The E-Cigarette Debate Has Exploded on Internet Forums | VICE United States
An article mainly about us to be honest
An article mainly about us to be honest
E-cigarette forums are booming, but theyre doomed
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Interesting. I didn't know Oliver held such contempt against the thought that vaping might help smokers quit...
It's not contempt, it's a legal requirement, you can't make a health claim on a non-medical product, none of our vendors do.
Haha, of course I don't. I was slightly surprised to see that particular paragraph in the piece, but context is key.
What I was referring to was the (perhaps historical) usage of "testimonials" by certain e-cig companies - these most definitely were bull: I checked out all the names of the so-called testimonials from these sites and they were made up. Some lastnames didn't even exist!
It's an interesting one, because we're still in the position where suppliers can't claim that their products help people to quit, despite there being ample evidence that some people can do so. I'm really not sure who 'clicks the button' that says that people can make this claim - perhaps a lawyer can chime in here.
What is clear, though, is that anyone who does make the claim, even now, is endangering their own business, and possibly vaping as a whole. Honestly, I've not seen much evidence of suppliers making these claims recently but I'm fairly sure there are some still doing it.
Hope that clears things up.
While the quality of the prose and the research in this piece appear to be top-notch, some of the essential conclusions caught my critical eye.
Let's start with the topic of the article - namely that ECF's funding sources may be compromised:
While I don't claim to know anything about ECF's accounting ledgers, I think a good reporter would view this with a little skepticism - at least before making the bolded assertion in their own words.
As far as I know, no one is yet talking about banning online equipment sales here in the states, and a great deal of e-liquid can be purchased for the price of a Provari. Besides, when was the last time that anyone bought a new Ford or a Toyota online - directly from the manufacturer? (Or from a dealer, for that matter.) Ad revenue doesn't require direct-to-consumer online sales.
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More troubling:
Even the most rabid ANTZ orgs don't claim that vaping may be as dangerous as smoking tobacco cigarettes. That's a far cry from the milder boilerplate observation to the effect that "long term studies don't exist."
Harm reduction is a completely different animal from cessation. Conflating the two - or even moving seamlessly between them as the quoted paragraph does - is sloppy at best. (Particularly in this context. It's not as if tobacco cigarette smoking is some minor problem, akin to hangnails.)
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For those salient issues that lie at the core of this article, I would've come down like the proverbial ton of bricks on a barely-literate tumbleweed-town cub reporter who happened to be writing for a two-bit weekly e-rag.
First-class prose in tandem with good research are no excuse for a lack of attention to content.
Just my
Let's start with the topic of the article - namely that ECF's funding sources may be compromised:
While I don't claim to know anything about ECF's accounting ledgers, I think a good reporter would view this with a little skepticism - at least before making the bolded assertion in their own words.
As far as I know, no one is yet talking about banning online equipment sales here in the states, and a great deal of e-liquid can be purchased for the price of a Provari. Besides, when was the last time that anyone bought a new Ford or a Toyota online - directly from the manufacturer? (Or from a dealer, for that matter.) Ad revenue doesn't require direct-to-consumer online sales.
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More troubling:
Even the most rabid ANTZ orgs don't claim that vaping may be as dangerous as smoking tobacco cigarettes. That's a far cry from the milder boilerplate observation to the effect that "long term studies don't exist."
Harm reduction is a completely different animal from cessation. Conflating the two - or even moving seamlessly between them as the quoted paragraph does - is sloppy at best. (Particularly in this context. It's not as if tobacco cigarette smoking is some minor problem, akin to hangnails.)
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For those salient issues that lie at the core of this article, I would've come down like the proverbial ton of bricks on a barely-literate tumbleweed-town cub reporter who happened to be writing for a two-bit weekly e-rag.
First-class prose in tandem with good research are no excuse for a lack of attention to content.
Just my
I am appreciative of the term harm reduction. It puts a positive spin on my actions. Smoking e-gigs is, well, I am not smoking and I use a vaporizer, not an e-cig. Word usage adds social legitimacy to something, positive or negative.
Well, the problem with journalism is that there always needs to be an angle. I was slightly surprised about the choice of angle, since we covered a lot of topics. I guess that's a lesson learned.
We have no idea what the future holds, was my real point, and that the forum requires an awful lot of resources that people probably aren't aware of (tech, servers, staff) - if the money was squeezed (which would definitely be the case if either online sales or advertising bans came into being) it would be very hard to run as we do currently. We don't have an additional 6 full-time staffers, by the way, we have me and four others, and one added extra which is actually 3 people working part-time. all adds up to 6, in aggregate, in my head. I should have clarified this in the interview.
On the second point, you're quite correct. And further, I'm not sure what's "ambivalent" about us not allowing advertisers to make cessation claims, since that's more-or-less illegal. We're quite clear on this point: that they are sold as harm reduction and not for smoking cessation. Or perhaps we're not clear enough? It's hard to have an "editorial" position on a forum (rule no.1 of forums - everyone ignores the stickies!).
I looked at the rest of the site and it appears to be for a younger set than what I suspect most smokers/vapers are. If anything I think it'll peak curiosity more because younger viewers tend to be more tech savy than the mainstream.
Let's just say that the internet has been increasingly monitored for a variety of reasons and those sites just go private. Any 13 year olds knows that, where as a 50 year old might not. No big deal. There is no better advertising than word-of-mouth anyway and I've seen some sites increase in membership when they've gone private due to more sense of security from lurkers like this author.
Then he talks about the money and also states the New Members forum is the most popular with 20-30 visiting. LOL! It takes a lot more than that to make money from clicking ads! Just try it. And mods are paid? I'd be surprised. Most just do it for the love of something and the good feeling of helping out. Let's just skip the various reasons why mainstream never considers humans do that. However, the average reader under 30 yr old will spot these gapping holes and discredit the article - and probably check ECF out since that's the way it works with "puff pieces" now.
The quotes were unbelievable IMO.
Let's just say that the internet has been increasingly monitored for a variety of reasons and those sites just go private. Any 13 year olds knows that, where as a 50 year old might not. No big deal. There is no better advertising than word-of-mouth anyway and I've seen some sites increase in membership when they've gone private due to more sense of security from lurkers like this author.
Then he talks about the money and also states the New Members forum is the most popular with 20-30 visiting. LOL! It takes a lot more than that to make money from clicking ads! Just try it. And mods are paid? I'd be surprised. Most just do it for the love of something and the good feeling of helping out. Let's just skip the various reasons why mainstream never considers humans do that. However, the average reader under 30 yr old will spot these gapping holes and discredit the article - and probably check ECF out since that's the way it works with "puff pieces" now.
The quotes were unbelievable IMO.
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Take a look at that again. The 30 to 20 was refering to the average age, not number of.
How would that be known? I haven't seen serious demographic polling on ECF. I'd be surprised because there's too many ppl here not familiar with message boards, FB or the internet in general. Sometimes I feel like I've been pushed back 20 years and I'm old.
Still, I've seen sites with > 10,000 unique visits / day not make spare change.
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aikanae - 30 to 20 is not right, although I hesitate to say I was misquoted.
What I was trying to get at is that of our new visitors we've seen a shift in average age from 30s to 20s - this is from demographic profiling on our analytics , so take that how you will. Presenting this sort of data in a meaningful way is always difficult. We will do some polling on this when we do our big survey, some time next month.
We are running at about 1.5million uniques per month, fyi.
What I was trying to get at is that of our new visitors we've seen a shift in average age from 30s to 20s - this is from demographic profiling on our analytics , so take that how you will. Presenting this sort of data in a meaningful way is always difficult. We will do some polling on this when we do our big survey, some time next month.
We are running at about 1.5million uniques per month, fyi.
I found the article pretty insulting - "vape nerds" gets thrown about. Sounds like, from what you have said SmokeyJoe that a lot was taken out of context also.
Interesting read, however. If anything, whoever reads it who doesn't know about ECF may sign up.
1.5 MILLION hits per month. Now that is -scary-
Interesting read, however. If anything, whoever reads it who doesn't know about ECF may sign up.
1.5 MILLION hits per month. Now that is -scary-
Negative angles and negative coverage is going to be the norm, for the forseeable future.
Getting people to say "vaporizer" and "vaping" is a good first step, but it's only a small indicator of progress. Most will still be unconsciously thinking "[tobacco] cigarette" and "[tobacco] cigarette smoke."
Quite likely vapers will bear the full brunt of tobacco-cigarette legal, social, and economic stigma and restrictions long after there are practically no tobacco cigarette smokers left. "It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it."
Getting people to say "vaporizer" and "vaping" is a good first step, but it's only a small indicator of progress. Most will still be unconsciously thinking "[tobacco] cigarette" and "[tobacco] cigarette smoke."
Quite likely vapers will bear the full brunt of tobacco-cigarette legal, social, and economic stigma and restrictions long after there are practically no tobacco cigarette smokers left. "It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it."
And it's a ridiculous law (or rule, as the case may be), based on the brazenly anti-rational premise that smoking is a disease rather than a harmful habit. Yes, it makes sense that vendors of unregulated consumer products should be disallowed from making affirmative health claims ("eating this breakfast cereal will cure diabetes and improve sexual performance!") -- but should they be disallowed from making verifiable statements with respect to the relative health risks/benefits of their products versus others? A vegetable farmer can't mention, even in passing, that his product's better for your long-term health than chocolate cake?
The ecig isn't a cure for smoking, because smoking isn't a condition. Smoking is an activity, for which vaping is a replacement. I vape; ergo I can't smoke as often (or in my case, at all); ergo I am healthier. I haven't been cured of smoking; the ecig's cured me of the desire to use an inferior product, just as my Mazda could be said to have cured me of the desire to go buy a horse buggy.
I understand why ECF's policy is what it is, and I agree with it. My objection is to the situation that makes ECF's policy necessary. I think we should all keep in mind how preposterous that situation is. More importantly, we should all remind ourselves, often, of the dangerously arrogant public-health ideology responsible for our preposterous situation.
It's amazing how quickly the status quo, no matter how absurd, begins to feel normal.
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"Even the most rabid ANTZ orgs don't claim that vaping may be as dangerous as smoking tobacco cigarettes. That's a far cry from the milder boilerplate observation to the effect that "long term studies don't exist.""
Only Slantz will go that far.
Only Slantz will go that far.
The move is toward a younger audience. They watched (and laughed) about the old hippies sucking on those metal fake cigarettes 5 years ago, but they're not laughing now.
Thx for clearing that up. It paints a very different picture.
I thought the actual membership was apx 200,000. If so, that makes me feel like we're in a fish bowl with that many lurkers. I'm not sure strategy should be in an open forum.
I wasn't buying into the "attractive to teens" angle because the handful I'm around are "addicted" to txting and video games. Substances don't have the allure that they did when I was growing up. The best attention-getter is to tell them they can't have it.
ECF is doing an excellent job with trolls and spam, that's for sure.
I thought the actual membership was apx 200,000. If so, that makes me feel like we're in a fish bowl with that many lurkers. I'm not sure strategy should be in an open forum.
I wasn't buying into the "attractive to teens" angle because the handful I'm around are "addicted" to txting and video games. Substances don't have the allure that they did when I was growing up. The best attention-getter is to tell them they can't have it.
ECF is doing an excellent job with trolls and spam, that's for sure.
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