Monthly Archives: November 2017

 

René Descartes wondered if the universe was real. Carl Ginet wondered if it’s true that we have no control over our past, present and future. Plato argued numbers were real despite some disagreeing. What would have brought them together would have been a simple question: are internet quizzes important?

Yes, they would have said. And no internet quiz is more important than one about vaping.

What Kind Of Vaper Am I?

1. Your friend offers you some new juice they’ve just discovered. Do you:

a) Add three drops to the cakes you’re baking.

b) Enjoy the vape and ask him where them where they bought it from.

c) Shout about how it’s disgusting you can only buy it in 10ml bottles these days.

d) Break out a chemistry set and attempt to deconstruct the flavour profiles.

e) Get the contact details from the label, call them and suggest they send you a boxload to review.

f) Hand it straight back. You don’t vape anything but boutique bottles costing £10 per ml.

g) Sorry mate, what? I can’t see the options.

 

2. You pick up your favourite mod. Do you:

a) Wonder what it is and if it can cure athlete’s foot.

b) Turn it on and enjoy a lovely vape.

c) Lament the fact that it was a far better mod before those bloody politicians messed about with your rights.

d) Get out a screwdriver and dismantle it.

e) Hold it up to your computer and record yourself saying it’s “the best mod ever, it really hits hard” and mention how you got it for free.

f) Polish off the fingerprints and place it back into the display case nobody looks at.

g) Sorry mate, what? I can’t see the options.

 

3. You wander into your local vape shop. Do you:

a) Ask for directions to Kentucky Fried Chicken.

b) Strike up a conversation with the staff, who all know you by name.

c) Thump the counter and scream that they should be closed, to signal what it’ll be like unless everybody starts bloody protesting these idiotic laws.

d) Show them the coil you just built, that took seventeen weeks to perfect.

e) Say nothing, but stand in the corner wearing sunglasses, stroking your hipster beard and waiting to be recognised.

f) Scoff, turn around and march straight out – none of that equipment was handmade.

g) Sorry mate, what? I can’t see the options.

 

4. You go out for a day trip. Do you:

a) Cancel it, there’s a new quiz on Facebook.

b) Walk out of the door carrying three bags, seventeen packs of charged batteries, eight spare mods, nine spare atomisers and every type of juice you like.

c) Wear a T-shirt telling people how much you care about lives, a black armband symbolising those lost, a petition signature sheet and a car boot full of leaflets.

d) Only visit places selling tools or resistors.

e) Live stream the entire proceedings on Periscope while wearing your best hat.

f) Walk about holding your device so everybody can see what they can’t afford or appreciate.

g) Sorry mate, what? I can’t see the options.

 

5. Somebody tells you vaping is dangerous. Do you:

a) Say “Sorry? What? I don’t know what you mean.”

b) Tell them about the PHE and RCP reports stating it’s 95% safer than smoking.

c) You turn red, make the noise of a hamster being squished, and call them many rude names on your social media account.

d) Get out your notebook and demonstrate how safe it is by using equations and a diagram of a pendulum.

e) Ask them if they would like an autograph.

f) Ignore them – you don’t talk to ‘normal’ people.

g) Sorry mate, what? I can’t see the options.

 

6. Your battery is dying, the juice almost run out. Do you:

a) Carry on with life as normal, mainly because you don’t understand the problem.

b) Cry. Shake. Then visit one of your thousand vape mates because you know they’ll sort you out.

c) Accuse the Prime Minister of carry out some kind of personal vendetta against you, then attempt to raze Parliament to the ground.

d) Construct a new battery out of an orange and make some emergency eliquid using household products and a rubber glove.

e) Put out an appeal on YouTube to all vendors to send you free stuff as soon as possible, promising them a great review that’ll be seen by both your subscribers.

f) To be honest, I’m not that bothered about vaping – I just like to spend money.

g) Sorry mate, what? I can’t see the options.

 

So, what kind of vaper are you?

If you answered mostly A‘s, you are not a vaper at all. The only reason you are doing this is because you have a compulsion to completing online surveys and already know which Game Of Thrones dragon you’d be. If it helps, you are the ABBA, Joey from Friends and The Ramones of Vaping – go post that as an update.

If you answered mostly B‘s, then you are a run of the mill normal vaper. You enjoy what you do, have made a ton of friends and learnt more Physics than you ever did at school. Whatever the government does, whatever the media writes, you are just happy you finally found a way to escape smoking.

If you answered mostly C‘s, you are probably a bit rabid about vape politics. Your friends are also very angry and you all enjoy using CAPS LOC in Facebook updates. You got fired from your last job for berating your boss because she didn’t order recycled photocopy paper. Life is a struggle and you last smiled in 1996.

If you answered mostly D‘s, you are probably some kind of DIY nut. If a job’s worth doing then it’s worth doing using the correct tools and posting pictures about it online so other DIYers can explain how they did it better suing a soldering iron and two brass connectors. Vaping may have replaced smoking – but making things has now replaced any opportunity for eating or socialising.

If you answered mostly E’s, then you are likely to be an aspirant Youtuber reviewer. Half of your subscriber base is your mum, you have a nasal monotone voice and everything free is the best thing in the world ever. One day you’d like somebody to write a comment on one of your posts. No, sorry, we can’t send you anything for free.

If you answered mostly F‘s, you are a member of the shrinking band of elite enthusiasts, who values a hideously expensive stainless steel tube over a cheap tube (or box full of electronics) because it was crafted using the lathe that once belonged to Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Or something. You felt important before 2.8million other people began vaping – you look back on 2009 as though it was a Golden Age.

If you answered mostly G‘s, you are a “Cloud Chaser”. The thing is, you can’t read this bit either because of the fog filling the downstairs of your house and half of the garden. We get it, bro, you vape!

It doesn’t matter though – whoever you are, however you choose to vape, we celebrate your success with you. Have a great vaping weekend!

 

 

It is, put simply, a phenomenal achievement. For a while, public health “experts” like Martin McKee derided vaping on the basis that it wasn’t helping anyone to escape from smoking. Paraphrasing him, he said things like: “Look at the data, about seventy to eighty percent of people who use electronic cigarettes still smoke – they’re dual users and they still smoke.”

And he wasn’t totally wrong. A few years ago the cigalike was the dominant device used and dual-users were the largest segment in vaping. But now, with 2.9-million vapers in Britain, ASH’s survey highlights that 55% of us have now totally given up traditional tobacco products. For the benefit of any public health “expert”, that’s a survey from a group (who’s sole remit is to campaign against tobacco) stating that vaping works as a quit smoking tool. The data says it works better than any other quit smoking tool available in Britain today.

Vapers are an encouraging community, by and large. They will readily offer advice and tips in online forums and on social media groups, the like of which is absent from any other smoking quitting method. Plus, it goes further. While ex-smokers were notoriously obnoxious to those unable to emulate their achievements, there is no scorn from vapers towards smokers. Plus, those vapers who have gone on to leave nicotine behind appear to remain supportive of vaping and the vaping community.

Most vapers do not currently hold an ambition to cease vaping, our Stealthvape Survey highlighted that just 10% intended to stop vaping altogether.

Likewise, most dual-fuellers (when questioned a couple of years ago) stated that they were happy to continue as they were. Yet the cost, taste or one of the many other factors eventually persuaded them to switch completely and successfully.

Is it not feasible that vaping will facilitate the gentle slide from smoking to vaping, and then a drift into the non-use of nicotine? There are a number of drivers that might create an environment for this to be the case.

Firstly, while the community can be fun, it has grown to such a size that it’s possible to not want to be associated with parts of it. Maybe the younger vapers begin to see it as an older person’s activity? Maybe older vapers tire of being expected to grow a beard, don a funny hat and vape out a twelve-foot cloud?

Maybe, as the nicotine levels being used have dropped to such low levels (3mg and 1.5mg being the market-leading strengths) the chemicals hold over the mind drops to a very weak one?

All told, it doesn’t matter. If someone wishes to make a conscious and informed decision to take something into their lungs that is 95% safer than tobacco smoke then why shouldn’t they, Martin McKee?

The data is clear: vaping hasn’t attracted non-smoking children, it hasn’t renormalised smoking, it hasn’t acted as gateway from vaping into smoking. The only thing it has done is increase the health of over 1.5-million ex-smokers.

 

 

I was trying to think about what would be the ultimate vape accessory but then I was overcome by the knowledge that pest killers have been taken from us and replaced with censored, emasculated versions of death. You used to be able to buy “Liberator” and “Crush”, you could splash “Stamp” and “Gravestone” about liberally.  But no more, thanks to bleeding hearts worrying about us poisoning everything in the food chain. My Granddad had grated lead on his cornflakes and he was fine his entire life – right up to the bit where he died in the war at nineteen.

Now, you can no longer kill household pests, you have to ask them to sit on the naughty outdoor step with “Ant Please Don’t”. Cockroaches can no longer be loaded with poison or crushed, they have to be soothed with a bowl of “Fluffy Timeout”. Pest control products, like the whole of society, have gone soft.

There was a time that I used to go into my Granddad’s shed (the living one, not the dead in the war one) and marvel at the tins and tubs of highly poisonous stuff. I’m not sure what his hobby was but it must have had something to do with a desire to kill small children (and who amongst us hasn’t harboured that once in a while?).

Then it struck me – isn’t this what the ultimate vape accessory should be? We are being told week in week out that vaping is ridiculously dangerous. Articles describe how e-liquids melt the faces off puppies and the special vape lithium-ion batteries are being used to explode cats’ bottoms.

Sheds of vape products. Sheds for vapes and vaping. Vape sheds.

Little children can wander into these dens of disaster, poke a bottle or a metal tube and live the rest of their lives marvelling at how they didn’t die. And, in fifty years time, write articles about how when they were kids it was like the Wild West, but nowadays everything is so sanitised.

Vape sheds are what we need, all of us. But not any old shed. Because they are vape sheds there will be cost implications. A Li-ion cell may be a Li-ion cell, but when it becomes an ecig Li-ion cell it takes on magical properties (which makes it more dangerous and more expensive).

Vape sheds will be boutique sheds, imbued with intrinsic value vape sheds. This means expensive. They will have an aura, and that aura is “Keep Out”. And that’s just the kind of quiet shed I want.

 

 

It is commonplace to see vaping being described as a gateway, and we read at least three studies a week where the toxins in vaping are apparently killing all of our children and turning male freshwater fish into females (and female freshwater fish into males). Apparently, someone that Martin McKee once met on holiday stepped into a river while vaping and became a freshwater fish. Martin McKee was very excited.

We have uncovered research that was paid for by the League of Leather Footwear Manufacturers. Many of you will probably not know this, but Big Leather has been waging a corporate war against Big Plastic and Big Manmadefibre for decades.

Leather shoe manufacturers believe they have the moral right to provide shoes for the discerning gentleman and thigh-length boots for the perverted discerning gentleman. The preface of their study contends that plastic and rubber shoes may only be sold as safe alternatives to leather footwear in the advent that safety licenses have been obtained and the wearers are warned never to don the footwear in public.

“We have discovered a clear gateway effect leading buyers from a civilized life to abject debauchery,” said Jane Footinmouthdisease, the study’s lead author. “It all begins with the purchase of a pair of Wellington boots.”

“This study demonstrates that Wellies are a clear gateway to terrible shoes, such as Crocs. Despite all of the warnings we give out, celebrities promote this deviant lifestyle and renormalise bad footwear. We hope that the government now see fit to do something and act.”

“But there’s more,” Footinmouthdisease continues, indicating there’s more by pointing at it in the study. “Have you seen the colourings they add to their boot products? They aren’t natural. We aren’t saying there’s a clear link between the additives and foot disease, but I’m mentioning it here so that you print it and it is carried into the public consciousness.”

The League of Leather Footwear Manufacturers’ report goes on to detail incidents of how, following the purchase of cheap Wellington boots, the owners were compelled to buy pairs of Le Chameau Chasseurnord Wellingtons (£245) because of peer pressure. Such boots are already a proven gateway to green quilted jacket and gun dog ownership.

In the face of such overwhelming evidence it is clear that politicians must act now. We are joining the League of Leather Footwear Manufacturers in calling for a strict Over-65-yrs purchase policy for Wellington boots and an immediate ban on wearing Crocs in public areas.

Next week we will look at how research demonstrates that the ageing £1 Brum ride outside shopping centres is a gateway to joy riding. Also, the free fruit for children in Tesco is a proven gateway to scrumping, which is a proven gateway to alcoholism.