CASAA Call to Action: I’m old enough to remember the 60’s. Vividly. Although I never inhaled, š I embraced the “Flower Child” and “Hippie” image. Long hair, crazy crazy clothes, and all the other accruement’s of the counter culture movement of the 60’s. This faze of my life eventually passed and some of my thoughts have changed. In other cases, sometimes my current age hinders my ability to remember what I was like in the 60s. Thankfully, I found a very insightful Blog post on ECF titled Where is our publicist? Written by The Ocelot, whose ECF avatar (with permission) is used in this post.
The main point of this Blog post is that the image of Vapers is not accurately portrayed by the media. Ā All we see are huge clouds and in some cases really “snarky” looking people. Of course, I strongly suggest you read this Blog post but just in case you decide not to, try this image search in Google for vapers. As the Blog post points out, where are the adults and a cross section of ages who do not blow huge clouds and look like everyday people? Make no mistake that the media in all forms is consciously looking for “theatrical” images to use. They make more money and attrack more views with images that portray only one segment of the vaping culture. Go ahead and look. It’s always the same images, huge clouds or large cloudsĀ from a vaper that looks nothing like a large segment of the vaping culture. Some vendors also love to promote this segment of the vaping culture. You can see it all around you, cloud competitions, wide bore drip tips which contain the word “Competition” in the name, 150 watt mods with dual coils using sub sub ohm builds. In case you didn’t notice, these kinds of vendor actions lead to more juice sales and Mod sales.Ā In some cases, you can also find “regulators” who perform the same twisted and deplorable portrayal of vapers.
Before you send me hate mail, let me clearly state my own long standing positions on all of the issues raised in this article and in the Blog post:
1. As long as you stay off of cigarettes or reduce your use via dual usage, that’s all I care about. I’m happy for you, even though I may not like your clouds.
2. How you choose to dress is your business and not mine. I’ve had great conversations and a few vaping buddy’s who have numerous tats, blow huge clouds, vape at 60 watts with sub ohm builds,Ā and sometimes act very very snarky. All of them are young enough to be my grand kids.Ā I embrace this diversity in the Vaping Culture.
3. Vapers are a diverse goup of people. This is to be expected given the age range of 18 to 70 and beyond. Deal with it. šĀ Given this diversity and the age demographic, their is no animal as “the typical vaper”. Respect this, embrace this, and help all vapers whenever and however you can.
4. Use any opportunity you can to portray a significant portion of the vaping culture as adults who resemble “every day” people of all ages, vaping with a lack of huge clouds, across all age groups, genders, and ethnicities. For example:
Gregory Conley, President of the American Vaping Association
5. I don’t care what kind of hardware or juice you use to vape. You no longer smoke or cut back viaĀ a dual user. That’s all that ever matters to me.Ā If a cigalite works, fine. If your a dual user, fine. If your shiny new 150 watt box mod with dual sub ohmĀ works, that’s fine. Lets please remember that vaping is about what works for YOU and not me. The notion that my “xyz” is the greatest thing since sliced bread and the only mod you will ever need to own is just plain false! If you like to show off that’s fine. For example, I love these newest members of my family but that’s because they work for me and may not work for you:
6. Given the diversity of “opinions” for many subjects germain to vaping, don’t hesitate to engage others in a very respectful and civil debate. All views are welcome. Even if you turn my skin inside out and don’t wish to embrace activism, I still want to know why and will do my very best to change your views on a given subject.