Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/12/20/spark-a-conversation-with-thes.html
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Stop promoting smoking. This is seriously unethical.
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For decades big tobacco marketed cigarettes as a social ice breaker. What better way to grow profits than to appeal to the socially disenfranchised with an addictive product?!
Your post, and the tone of writing, is contributing to their work. Shame on you.
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Kerosene lighters make the cigarette taste like ass anyway.
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FWIW, none of the BB contributors wrote the post. It’s all AI-piped in from Stack Social to try and fit our demographic automagically.
Fully automated “luxury” space capitalism.
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one… you really think this is aimed to tobacco users?
two… a good lighter is useful for many other things than that. I don’t smoke tobacco or weed but I could use something better than a bic disposable.
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What is a kerosene lighter? I’ve heard of zippos, which you fill with zippo fuel, white gas, camp fuel, or naptha. If you put kerosene or lamp oil them, they don’t work very well and leave an oily residue on your clothes.
Is anyone buying kerosene to put in these like the name suggests. Or is it a gimmick to make it sound old timey and perhaps avoid trademark names like zippo?d
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Oh, please, no. Just, no. My least favorite “steampunk” trope is the "let’s glue gears on it and call it ‘steampunk’ " trope. Gluing a non-functional surplus watch movement on these lighters is annoying and silly. It takes the lighters from being retro into being retro BS.
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I do have to wonder how different the $100 $75 lighter in BBS is from this Chinese wholesale. Is the Chinese model a cheap knock off? Or is TSHOMX importing inexpensive lighters, wrapping some leather around them and selling them as “luxury lighters” for a 20x mark up? 
Curiously, the behind the scenes manufacturing images and video on Stack Social’s sales page and the seller’s website don’t show any “hand forging” of lighters. Instead they seem to be showing unrelated stock footage of watchmaking and leather stitching - the only images of the lighters in the video are still pictures of fully assembled lighters. The company’s website was first registered less than 4 months ago.
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What’s with this sudden promotion of smoking-related products? Has it escaped your notice that smoking kills? As if “pipes” weren’t enough, we are now inflicted by a lighters promotion. Do you guys over the other side of the pond not have any laws relating to this sort of thing? Really can’t believe this is happening from Boing and is totally unethical. Kindly desist ASAP.
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All smoke is bad. Lungs don’t discriminate.
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TSHOMX’s website touts hand brass carving as a feature of its luxury lighters, showing an image of a skilled craftsperson deep carving a watch case.
Looking at their “Brass Carved Lift Arm Kerosene Lighter” I have to say I’m not seeing any fine brass carving on the lighter, or any carving whatsoever. All I see is what appears to be a stamped sheet metal lighter with some leather and a scratched up watch movement glued to it. The $100 TSHOMX “luxury lighter” bears a striking resemblance to this inexpensive Chinese wholesale lighter.
It’s almost as if Stack Social is an utterly untrustworthy company that needs to lean heavily on the trustworthiness of the brands of its affiliate websites to help it rip people off.
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Late stage BoingBoing?
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On the plus side, these won’t be as sensitive to cold as butane lighters. So no need to tuck it into your armpit, or other warm bodily cavity to thaw it out.
Seriously? Enough with the lecturing already!
As someone else pointed out above, there’s a shitload of things a lighter is useful for, lighting cigs is only one.
I’ve never smoked in my life, well, once, when my mate up the road nicked some of his dads fags and we went to the woods and lit up.
It only took a few puffs to show me it was disgusting, never touched a cigarette after that.
I currently have two brass Zippos in leather cases that I made for them, they get used for lighting candles and lighting my garden incinerator.
No matter the subject, there’s always someone who’ll start waving a disapproving finger. #rollseyes
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People getting bent out of shape because smoking exists is cute. Yes, we get it, you don’t have any bad habits that an unscrupulous marketing company could take advantage of. Bravo.
Goofy retro nonsense I think. Ronsonol lighter fluid is just low-flashpoint naptha. Kerosene would stink and smoke, white gas might explode.
#rollsthemback
I’ll stick with my Dunhill.
