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What the Hell Was Going on with Cigarette Ads in the 70s? (2024)
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- lmm 5mo ago"Error establishing a database connection", apparently? Groovy.
- jonplackett 5mo agoHug of death
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- noelwelsh 5mo ago> Groovy PHP / Wordpress I think.
- Vasbarlog 5mo agoWorks now!
- DANmode 5mo agoArchived copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20260514073345/https://tohippo.com/what-the-hell-was-going-on-with-cigarette-ads-in-the-70s/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260514073345/https://tohippo.c...
- pixel_popping 5mo agoSomeone forgot to code a 5-liner RAM cache.
- Vasbarlog 5mo agoIt's up now!
- TurdF3rguson 5mo agoIs it about how Joe Camel looks like a cock?
- Vasbarlog 5mo agoNope!
- pavel_lishin 5mo ago... maybe you should see a doctor?
- TurdF3rguson 5mo agoYou weren't alive in the 70s obviously lol
- ViktorRay 5mo agoIt's so strange sometimes watching tv shows and movies from the 90's where you see characters smoking indoors in public places. Like in Seinfeld you will have episodes where Kramer is smoking in offices....and even in the doctor's clinic! There was an episode where Kramer took out a cigar and smoked in a doctor's waiting room. I thought he would immediately get in trouble but none of the other characters cared. And then you got movies from back then like Jackie Brown (which is a great movie by the way) where you see character's smoking in a mall cafeteria. A mall! A family friendly environment! And it's considered normal!?!?!? Blows my mind.
- petesergeant 5mo agoI remember transatlantic flights with smoking sections
- ArnoVW 5mo agoThe day they introduced non smoking (late nineties?) a friend of mine found out as the aeroport. He made a big stink, canceled his ticket and booked a new flight for Amsterdam - NYC with the only company still allowing smoking: Aeroflot. He spent the better part of a day, flying via Moscow. The next time he had to fly he grudgingly accepted it. Sometimes even Shaw's unreasonable man has to come to terms with defeat.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- cjrp 5mo agoSmoking on airplanes is the one that just seemed like an accident waiting to happen. And yet there were (relatively) few incidents caused by cigarettes.
- black_knight 5mo agoI heard that air quality on planes was better back then (maybe someone who was alive then can confirm). Because of smoking they had to ventilate the whole aircraft much better. While these days I feel like they are just starving us for oxygen so as to not have to heat up fresh air.
- notahacker 5mo agoReminds me of reading my grandparents' old copies of National Geographic from a similar era. The ads were all attractively retro cars or cigarettes. A couple of taglines that stick in the mind are "the thinking man smokes" and "doctors recommend..."!
- cucumber3732842 5mo agoI remember reading one and they were advertising all the benefits of tubeless tires on drop center rims. High technology at the time.
- markyc 5mo agowhat will our grand kids be shocked to read about us and our acceptable 'cigarettes'? plastic everywhere social media as news teflon fossil fuel cars sugar/ultra-processed food
- petesergeant 5mo agoMeat not as a treat, but as a staple
- nxm 5mo agoHuh? As has been the case since our species evolved into homosapiens?
- socalgal2 5mo agoyes, And smoking has been around for 1000s of years and only recently it became common to ban it in shared spaces
- petesergeant 5mo agoSure, as has slavery and rape as a spoil of war, but we’ve managed to make that taboo in the last couple of hundred, so maybe there’s hope for us yet despite thousands of years of doing the wrong thing!
- Pay08 5mo agoNo, it's going to be about either the roll back of nuclear reactors or various social movements.
- throw9393ir 5mo agoPerhaps overuse of medication. No real proof it works, severe side effects, "misterious" rise in cancer and other dissieases, state sanctioned censorship, billion dolar corruption scandals...
- kuerbel 5mo agoNot only teflon, but pfas. Overuse of pesticides. The second coming of authoritarianism 80 years after the last time. Not doing enough about climate change. Anthropocene extinction.
- bramgn 5mo agoand yet somehow that world seemed more healthy than today's
- Pay08 5mo agoIt wasn't. Lifespans were almost a decade shorter.
- phs318u 5mo ago“Seemed” is the key word here.
- Vasbarlog 5mo agoIf you wear your nostalgia glasses it sure does "seem" more healthy. Life expectancy at birth in the 70s was 70.8. Now it's 79. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/data-finder.htm?&subject=Life%20expectancy https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/data-finder.htm?&subject=Life%2...
- cucumber3732842 5mo agoI wonder how much of that was occupational vs lifestyle.
- sceptic123 5mo agoLife expectancy is a useful summary statistic but not really a guide to healthy. The main reason for the increase there is a reduction in child mortality, not an increase in overall healthiness. Ironically, one of the main factors improving the adult population statistics is the decrease in smoking. But look at something like HALE (Healthy Life Expectancy from WHO[1]) that's much lower and is currently decreasing. https://data.who.int/indicators/i/48D9B0C/C64284D https://data.who.int/indicators/i/48D9B0C/C64284D
- narag 5mo agoWhat seems to me is the ads seem less staged and processed than current ones. They're wilder and not as softened as every media are now. As for people pointing at lifespans for the healthy part, how much of the change is systemic use of anticoagulants? And of course less tobacco, but I wouldn't rush to say people are in much better shape now.
- CodeCompost 5mo agoQuit smoking 10 years ago. Best thing I ever did. I'm particularly inspired by articles like this: * https://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/what-happens-body-quit-smoking https://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/what-happens-body-qu... According to the article I have 5 years to go till my body has completely recovered from the effects of smoking.
- anygivnthursday 5mo agoCongrats! I quit around the same time cca 2012-2014. I did not smoke on a plane, but smoking on trains (and many places indoor) was "normal" before like 2010 around my place. I did not like it even as a smoker and rather went out. But fully echo you that quitting was one of the best decisions of my life.
- JKCalhoun 5mo agoI quit in 1999. I don't need to tell you how hard it was. A year of still wanting a cigarette, having to fight the urge, every single day. Two years quit and I was still having dreams where I am lighting up… Twenty-seven years since now and it's all a distant memory. Even forgotten in dreamland…
- ffaser5gxlsll 5mo agoPress page-down: scrolls the galleries right. Somebody thought this was a good idea, let alone intuitive.
- felooboolooomba 5mo agoThey didn't have a scientific proof that smoking was bad for you. Just like we don't have the proof that social media is awful for you and that Trump is a cult.
- cindyllm 5mo ago[dead]
- Vasbarlog 5mo agoCigarettes were recognised as the cause of lung cancer in the 1940s and 1950s, with the confluence of studies from epidemiology, animal experiments, cellular pathology and chemical analytics https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/21/2/87 https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/21/2/87
- thisislife2 5mo agoAnd to think that in the 1920s, doctors prescribed cigarettes for weight loss. And now the tobacco industry is moving on to weed, and repeating the same marketing tricks that they used to sell cigarettes nearly a 100 years back ...
- xyz100 5mo agoIt seems the case. I used to think weed was for enlightened individuals given how it was portrayed as a natural alternative to pharmaceuticals (e.g., for pain or psychological reasons). Many forms of media would discuss it positively. But it is still smoking and how many people really have medical justification for the usage? Mushrooms have a similar portrayal I would say as some god-given superfood.
- hackeraccount 5mo agoLooking at smoking rates for people in the US - it peaks for men in the 1950's. I'm not saying studies and taxes and PSA's did nothing but on some level I think most people had a pretty good idea that smoking was no good long before they ever saw scientific proof. I think those studies, taxes and everything else was as much an expression of that thinking as it was an influence on it.
- juleiie 5mo agoI miss this awful habit so much. Ever since quitting years ago I never really recovered. It’s like 35% of my mental focus and clarity evaporated. All these moments when something had to be figured out suddenly things became easy if you only went for a smoke. Solutions became crystal clear obvious and effortless. At a price. Without it is always like a little bit of heavy fog is obscuring everything. That I know could be instantly lifted by this terrible drug. I even remember my first time what a transcendental clarity it summoned. It was as if some thick veil fell from me in an instant. That’s very, very addicting and just useful. Does overclocking your brain is worth the accelerated parts wear and tear? Well I made a decision that it isn’t. That I am intelligent and privileged enough to hopefully achieve the things I want and enjoy them for longer.
- Pay08 5mo agoHave you tried doing something similarly meditative instead?
- juleiie 5mo agoI tried using matcha tea instead and it is kind of similar in that general direction but it doesn’t work quite the same mostly due to being constant effect for a few hours after a strong drink instead of a precise impulse. It was alright for a couple of projects but the day I drink matcha is firmly a “matcha day” with its characteristic of great energy at first and then feeling kind of shitty the rest of the day. It shapes your day too much. I am sure there are some substances that are similar to nicotine in mechanism and less harmful to the heart and blood thickening but they aren’t easy to get usually or aren’t well researched. Despite all nicotine is fairly well known and tested on huge population not to mention virtually unlimited access for any interested adult.
- Pay08 5mo agoI don't mean any sort of substance, but a habit. That can be consuming something (be it cigarettes or tea) but it doesn't need to be. I used to be in a similar position as you (except with food). I've found that doing something similarly meditative, in my case listening to music, achieves much the same effect as food did.
- 0rbiter 5mo agoAnd there I was wondering where all the bunkum came from that LLMs spit out. This is proof that we don't need AI to write hilariously absurd copy.
- amriksohata 5mo agoFor those who are not that old, when cigarettes were mainstream there were many scientists (or business backed science) telling people that smoking was healthy. Then they decided to change tact when it became obvious it was causing lung disease.
- RhysU 5mo agoAbsent any restrictions on targeting adults, what would cigarette ads look like today?
- RichardCA 5mo agoHere's a fun one, Benson and Hedges commissioned some classic 80's CGI, it got played at one of the art-house animation festivals that was a thing for nerds to do in the 80's. Looks like it was Robert Abel who did it. But what was the point? It seemed like they were trying to sell gold collectibles to rich people in Malaysia. https://youtu.be/fdBoKOpctp4 https://youtu.be/fdBoKOpctp4
- recursivecaveat 5mo agoToday I learned that cigarette filters were designed to spontaneously brown on use to give the illusion that they had trapped a large amount of tar or whatever: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_filter#Colour_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_filter#Colour_change
- Clamchop 5mo agoThese don't seem strange to me at all. Lifestyle marketing, romance, appeals to independence, metaphor, and humor. All timeless advertising tropes. It's cigarettes themselves that are passé.
- phendrenad2 5mo agoIf you want to browse old tobacco ads without the comedy schtick this site adds, Standord has an interesting archive: https://tobacco.stanford.edu/cigarettes/ https://tobacco.stanford.edu/cigarettes/
- sidewndr46 5mo agoIsn't this true of most advertising from the past? I've watch lots of Honda ads in the US from the 1980s. I don't think you could air them today