funkyphantom

I wrote this in an insane fit of boredom

Enjoy

I was gearing down to sleep one night, and as per usual I put a movie on
My movie of choice this night was Clerks II.
For some reason I decided to sit through the previews before the main DVD menu, and something interesting caught my eye. There is an ad for TRUTH before the DVD. Now this was interesting, and mildly humorous seeing as the characters in any Kevin Smith film are not really anti smoking. In this particular ad, there is a group of people all with numbered shirts, from 1 to 1200. They all go in front of a Tobacco building where the various executives meet, and then fall down, pretending to be dead. There's other stuff to it, but that is just about the most of it.

This troubled me a little

Not because this addition to the perpetual propaganda machine that lives unchained in this country was wasting my time (my fault) but because the message sent was something that I have been somewhat opposed to recently.

There seems to be, even after years of being disproved and having examples all over the place, that if you confront with an army, or become a single part of, any corporation, you can bring them down or at least make a change.

Now that is just silly.

Unless the company is doing something legitimately wrong, you cant touch them, and even then they have some leeway, if not some leverage against their incrimination. Its great that people are against smoking, its great that people smoke, its great that people could give a shit less, wonderful really. But if you want to make change in your favor, when it has to do with buying any product, you cant be militant at all, no one will listen, you will either piss people off or they will just laugh at you. You can't do this against corporations, and you CERTAINLY can't do it to the average person. Few (if any) people want to stand there and be yelled at about how much they suck, we all got enough of that in high school (and it seems some of the people who are militant assholes didn't get enough). If you want a corporation to change, or for an "evil" product to become obsolete, then its not the corporation who you need to speak to, it's the consumer. Sure the corporations are peddling death or whatever bullshit you want to call it, but boy are they smart about it. It's the consumer that are making the silly decisions, smoking is one of those silly decisions that EVERYONE makes in their life, meaning everyone does stupid shit. And smokers know that it is bad for them, and they could care less. Now if that isn't most patriotic thing, I don't know what is. In America it should be your right to be as effing retarded as you want to be, just as long a you don't hurt anyone, or impede on anyone's rights, in the process.

So if you want to appeal to people, especially on the subject of smoking, you don't yell in their faces, you educate them, BEFORE the fact, smokers know already they've heard it the most, cause they often get picked on. And by educate, I don't mean just hand just give out popcorn facts to share with their buddies, sure its enough to bullshit your way through a conversation or casual argument, if the other person is a moron of course. Actually EDUCATE these people, not scare tactics which is what a lot of these school programs are
Example:
YOU WILL HAVE TAR IN YOU!!!!!!! THEY PAVE STREETS WITH TAR!!!! TAR! TAR! TAR! TAR! [collapse] (true story by the way, sort of, ask me sometime)

That doesn't work it never does especially with kids. Its up to each individual to make sure they are educated, and for each parent to educate their kids. And its up to smokers that already in deep to quit or keep going, honestly I could care less.