Katonik, most of this is not a direct response to anything you have personally said.
It's dumb to treat it like smoking, but if people choose to be ignorant, aggravating them with trying to change their opinions will not help matters either.
It's not about people
choosing to be ignorant about e-cigs, they
are ignorant about e-cigs. Guess what, they aren't
wrong to be ignorant about them. The big problem I have is with vapers who somehow think that some guy on the street not knowing anything about e-cigs is somehow at fault. That's crap, plain and simple, and is a very poor attitude for the vaper to have.
If I am just some guy, or better yet a protective mother, standing in a public place where smoking is prohibited and some guy in front of me blows out a plume of what appears to be smoke, how is she supposed to react? Just because she doesn't actually say anything to the vaper about it (which is much more likely caused by a reluctance of conflict than disinterest or tacit approval) doesn't mean that she isn't concerned about it.
How is she
wrong for not identifying the plume of "smoke" as relatively harmless (we hope) vapor? She's not.
If someone here walks through their local Wal-Mart openly vaping away without a care in the world and without explicit permission from the manager to do so, they are being inconsiderate. Period. The fact that "no one said anything" doesn't change anything.
I am all for politely educating others about PVs and I am all for vaping in non-smoking establishments with permission. I also don't have a problem with stealth vaping in public places because 1) I don't believe that the vape is harmful, 2) the vapor dissipates very quickly and 3) no one is being offended by it. It's this all-too-common "I'll vape where I want to and if they don't like it then too bad" attitude I see on display all too often that I do have a problem with.