Remember advice animal memes with their pinwheel backgrounds? You're not that old, you've just been online for a while now. But do you remember when cigarettes were advertised on American TV by a cartoon camel? Be sure to schedule a prostate exam or mammogram, because we're old now.
Shit.
Tobacco is bad, mmkay? Vaping is not exactly safe, although it is far less bad. I can't remember when I heard vape pens called "robot cocks," but the delightfully lewd Freudian accusation still amuses me. I also really hate the vape bros who revel in sharing clouds of sickly scented secondhand not-smoke with everyone.
It seems like the old-school tobacco addicts were less obnoxious, but then again, I also remember when people wrote laws telling the smokers to back the hell away and leave a little bit of a gap for other folks by every door to every public building two decades ago. When I was in college, and later when I worked at the Call Center From Hell, it seemed like half my fellow students and co-workers were living for their next smoke break, and they would all huddle together at every entrance regardless of the temperatures and precipitation just to get their fix. I dreaded running the gauntlet of gross air every day back then.
Much as I hated cigarette butts littering everything, not to mention setting a national forest on fire from time to time, I really feel a blinding rage when I see new disposable vape pens people manage to leave lying around nowadays, too. Did no one teach you how to put trash in the trash can? It's not like they're smoldering leaves and paper you needed to stomp out back in the day.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure the "plant-based alternative" line is stolen from someone else's meme that has been circulating on the internet for years, but I decided to fire up Canva and make a meme out of it. The vape pen and cigarette are both made from simple geometric shapes with solid fill and a basic outline, except for the vape body with its gradient and added text. In any case, consider the image fair game for sharing, editing, whatever.
