Resolved: The Health Effects of Smoking are Outweighed by How Cool They Make You Look

Written September 2007

Smoking doesn’t make you look cool. It makes you look like a wimp.

I remember in high school, when I was walking home from the bus, I’d pass the Chick Fil’A, and the K Mart, and see the employees on their breaks, They were smoking. They huddled together, bent over, and, by the way they pursed their lips, they resembled little mice nibbling on lunch.

Little fucking mice.

Smoking is equivalent to thumb-sucking. It’s nibbling on a paper, ashy stick. When a person smokes, he lets everybody know how nervous and agitated he is. You never see any body smoke when they were already comfortable, only when they need some sort of comfort.

Now, some of you may bring up famous smokers.
Such as journalist Oriana Fallaci, prime-minister Winston Churchill, actress Audrey Hepburn, writer Oscar Wilde, and everybody’s favorite body-builder-turned-actor-turned-governor: Arnold Swartzennegger. These are very, cool, talented people who have been seem smoking many times. It seems, from those instances of them smoking, that the act can be considered cool.
But it isn’t smoking that made those people cool. Those people were already cool. They already made great accomplishments.

Cool people—truly awesome people—do what they have to do when they have to do it. They make eye contact. They have goals, and attempt to fulfill those goals despite opposition. When faced with opposition, cool people grab their balls, and say, "bring it, fuckers."

So when cool people are seen smoking, observers begin to see smoking as cool. And that was where the association began, the situation that created the myth.