy-billion times worse than merely sucking on a cancer tube (not to mention it could blow up in your face, which only happens with cigarrettes when your friends pack a black cat in them). You may grow 300 feet, sprout tentacles, and acquire an annoying compulsion to bellow "WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?!", we simply DO NOT KNOW AT THIS POINT IN TIME.
Needless to say, like anything enjoyable it's likely bad for you and will whisk you away to an early grave.
EDIT: Fixed a typo where "Loogie" was spelled "Lookie"
Not sure what the point of this is.
I'm sure it has a point, mind you, I just can't identify it.
Could also be I feel a little targeted by it as someone who does smoke. I'm struggling to quit now, but even if I wasn't I don't see myself reflected in your post really, so I'm not sure that's what it is.
Might also be whatever horrible plague has taken up residence in my gut today.
Could you give me the stupid person breakdown?
Quote from: nullified on May 02, 2019, 10:22:43 PM
Not sure what the point of this is.
I'm sure it has a point, mind you, I just can't identify it.
Could also be I feel a little targeted by it as someone who does smoke. I'm struggling to quit now, but even if I wasn't I don't see myself reflected in your post really, so I'm not sure that's what it is.
Might also be whatever horrible plague has taken up residence in my gut today.
Could you give me the stupid person breakdown?
Something something about generalizing that smokers smoke purely because of peer pressure and identity.
But tbh, i smoke as a really bad way to regulate my mood, cause you know, being overworked and having a bad life, i have to
maintain in one way or another, and i cant afford other methods.
Don't get me wrong, I smoke too and enjoy it very much. The bit was supposed to be blatantly allegorical.
I just had a random a-ha moment today. I realized that if I blow into the cigarette, I'd look close to exactly like I was smoking, I'd felt there was something universal and horrifying about that.
Like imagine if all your crack addict friends just pretended to be using crack to trick you into trying the real shit, so you needed to come up with some fake crack really fast and join the con just to survive.
There's something similar about identity.
Or there may not be, but thought about that bothers me anyway.
edit:It's like everyone who actually has taken in some arbitrary identity, and actually seriously believe in it, lack the character to transmit the identity forwards. It's the moment when they start blowing into the cigarette, Not taking themselves and their cause seriously, that they gain the ability to spread it. The process has made them look like a thing, but them not believing they are a thing, gives them a personality, the personality lures uninitiated to think they could gain one too by These 5 Simple Tricks. No need to add most tend to get lost in the way.
I think blowing through a crack pipe is a good way to get shivved, just sayin'.
Quote from: Fujikoma on May 02, 2019, 11:18:45 PM
I think blowing through a crack pipe is a good way to get shivved, just sayin'.
That's why you have this specially made plastic back in your throat, that catches the vapor and let's it to crystallize again, so you can sell it again.
:lulz: :lulz: :lulz:
Like your metaphors are so bad, but i think i know what youre getting at.
What comes to mind is how cults and pyramid schemes if you invest enough of your life and money they let you in on the joke... thats basically what transitioning from a coaching client to a coaching practitioner looks like too... Scientology, Herbalife, coaching, anything with a guru.
I understood there had to be more to it, but it came off immediately as usual “fuckin smokers” shit I could pick up anywhere else if I so chose. Decided to ask instead of shitting all over the place.
I think the metaphor isn’t very good for easy communication is the problem: it’s such a personal one that it demands more explanation. That last line isn’t the end, it’s the middle of a piece twice the size, you just haven’t written the rest yet.
Edit: typo fixed
Quote from: The Johnny on May 02, 2019, 11:45:27 PM
:lulz: :lulz: :lulz:
Like your metaphors are so bad, but i think i know what youre getting at.
What comes to mind is how cults and pyramid schemes if you invest enough of your life and money they let you in on the joke... thats basically what transitioning from a coaching client to a coaching practitioner looks like too... Scientology, Herbalife, coaching, anything with a guru.
Forgot to reply to this also:
I did some research into MLMs not too long ago, and it's crazy how different the responses are if they don't think you know the score and when you prove that you do.
In Missouri, I was job hunting and this Vector Marketing place contacts me. I do very cursory research into them, like first google result cursory, and say sure, I'm interested. They send me this questionnaire and it mentions "direct sales" and alarm bells ring. I call them back and say no thanks. They start hounding me aggressively, then I drop "not interested in working for an MLM" and the calls miraculously stop.
Being on the inside is definitely sort of a special thing. Modern mystery cults: they have the answers, and so can you, with just 3 small payments of $9.95
(per month). Act now and get your first mystery
(just) before the end of the year!
I'm so sorry for offending your cult.
Jokes aside, these were my genuine experiences with nicotine addiction (mostly). What I find interesting is that recently i proved myself I physically have the power to stop, by going cold turkey for a month or so, but for some reason, I still don't want to. Smoking is okay, and I while I get the value of it, it still strikes me as peculiar how the whole social concept of smoking cigarettes makes me want to fuck up my lungs. I mean, it isn't even fun anymore after I got some of the tar out. It fucking hurts. I still keep going.
It clearly isn't the nicotine that keeps me doing that, but the cult(ure) around that.
I think that its a fringe case when the initiated get in on the joke... like, its counterproductive to the whole if too many of them crossover, the proportion of the exploited at some point makes it so that its not profitable or worth the time. Has to be less than 10% i would imagine.
Discordian texts play around with some Zen master/student metaphors that sort of have echoes of this within them... and while the student is gullible just as any low rank cultist, the hypothetical Zen master is portrayed as his ultimate goal to actually teach or benefit the student, while all cults are just there to exploit people.
Anyhow, I know you didnt ask but, something feels off about this thread... i dont know if its like, low effort, or the tone of the discussion... and i dont say it to discourage you, but your ideas dont come out clearly... like nullified and me seem to be free jazzing with what we associate rather than what it actually is...
If it's the social aspect, some twelve-step programs I've attended recommend separating yourself from the people who indulge in the habit... I mean, if you really WANT to quit. If you don't want to then that's also fine from my perspective, though nobody asked for my perspective.
That's the thing, in here at least the whole thing is so stigmatized that it creates a convenient us and them mentality.
For me it creates a perfect example for cult behavior. People refusing to embrace the metaphor just kinda make it even more fitting.
Don't worry, I never made any sense.
No, to me you make perfect sense, I'm not one of "them"... but I can tell you it's gross and it smells like a decomposing ass-monkey. It's a bad habit, and one we indulge in the absence of a better one.
Every "better" habit offered feels like even more cultish. For example going to a gym: "sacrifice your calories to us and we'll make you look more appetizing to cannibals". No thank you.
There's same sense of sliminess emitting from every "viable" activity directed from the above. It isn't the activities themselves, but the culture surrounding them. The parasitic identity that latches onto you as you get into them.
Only things you could do to stay as a person and not just a walking advertisement for some thing or idea is to do only the stuff "you" want, but "you" are biased from being exposed to all the shit from the day one.
Some days I find things to do that I've never done before and never seen or heard anyone to do. Then for a moment I feel like someone special. But that never sticks, my "identity" becomes afraid of seeming weird to other people, and sheds all the uncanny things as they emerge.
You seem to have forgotten that Black Sheep Are Still Sheep. You’re using “what they tell you” to define your value system.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with valuing originality, or even mere novelty. But if you value it because You Never Had Anyone Tell You To Do It...
Consider: if we didn’t have Dark Enlightenment dumbasses like Land and Moldbug shitting everywhere and begging people to join their little cults, they aren’t exactly hard beliefs to stumble upon but they are hard ones to entertain for any length of time.
If you only value “useful” originality, which isn’t a trivial modification, nor an unfair one, you have to allow that without having your work sanity checked or tested, it’s impossible for any truly original concept to be sorted into “useful” and “useless” categories.
And unfortunately, if you happen to find a useless one brings you things monkeys CRAVE, you could be the next Jim Jones by the time you realize there’s no actual utility in the idea. Whoops, you fucked up.
You have forgotten that the counterculture is still moving parallel to the mainstream, just OPPOSITE. Whatever you value here at depth, you’re mistaking it for “whatever everyone else ISN’T doing” instead of building your own identity the way you want it to be, from whatever parts appeal to you.
And then, when you consider the options available to them, you end up weighting “dumb, self destructive idea” near equivalent to “dumb but at least harmless and actually probably helpful idea” because one is mainstreamed, has this cult of identity battened to it like a leech, and the other does not.
That’s a classic case of bad priorities. If everyone says “don’t drink magic methyl” and you do it anyway, you will win a Darwin Award. If you weight drinking magic methyl and drinking water close to each other just because water is mainstream and magic methyl is not, you deserve to win a Darwin Award.
Stop paying attention to “everyone else” and start focusing on what you want. And if what you want is to be completely unique and individual, remember that millions have done the opposite of what the mainstream told them to do. Counterculture predates you, probably predates Western civilization. The equivalents of goths and hippies probably lived in Uruk, rolling their eyes at each other and trying to capture the sheeple’s attention.
If you really, really want to be completely unique and original, though... well. Good luck. Not “nothing original under the sun” good luck, but “the majority of original actions will always be actions of unthinkable stupidity, like kissing a running sawblade or something”.
I’m not a conservative individual at all, but it is an unarguable truth that most new and innovative ideas one can ever have will be dismissed by the person to come up with them IMMEDIATELY on account of the actor would no longer be able to hear their friends mocking them for doing such a stupid thing. Source: your intrusive fucking thoughts.