Smoking may not BE cool, but it sure as hell LOOKS cool.
Smoking LOOKS cool precisely because it is dangerous. All of the TV and film "rebels" smoke precisely because a kid who smoked was a sign of a bad kid. And bad=cool.
Take Solid Snake. He smokes and everyone thinks that he is cool. But which would be MORE cool? Solid Snake smoking, or Solid Snake delivering a kid-friendly message about how smoking is bad? The answer is the former. The formal makes him look cool, while the latter would make him look like a hypocrite. If Solid Snake or James Bond were to walk up to you TODAY, and tell you not to smoke, you'd probably say "mind your own business, dude. I'll smoke if I want to smoke. At least I'm not MURDERING PEOPLE like you."
Only you probably wouldn't actually SAY that out of fear that they'll get angry and murder you. But you'd sure as hell be THINKING it.
And that's why smoking looks cool. Because badasses are bad. And smoking is bad. So when badasses smoke, it just supports their character traits and amplifies their badness. And to be fair, we only like Solid Snake because he is cool, and he is only cool because he is bad. So smoking makes him look more cool.
If anything, the ongoing trend against smoking has actually made smoking look MORE cool. Back in the 50s, everyone was smoking. It was hard to pick up a cigarette and look like a badass, because simply everyone was doing it. Meanwhile, today, smoking actually DOES go against everything that "civilized society" stands for, and there's a whole list of sources documenting how smoking even one cigarette will make your chest implode. So today more than ever, a smoker signifies a rebellious badass "I am too cool for warning labels or authority, I do whatever the hell I want to" kind of mentality. And that actually does LOOK like a sign of badassedness. Which is at the very least fairly often used as an indicator of coolness.
So yeah, at least OFTEN, smoking actually does LOOK cool. If anything, now it looks cooler than it EVER did (except for the people who are "squares"). That certainly doesn't mean that smoking IS cool. But just like robbing banks or assassinating people after quoting biblical verses, the APPARENT coolness of smoking is inversely proportional to its ACTUAL coolness. Smoking, robbing banks, and getting paid money to assassinate people are NOT cool. That's why you're not going to do those things. But those things signal someone who just does what they want without giving a flying ****, and THAT is cool because it is bad. Smoking is like when Evel Knievel used to do those dumbass flat-out stupid stunts. People LOVED watching that ****. Ask people to imitate it, they'll say "hell no, I'm not an idiot!" But they sure loved watching it, because it looked cool as hell and they're sure as hell not gonna do that stuff themselves. Bottom line is that it's still "danger". And danger looks "cool". That's why so many people think that Bear Grylls and Les Stroud are cool, and why so many people used to think that Steve Irwin was cool.
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