Cigarettes are 'cool' again, and the reason why might surprise you... - Revolver News
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The cigarette is making a cool comeback. That’s what the reporters at WaPo are freaking out about. They want to know why these “subhuman” cancer sticks are becoming popular again. They think it’s all because of celebrities and influencers, but that’s the easy, lazy answer. A pop star poses with a cigarette, so what? A fashion girl lights one outside a bar. Big deal. Some actress looks moody and French for five seconds, and suddenly everybody acts like Big Tobacco just got its groove back.
Again, that’s way too easy.
Because we all know celebrity culture is dying a pretty quick death, and influencers aren’t far behind. People don’t worship them the way they used to. If anything, the harder these people try to sell a lifestyle, the more regular people roll their eyes and begin mocking them. Honestly, social media was the beginning of the end of the “movie star.” We all discovered at once how dumb and out-of-touch these people are without a team behind them calling every shot.
So, that’s why the cigarette comeback feels like something else. Something bigger.
Yes, it feels retro. Cigarettes have that old-school, black-and-white-movie vibe. But there’s also a middle finger tucked inside the good ol’ smoke.
The way the “great smoking ban” went down was a bit crazy. People were shamed into quitting. Smokers were treated like disgusting outcasts, kicked outside, taxed to death, scolded by politicians, and made to feel like the lowest form of scum on the planet. And what was really absurd was how the same officials who acted like one Marlboro Light is a crime against humanity handed out clean needles to heroin and meth addicts so they could shoot up in the streets.
That’s the kind of hooey people remember.
And no, cigarettes aren’t part of a healthy lifestyle, everybody knows it. But a lot of stuff isn’t good for you, like heroin, even if the needles are clean. But for cigs, maybe that’s part of the appeal now, right? This rebel, screw you kinda attitude to elites. Cigarettes don’t pretend to be wellness or “self-care,” even though they really can take the edge off a stressful moment. But in a world full of corporate lies, there’s something weirdly honest about the humble cigarette.
So when people start smoking again, or maybe flirting with the vibes, it’s probably not because Dua Lipa posted a picture. It’s likely more about the uprising against the ruling-class “hall monitors” who spent years telling everyone how to live, what to eat, what to say, what to think, what to drive, what to buy, and where they’re allowed to stand with a cigarette… and the kicker is that they’re usually wrong about everything.
The Washington Post article starts with a familiar story: a person who never smoked before suddenly finding herself saying yes to a “little social cigarette.”
Delia Cai remembers everything about her first cigarette. Picture: Fall 2023. She and a friend were dining outdoors. Warm air, beautiful night. “There was this sense of: We survived this really terrifying pandemic, where we all thought about death a lot,” says the Deez Links newsletter author. Her friend offered a cigarette and Cai, searching her brain for a reason to say no, couldn’t find one.
“It was, unfortunately, perfect,” she says. “I was like: ‘Ooooh, I get it.’”
So Cai, who was 30 and had “never touched a cigarette in my life” started occasionally indulging in “a little social cigarette.” And since that inaugural cig, she’s observed an upswing in smoking in her circles. “It’s the friends I would’ve never expected,” says Cai: “high-functioning, wonderful, successful people.”
“As a kid,” explains Cai, now 33, “I was taught ‘the burnouts do that, and if you do you’re not going to be a good part of society.’”
For so long now, smoking has been turned into this low-class red flag and a moral failing and a sign that you are some gross loser who doesn’t belong in polite society.
That shame worked… for a while. But people get sick of it, especially after the COVID fiasco, when we all learned that the experts weren’t all that smart after all and that so much of what was being done was based more on power and control than actual health concerns. After all, how “healthy” was it to offer donuts as a bribe to get people vaccinated for an illness that was especially hard on obese people?
But when it comes to cigs, there’s a whole cool retro “vibe” around smoking.
Cigarettes feel old-fashioned, like they belong to another era that was way cooler and more free than one we’re in now.
WAPO:
By comparison, vapes are modern, lame and ugly; no one, not even one of the biggest movie stars on the face of the earth, has ever looked cool sucking on one. But cigarettes feel pleasingly analog, like a landline phone. They evoke Old Hollywood and 90s cool. Very Sarah-Pidgeon-as-Carolyn-Bessette. “It’s like listening to something on vinyl versus your iPhone,” says Sullivan. Cigarettes, she adds, have “the nostalgia factor.”
And nostalgia — to quote one of our nation’s most famous fictional smokers — is “a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone.” These days, a cigarette isn’t just an affectation or even an addiction. It’s a time machine.
READ MORE: July 29th, 2026: Fauci’s time has finally come…
Nostalgia usually ignites when people are unhappy with the current state of affairs. The cigarette has become this tiny little escape hatch from a world that now feels really over-managed and fake.
That’s where the rebellion comes in…
And yeah, cigarettes may be ugly, but at least they aren’t pretending to be your therapist.
WAPO:
It’s been a beat since tobacco companies have marketed themselves with slogans like, “More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarettes.” But today’s vices have taken up that faux-wholesome mantle, insisting they’re not vices at all, and that only buzzkills and Luddites would refuse to buy what they’re selling. Sports gambling: It’s harmless fun! Gambling on literally everything via Polymarket: Also harmless, also fun! AI chatbots: They’re not just great — they’re extraordinary, like you! Social media: FUN! So fun! Are we having fun yet??
Taken next to these offerings — which are obviously addictive and destructive but are obsessed with convincing us that they’re not — the cigarette feels appealingly straightforward. “There’s something strangely refreshing about something that says, ‘We’re bad.’” muses Sullivan. “They’re not selling you a lie.”
Modern life is filled with addictions. Your phone, porn, fast food, gambling apps, AI pretending to be your BFF, social media, and on and on. All of it’s sold as fun, convenient, harmless, or even healthy… but it’s not always that way, is it?
No.
But one thing about cigarettes is they don’t bother putting on a fake costume. You know what you’re getting, good, bad, and everything in between, when you light one up.
More than two decades ago, South Park nailed it with its “Butt Out” episode about anti-smoking zealot Rob Reiner. At the time Rob was pushing to ban smoking, he was obese and looked more unhealthy than most smokers you’d meet.
Honestly, at some point, people just get tired of being managed, don’t they? And once that happens, they decide enough is enough. That’s when the tide turns, and sometimes that little bit of rebellion is as simple as stepping outside, lighting up a smoke, and saying, “Leave me alone for 15 minutes.”
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