Genuinely didn’t know there were such a large number of twitter busy bodies that feel some kind of way about *other* people enjoying to smoke.

Their main hang up isn’t even seemingly the smoking issues itself, or any effect it has on them (probably because they know if they get affected it’s because they don’t mind their own business), but that people *enjoy* it. And for some of them, this seems to even enrage them lol

In general, the pleasure people derive from drugs, especially if they can do so asocially, is pretty predictive of their legal status—pleasurablility predicts criminal sanction, independently of addictiveness & individual/social harm

Cigarettes fit this pattern because they’re very legal and not that pleasurable comparatively, but it’s interesting that this dynamic is seemingly recursive—in that to the extent people find it pleasurable this gives offense.

It’s a trivial point that moralism & its intensity is often driven by a mix of envy, ressentiment, dissonance, projection, and disgust—apply this principle to drugs, sex, moral hang ups, party poopers, busy bodies, baptists, bootleggers, cops, and boomers, and you’ll see it holds

The genie comes to a man and says you can have any wish, but beware, whatever you do, I’ll give your neighbor double

Man pauses, thinks, and says

Well, then take out one of my eyes

Think about how angry people got that smokers got ahead in line for Covid vaccine, because it ‘rewards bad behavior’—even though, socially speaking, healthy people who follow social distancing guidelines need vaccines the least

Unhealthy and/or at risk people, who either don’t and/or can’t follow social distancing guidelines are the *first* people you want to vaccinate from a public health standpoint.

Same thing occurs with prison abolition stuff—if all you want to release are so called low level ‘non violent’ offenders, preferably ones that were ‘framed’,from a low socioeconomic background,who haven’t done other shitty things you’re gonna release just like 1% of prisoners lol

This also applies to privilege discourse which turns issues of structural inequity into individualized indices of virtue and desert, the main effect of which is fracturing solidarity— it renders oppression a competitive individual branding exercise.