Tobacco Company Involvement With YouTube Smoking Videos Pondered
CMM News points to a Sydney Morning Herald article which calls to our attention the odd proliferation of videos on YouTube that show women smoking. Now that wouldn't be so weird except for the fact that in many of the videos, that's all they're doing: glamming on the cam while puffing away seductively. Sydney University School of Public Health Professor Simon Chapman viewed many of the 27,000 smoking-related videos on YouTube and while he acknowledges the videos could simply be an innocent social phenomenon, Chapman also wonders whether it's a clandestine effort by tobacco companies to promote smoking's cool quotient.
While tobacco advertising in America has been severely limited, it's been completely outlawed in Australia since 1992. Whether or not any tobacco company is behind this is likely to remain a mystery. A Philip Morris rep neither confirmed or denied involvement in with the video and said the company adheres to local laws and Internet advertising to minors should be banned. YouTube declined to comment for the story. While we find it hard to believe tobacco companies have any involvement in this and there's plenty of not-so-glamorous smoking videos to back up that belief, stranger things have certainly happened regarding this industry's marketing efforts.
Topic: Online, Opinion, Social, Strange, Trends and Culture, Video
Comments
Something about smoking makes everyone want to smell a conspiracy these days. It's just smoking fetishists. They've been on the internet as long as I can remember, and now they're on YouTube.
Jonas is right – it's porn that doesn't necessarily involve nudity or sex – just a blend of mellow tobaccos and fire. Leave those poor cig companies alone - they've gone from trillions to billions, lets try to be considerate. Shit now I need a smoke.
Welcome to the Smoking Fetish community. We are not funded by big tobacco. We just find smoking sexy. With the advent of the internet, 'weird' people have been given a tool to find like-minded individuals. With the internet people are never 'the only one'.
The growth of Youtube has made the sharing of videos incredibly easy and some members of a suprisingly large 'smoking fetish' community have used the site to share videos, which to outsiders I can appreciate, look strange, even sinister.
Not all smoking fetishists feel this way, but I would never want to encourage anyone to start smoking. I merely appreciate those who already do. Perhaps the posting of such videos to youtube (and even this site) might encourage new smokers but freedom of expression should not be curtailed to 'save the children'. Smokers of any age cannot be oblivious to the health risks given the current anti-smoking climate so my conscienence is, for the most part, clear.
So sit back and enjoy this window into our little 'community'
For more comment: visit my blog post:
http://free-blog-site.com/smokingfetish/archive/2006/11/25/100751.aspx
Public health experts agree this definition is incomplete. WBR LeoP