The anti-smoking people want me to start smoking. That's the only explanation I can come up with for their relentlessly irritating ad campaigns. They're secretly trying to drive me to tobacco use by being preachy, inaccurate, and over-the-top. And I don't even like to smoke. But I would if it would stop smug 20-something "Truth" people from entering my living room and preening about the evils of big tobacco. I'll take evil corporate guys in suits over smug pseudo-hipsters any day.
It was bad enough when they were just being hysterical in documentary format with their little pieces of man-on-the-street performance art. The damned things were ironic about everything except the fact that they were being as manipulative with facts and statistics as the big, evil tobacco companies they attacked. But all of that paled before the new Syke 9 campaign.
Where to begin? Well, there's the fact that most people stopped saying "syke" in the mid '80s sometime. Well, except for my sister. And then they did weeks of ads where they didn't even hint that this is about cigarettes, instead giving us an energy drink that advertises like Axe body spray. If it weren't for the obvious allusions to cigarette smokng in later ads, I'd be convinced that they were trying to warn young men about the dangers of overusing cheap cologne. And a worthy cause that would be.
And all of this in a pathetic effort to make it seem like smoking isn't cool and opposing smoking is. Nice try guys, but you should have had a nice long chat with the anti-drug folks before sinking millions into an ad campaign the primary purpose of which is apparently to get me so annoyed that I throw something at my flat screen TV, permanently damage it, and become so depressed that I skip right past tobacco and start on heroin. It is impossible to make cigarette smoking or drug use appear uncool via commercials, cartoons, dramatic school presentations, or short films. The Force is too strong in them to be affected by the lameness that is the PSA. The only way to really pierce their cool aura is to grab a 43 year-old meth head, complete with missing teeth and oozy complexion, and have her introduce herself to children individually. (While chain smoking Marlboro Reds, of course.) Don't let her talk though--other than mentioning how much she loves getting high and smoking cigarettes. You don't want her sharing about the time she did lines with Keith Richards and undermining the whole project.
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