Maryland Junior Ellen [name withheld on request] shares why she started smoking and genuine advice on how to quit!
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Web 2.0 and Cigarettes
Trillions of lines of software "code" and leaves of tobacco folded in pieces of paper that kill people seem to me as the most unlikely allies.
But Web 2.0 and cigarettes are connected, intrinsically, to each other. How? It starts with acknowledgment of the fact that the internet is one of the most powerful tools accessed by billions of human beings today. The transformation of the internet, from one that served very functional and technical purposes in yesterday-decades, to the personalized, social-network-based interactive form (Web 2.0) it has taken today, has made it an integral part of human society. Today, humans spend more time on the internet for leisure, work, information-gathering and entertainment, than ever before.
This extreme dependence has enabled the internet, more so the content floating on the internet, to influence our lives to a great extent. Like it has in most other spheres of human activity, the internet has changed our perception of cigarette smoking.
Coincidence?
The advent of Web 2.0 and the decline of the image of smoking have coincidental correlations. What do I mean by the decline of the image of smoking? Today, for certain, smoking is, across every culture and society, labeled and considered a bad activity to indulge in. In previous decades, a smoker was considered cool and classy (refer to the TV show Madmen which depicts the 1960s tobacco-addict American society.) That has changed; and the internet has had a big role in inducing that change.
But a question begs to be asked: While this transformation of how society perceives smoking has been gradual and a decades'-long phenomenon, the advent of Web 2.0 began only a little more than a decade ago. How can there be a casual correlation between the two?
Social Effects
For all its merits and demerits, Web 2.0 has had one seismic effect: It has given a voice to every human being that can be echoed across every corridor of society. One no longer needs to be a prominent personality to air his or her views via the traditional mediums of newspaper, television and/or book-authorship.
It will be fair to say that, between the 1970s and 1990s, most understood the negative implications of smoking cigarettes, but were not aware of the scale at which everybody else in society understood this fact. Newspaper columns, television debates and the publishing of books have been mostly reserved for the elite, who are usually unable to reflect the true intent and thinking of the common folk at large.
With the prominence of Web 2.0, however, common people have had the chance to air their views. And air their views they have (in the millions and billions): On blogs, Facebook statuses, emails, twitter feeds, youtube videos, vimeos, podcasts, and so on. Now everybody knows that everybody knows cigarette smoking is a bad habit -- there is no uncertainty around this fact. The internet has been largely responsible for creating this worldwide consensus.
For instance look at this heart-wrenching blog created by the family members of a deceased smoker, from St. Petersburg, Russia. WHY QUIT. Without the internet, an Indian national living in the United States of America would have likely never been able to read this Russian story. Honestly, it has gone as far as to inspire me to quit smoking. Without the internet, I'm not sure I could trust traditional media to portray Bryan's story to me halfway across the world (and rightly so, there are logistical and time limitations).
Further, look at this informative video on the kind of treacherous effect that 400 cigarettes can have on the human body.
This is really what the Web has enabled humans to do. A researcher in Japan has produced a video that is now being seen by upwards of 400,000 people in America, Czech Republic and other parts of the world (as noted from the stats page of the video). Similarly, search for simply "cigarette smoking" on Youtube (not even a biased keyword like "bad effects of cigarette smoking") and you will see a barrage of videos made by other fellow human beings from random corners of the world sharing their stories and telling a viewer why and how cigarette smoking is horrible.
Why just restrict to videos and blogs, look at Twitter as well. Twitter, I believe, is the best gauge of the common-man's opinion. So, go to Twitter and just search for the word "cigarettes" and see what common people have to say about the habit of smoking. The likelihood that a seemingly rational person would tweet glorifying the act of cigarette smoking is unsurprisingly very low. There are thousands of tweets, in fact, denouncing cigarette smoking. Look at the tweets I found just 7 minutes ago:
This extreme dependence has enabled the internet, more so the content floating on the internet, to influence our lives to a great extent. Like it has in most other spheres of human activity, the internet has changed our perception of cigarette smoking.
Coincidence?
The advent of Web 2.0 and the decline of the image of smoking have coincidental correlations. What do I mean by the decline of the image of smoking? Today, for certain, smoking is, across every culture and society, labeled and considered a bad activity to indulge in. In previous decades, a smoker was considered cool and classy (refer to the TV show Madmen which depicts the 1960s tobacco-addict American society.) That has changed; and the internet has had a big role in inducing that change.
But a question begs to be asked: While this transformation of how society perceives smoking has been gradual and a decades'-long phenomenon, the advent of Web 2.0 began only a little more than a decade ago. How can there be a casual correlation between the two?
Social Effects
For all its merits and demerits, Web 2.0 has had one seismic effect: It has given a voice to every human being that can be echoed across every corridor of society. One no longer needs to be a prominent personality to air his or her views via the traditional mediums of newspaper, television and/or book-authorship.
It will be fair to say that, between the 1970s and 1990s, most understood the negative implications of smoking cigarettes, but were not aware of the scale at which everybody else in society understood this fact. Newspaper columns, television debates and the publishing of books have been mostly reserved for the elite, who are usually unable to reflect the true intent and thinking of the common folk at large.
With the prominence of Web 2.0, however, common people have had the chance to air their views. And air their views they have (in the millions and billions): On blogs, Facebook statuses, emails, twitter feeds, youtube videos, vimeos, podcasts, and so on. Now everybody knows that everybody knows cigarette smoking is a bad habit -- there is no uncertainty around this fact. The internet has been largely responsible for creating this worldwide consensus.
For instance look at this heart-wrenching blog created by the family members of a deceased smoker, from St. Petersburg, Russia. WHY QUIT. Without the internet, an Indian national living in the United States of America would have likely never been able to read this Russian story. Honestly, it has gone as far as to inspire me to quit smoking. Without the internet, I'm not sure I could trust traditional media to portray Bryan's story to me halfway across the world (and rightly so, there are logistical and time limitations).
Further, look at this informative video on the kind of treacherous effect that 400 cigarettes can have on the human body.
This is really what the Web has enabled humans to do. A researcher in Japan has produced a video that is now being seen by upwards of 400,000 people in America, Czech Republic and other parts of the world (as noted from the stats page of the video). Similarly, search for simply "cigarette smoking" on Youtube (not even a biased keyword like "bad effects of cigarette smoking") and you will see a barrage of videos made by other fellow human beings from random corners of the world sharing their stories and telling a viewer why and how cigarette smoking is horrible.
Why just restrict to videos and blogs, look at Twitter as well. Twitter, I believe, is the best gauge of the common-man's opinion. So, go to Twitter and just search for the word "cigarettes" and see what common people have to say about the habit of smoking. The likelihood that a seemingly rational person would tweet glorifying the act of cigarette smoking is unsurprisingly very low. There are thousands of tweets, in fact, denouncing cigarette smoking. Look at the tweets I found just 7 minutes ago:
And then, of course, there are countless email exchanged between friends and family members that deride smoking. I remember sharing with my parents how I started smoking lightly, off-late, and my entire family gently pounced on me. I received so many encouraging emails from everyone on how and why it is important to quit smoking. And that has really helped. I know that there are folks who care for me and that in itself provides motivation needed to quit the habit.
Yes, trillions of lines of software "code" and leaves of tobacco folded in pieces of paper that kill people are, indeed, the most unlikely allies, but allies nonetheless..
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