The other day I passed by someone who smelled of cigarette smoke on the street. My two simultaneous, unspoken thoughts were, "You should quit those, they'll kill you and any bystander who breathes that miasma," and, "Takes me back to being a kid at granddad's place. I miss that guy."

Of course, back when my granddad was alive, I wanted him to quit smoking. It burned my eyes and smelled awful, and even as a little kid I knew that smoking kills and that secondhand smoke is also awful for your health.

It's interesting the extent to which most any "vice" can be presented as both "cool" and as pathetic, dangerous, and overall awful, and how these two contradictory perceptions can seemingly coexist. I can't name a single person I've seen smoke in real life who I thought looked cool doing it; but in movies, TV shows, music videos, and the likes, it's a different story. Even there it's not universally positive depictions, but when the depictions are positive, it's obviously propaganda; if not outright backed by a tobacco lobby, then it's at least that self-reproducing sort of propaganda that can persist even fifty-plus years after a socialist revolution, I'm thinking of Yuri Nikulin in the 60s and Viktor Tsoi in the 80s.

In any case, I don't really have context for the Internet pretending smoking is still cool — it isn't something I've personally seen, but I can be a bit insular so I won't deny that it's a thing.