You maybe a typical smoker who actually tries to be considerate. Perhaps I just notice the obnoxious ones who don’t seem to give a damn.
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What about obese people? Or women who outwardly express their sexuality? Transgendered people? They are regularly and forcefully shamed. I don’t think they have done anything wrong, but there’s no question in my mind that they feel shame.
Edited to add that the they are feeling shamed by others and may or may not internalize that shame.
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It depends on where and how they do it. I am pretty sure a billboard isn’t harmed by someone smoking near it. If anything, I consider the eye-sore of billboards to be a longer-range nuisance. Besides, this ad campaign makes it clear that their goal is to shame people for self-harm. Which is just idiocy. If they’re smoking enough to do long-term systemic damage (as opposed to the occasional cigarette), then they already know that, and this billboard only serves to make a public spectacle out of them.
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Actually…there is quite a lot of evidence that schizophrenics [or whatever they are calling it these days, haven’t been keeping up with the literature for a while] often self-medicate with nicotine, which seems to relieve the symptoms (it does mess with your synapses, after all).
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I think that’s absolutely right. You naturally wouldn’t notice the courteous smokers.
It’s wrong that people try to shame them. But plenty of people don’t predicate their sense of self-worth on the opinions of busybodies. Like I said, we as a society should collectively verbally disembowel privileged wastes-of-skin who think they have a right to stick their fingers in other people’s personal lives, and otherwise ignore what they have to say. They’re the contemptible ones, and they’re the one’s who should be treated with contempt. They can’t tale the moral high ground simply by asserting it. Ethics don’t work like that.
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Could they set it for industrial-strength perfumes and “deodorants” too?
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That should help with the interpretation of pretty much anything I post on BBBBS these days. Yeah, I do think nicotine is probably a means of self medication for many schizophrenics.
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Er no, I don’t think so. The person in the billboard is reacting to smoke, not smoking himself.
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Transcript from the video:
“Hi. We’re the Swedish Pharmacy Hjärtat. Our mission is to help you live a longer and healthier life. That’s why I’m here. To help you get new, healthier habits just in time for the new year.”
I agree they do a poor job of it, but that’s their stated objective in their own words. Though as a business, their central objective is naturally to sell products that nominally help addicts quit.
Realistically, the buses that are stopping at this bus stop are doing far more harm to the lungs of passersby and commuters than a few seconds of exposure to diffuse second-hand smoke. And anyone living in the city is constantly exposed to this low-quality air, not just from ubiquitous motor vehicles but also from ubiquitous furnaces, boilers, and water heaters as well as industrial processes.
The harm done by second hand smoke (statistically about nil for anyone who’s not a server somewhere that allows smoking) has been consistently exaggerated as part of anti-smoking campaigns as part of an attempt to shame smokers for harm they’re not even actually causing by any reasonable measure.
Anyone citing the harm done by second hand smoke as the primary justification for shaming tactics like this billboard is fooling themselves.
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I think you are overestimating the average person’s abiliy to ignore the opinions of busybodies. Otherwise things like gender norms and stereotypes would not be cramping us all into the tiny boxes that they do.
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Man, I don’t smoke but I am pretty sure if I did I’d give a hearty “fuck you” to that sign…
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They should put one of these in China
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I’m thinking I didn’t do a very good job explaining my position.
I agree that people are saddled with complexes. What I mean is that they shouldn’t be. And yes, I hear the rebuttal that what should be is immaterial and what is is all that matters. But we, as a society, can change this. But to do so we have to stop tolerating the people who lay false claim to the moral high ground. Lots of people know it’s wrong. Lot’s of people understand that ethically there’s no rationale for treating people as lesser human beings for having different lifestyles, body-types, sexual orientations, ect… But so often the busybodies are treated with the respect they refuse to show others. That needs to stop. It’s got to made socially costly for them to treat people that way. Which means condemnation, contempt, push-back and no quarter given to their moral house of cards. If we start going after them, they’ll think twice before preying on people. The simple fact is that they’re in the wrong. The only reason they win is because society lets them go unchallenged.
So yes, someone who’s feeling of self-worth is deflated by prejudice is having a human reaction. But the answer is to tell them they’re not worth less just because assholes tell them they are, and also to go after the assholes and put them in the virtual stockades because they’re the ones who are actually causing problems. And yes, a pharmacy making a spectacle out of people for smoke near a billboard is a very very minor example of this sort of bad behavior.
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Did someone already ask if/how it differentiates smoking vs non-smoking pedestrians? If it does, that’s pretty cool on its own.
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As a former smoker (9 years quit), I’m not sure how I feel about this…
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This is still less humiliating than the Beano® ad.
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Born again Christians and smoking Nazis - cut from the same cloth.
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So true. And smoking Nazis were among the very worst Nazis.
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Don’t forget living with a smoker. Those old studies were about people that shared a space like an office or a house with a smoker.
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