Truth
January 18, 2003 6:33 PM   Subscribe

You've seen the ads. Spreading the truth about tobacco. (some Flash involved.)
posted by konolia (43 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: nothing new or interesting on the site.



 
yes. i have seen them. what is the point if this exactly?
posted by folktrash at 6:36 PM on January 18, 2003


Great. There's a group out there with a flash-infused website about tobacco/smoking/et al.

B. F. D!!!

There's a LOT of well-intentioned websites out there, with or without flash, on ANY NUMBER of good (or bad) causes! WHAT CAN THERE POSSIBLY BE TO DISCUSS ABOUT THIS ONE, OTHER THAN A MASSIVE FLAME WAR ABOUT SMOKING???????

Oh, by the way, I quit ten days ago. Yay, me! There's been surprisingly little stress and anxiety, although it does come out from time to time.
posted by yhbc at 6:39 PM on January 18, 2003


uh huhuhuhh settle down yhbeavis
posted by folktrash at 6:42 PM on January 18, 2003


OF this... what is the point OF this...

*sigh*
posted by folktrash at 6:45 PM on January 18, 2003


Well, we could always discuss how much overkill is used in the web design. It is a pain in the butt to navigate. I do think some of the info there is of interest (at least to me) but I think I would get a headache trying to find it.

But I did find out one thing on the site-do you know there is an actual book that tobacco execs are supposed to rely on when they go on tv interviews? They have it on the site. Altho it is harder to find than an easter egg.
posted by konolia at 6:53 PM on January 18, 2003


It's a good site, a good campaign. I quote it to my friends since a lot of them smoke and I detest smoking. It's something the world could definetly do without.
posted by tomorama at 7:11 PM on January 18, 2003


Diffucult site; questionable content. Oh, and I smoke...but you probably knew that anyway. What intrigues me about anti-smokers is their perceived assumption (or assertions) that smoking will kill you IMMEDIATELY. As opposed to, say, a drunk driver, or drug overdose, or other "vice"-induced fatalities. In fact (and I have no data to support this, other than anecdotal, reading the obits sometimes, and hearing of famous folk who die of same), I'd wager that the vast majority of smokers who actually do die of smoking-induced lung cancer have been smoking for many, many years, and few of them die at a relatively early age. Just a supposition.
posted by davidmsc at 7:25 PM on January 18, 2003


yes because it makes it better if it kills you slowly
posted by kv at 7:32 PM on January 18, 2003


And, besides, when you're but a young buck, give or take a few years doesn't seem like a big deal.

When you get old and ill, you start to understand that it's not a couple years lost: it's a decade of increasing illness, pain, and worry, and that you'd have had a lot more good life in ya if only you'd never smoked.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:37 PM on January 18, 2003


Oh my god! You mean smoking can kill me? Where's that patch? :)
posted by LouReedsSon at 7:38 PM on January 18, 2003


I think this is one of the worst examples of gratuitous Flash I've seen recently. It's not doing anything except replacing the familiar experience of hypertext in a web browser with an unusual one. And making silly game noises. I am SO unmotivated to poke around in it, because it annoys the hell out of me.

Now, if there were neato tours of rotting lungs...
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:40 PM on January 18, 2003


Just a supposition.

That is also a splendid way to fleece the tobacco companies out of billions while lining one's own pockets with fat lawsuit cash.

This helps if you simultaneously convince everyone that they are powerless victims without the ability to choose, therefore duped by "big tobacco" to smoulder their lives through. There's more money in victimhood, after all.

But the haze of hapless victims, even and New York Mayors is pretty thick.

Dave Barry wrote this fine article on the subject, which sums it up nicely.
posted by hama7 at 7:47 PM on January 18, 2003


Here's some stats, davidmsc, from some bloke at Cornell.

It seems that the incidence starts to rise sharply around 45 or so (141 deaths per 100,000). By 55 it's 335 per 100,000, and rising.

45 and even 55 seem pretty early to me.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:49 PM on January 18, 2003


I quit 11 years ago.

That being said...

I can't believe that the stupid campaign is how the settlement money from tobacco is being spent! How annoying! What is this, some sort of boost to the advertising industry? Subsidy for slack jawed gen Y adman wannabees?

Sheesh. It makes me want to smoke a cigarette...
posted by jpburns at 7:55 PM on January 18, 2003


I think the thing to keep in mind, hama7, is that obacco cases are fundamentally unlike other famous product liability lawsuits that are easily scoffed at. For years and years cigarette companies deliberately misled the public about the health risks and addictiveness of smoking. When I started smoking in 1987, the warning labels were already on the boxes (I qui last april), but it's a bit more complicated for people in my parents' generation who saw ads as children telling them that menthol cigarettes were good for a sore throat.

Making a dangerous product and saying it's dangerous is one thing. Making a dangerous product and hiding it from the general public is just plain evil.
posted by vraxoin at 8:00 PM on January 18, 2003


hama7 is right: money is just transfering hands.

i'm a smoker and i believe in most of the laws that have been passed to protect others. otoh, it's pretty obvious that many people have discovered there's a goldmine here.

but i'm so glad that the 'truth' campaign cares about the health of others. i really am. idly waiting for the 'truthsayers' to make the connection between tobacco and terrorists
posted by poopy at 8:00 PM on January 18, 2003


The same is true of "tobacco"; it doesn't just apply to "obacco." Or "tomacco," for that matter.
posted by vraxoin at 8:01 PM on January 18, 2003


The Truth is the worst, most annoying, half-truth--filled (cigarettes contain dog piss, etc) campaign ever. Makes me want to smoke out of spite even more then the inept propagandizing of DARE in elementary school made me want to do drugs. If it weren't so disgusting I'd do it on principal.
posted by Nothing at 8:05 PM on January 18, 2003


Principle, even. On principal sounds kinky.
posted by Nothing at 8:06 PM on January 18, 2003


You lot are all making me want to (really, really badly) do it on principal, as well as on principle.

Like I caterwauled before, there is nothing to discuss here. CIGARETTES ARE BAD. NO. SHIT. Do we, or any one else, really need to debate, or discuss the issue? Especially with this kind of crap?!?

Let this abysmal excuse for a thread, and the hellspawn website that prompted it, die a painful and merciless death with the dawn (on the west coast).
posted by yhbc at 8:09 PM on January 18, 2003


Damn. Sorry nothing, I had already composed and committed that particular diatribe before I saw your own self-correction.
posted by yhbc at 8:11 PM on January 18, 2003


Do we, or any one else, really need to debate, or discuss the issue?

Not for nuthin', but...yeah.
posted by adampsyche at 8:13 PM on January 18, 2003


Fine.

adam: cigarettes, and the industry that has supplied them for well over 400 years now, are bad. They, and it, have no point in existing in any society, since they shorten life, cause disease, and expose non-practitioners to their own evils.

OTOH, they are addictive, and very pleasurable. I want one RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

Counterpoint?
posted by yhbc at 8:17 PM on January 18, 2003


two words: 'bubble guy'. i really hate that guy, so smug in his protective gerbil ball. pretty insensitive to gerbils if you ask me.... i love gerbils.

although the truth campaign had a fantastic lil ditty about a year ago....forget what it was. i saw it when i went to see LOTR:FOTR. Great jingle and if anyone can tell me what it was, i might even furnish you with your own personal bubble, protecting you from any harmful toxins that you may come in contact with on your day-to-day travels.
posted by poopy at 8:19 PM on January 18, 2003


Congrats to those of you who have quit. I salute you.
posted by rushmc at 8:19 PM on January 18, 2003


Making a dangerous product and hiding it from the general public is just plain evil.

True, but even my grandparents' generation somehow grasped the idea that tobacco wasn't a vitamin tablet.

Have you ever seen 'Sunset Boulevard'? There's a scene in the limo where William Holden's character tells Gloria Swanson's character: "You smoke too much." That was 1950. People knew because they weren't idiots.

They are playing idiots today because there's money in it.
posted by hama7 at 8:20 PM on January 18, 2003


I didn't mean to be snarky or anything, but if there was no need to bring light to the issue (pardon the pun), not necessarily debate, then no one would smoke.
posted by adampsyche at 8:21 PM on January 18, 2003


rushmc: give me a cigarette. Please.
posted by yhbc at 8:24 PM on January 18, 2003


i'm goan go to chop suey right now, watch this band, and smoke some cigarettes while i have a few tastey drinks.

at least drinks are still good for me.
posted by folktrash at 8:24 PM on January 18, 2003


that was supposed to come right after the call for counterpoint, but this thread's so damn hot.... it's, uh, smoking.
posted by folktrash at 8:25 PM on January 18, 2003


at least drinks are still good for me.

That is, until some chronic drunks with physical problems get some lawyers start suing "big alcohol"!
posted by hama7 at 8:28 PM on January 18, 2003


The American Legacy Foundation (the folks with the truth ads) is funded with a very thin pie-slice of the tobacco settlement money, most of which is paid directly to the states so they can spend it on health related stuff (NOT!)

It seems to me that the reason we are even able to write these threads saying "well DUH OF COURSE smoking is bad... Who needs somebody to tell us THAT!!" is exactly because public education about smoking is working. If the education stopped, in a few years we'd be back to saying "What do you mean it's bad for me??? That's a myth" etc.

As for the use of Flash on that site, I'm not a big Flash fan either, but something tells me that if that bloopy bleepy interface contained a music trading and Hello Kitty parody site run by lesbian Dutch anarchists, we'd be falling over ourselves passing the URL around and calling it cool. Instead it contains a site with the thankless task of saying something people don't want to hear, so we call it hellspawn.
posted by anser at 8:29 PM on January 18, 2003


I once thought about picking up smoking because each cigarette shortens your life something like seven minutes...which is a good thing, because that last hour is a bitch.
posted by pedantic at 8:31 PM on January 18, 2003


I'm getting one of these.

yhbc: what are we gonna swap now, duder?
posted by WolfDaddy at 8:45 PM on January 18, 2003


WolfDaddy, I had already decided, even before I saw just how much money I was saving, that non-smokers drink better beer. It's a reward thing, you see.

You like Sam Adams? Some of the seasonal brews are quite nice.
posted by yhbc at 8:54 PM on January 18, 2003


Yep, cigarettes are bad. I knew that when I started smoking ten years ago, and it didn't matter. If you want people to stop smoking, find something more excellent than a cigarette with morning coffee.

That being said, I quit smoking a little over a month ago, I give a hearty stamp of approval to Nicorette for their help.
posted by mosch at 9:39 PM on January 18, 2003


Enough with the repetitive "I know cigarettes are bad already" comments. That's not the point.

If you guys knew anything about the Truth campaign, you'd see that it's mostly geared toward young people (so I think the Flash makes sense--it's not geared just toward Nielsen's usability standards, it's geared toward being entertaining to teenagers), and it's not a DON'T SMOKE! SMOKING IS EVIL AND BAD AND SINFUL! campaign, it's about letting people know the truth about smoking, and letting them then make informed decisions on whether they want to smoke or not. The fact is the tobacco companies have done some disgusting terrible, vile, immoral, unethical, sickening stuff to promote and encourage the consumption of their productS, and I think it's great that there's a campaign out there to disseminate the information.

Read the site before you piss all over it next time. I think the ads are clever and attention-getting. Just what they're trying to accomplish. The ads rarely say "smoking is bad;" they usually say "this is what the tobacco companies did," ie: target gays and homeless people, coverup the fact that they knew their products were deadly, etc.
posted by gramcracker at 9:48 PM on January 18, 2003


I don't know about being entertaining to teenagers. I'm 32 so I won't presume to comment, except to say that it's verging on pandering when the "entertainment" consists solely of bleeps and cute widgets.

It turns out that buried under "Tools" is a "Switch to HTML" command. I like the HTML version a lot better.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:06 PM on January 18, 2003


Ok, so, if you know that your drug dealer has done really bad things, you won't use? Hmmm..... :)
posted by LouReedsSon at 10:11 PM on January 18, 2003


i_am_joe's_spleen beat me to the punch, in regards to the HTML version. The link is right there on the home page, listed before the link to the "Flash MX" version.

Actually, that annoys me more than anything else on the site. The player is just called "Macromedia Flash Player" and is up to version 6. Flash MX is the authoring program. Despite what the third link on the homepage says, you don't need to download Flash MX to view the site.

Sorry for the syntactic wankery.
posted by Monk at 10:24 PM on January 18, 2003


In much the same way that a lit citronella candle will keep pests away, I find that keeping a lit cigarette nearby keeps self-righteous, whiney, sanctimonious nanny-types away.
posted by RavinDave at 10:27 PM on January 18, 2003


I can't wait until they catch up around here... welcome to tobacco road, Kentucky. I was eating a nice dinner tonight, and my eyes started burning, wh00p, somkie grandma 2 booths over and bob's left-over cig still burnin in the ashtray. I hate it. My eyes can't handle the littlest amount of smoke, so I stay away from bars and places that have smoke... or at least try to. No more bowling, no 'first available', and no more consession's area at the basketball games.

Eat your heart out CA, come to KY and eat as much tobacco as you care to.
posted by tomplus2 at 10:28 PM on January 18, 2003


I gotta agree with gramcracker: although the Flash ads are pretty annoying, it's still an effective way to try and get young people to accept the message. I've never smoked myself (my Mom smoked like a burning house and still does - totally turned me off) and I loathe the practice, (even though my state still sanctions it, sort of), I respect people's choice to smoke, or accomodate any legal vice, as long as they aren't doing silly crap like trying to sue the companies or the government for their stupidity or ignorance. I'm a big fan of personal responsibility, and anything - goofy ass Flash or whatnot- that informs, or tries to inform, is fine by me.

It's all about personal choice - but I take a distinctly Libertarian view here: " your right to swing ends where my face begins."
posted by elendil71 at 10:32 PM on January 18, 2003


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