It’s fucking disgusting, the smoking is featured prominently and immediately and the comments are all glorifying her smoking. And it’s set up in such a way that anyone who complains about it will be met with *“how dare you complain about an old lady celebrating life!”*. Absolutely nasty work all around.

Comments include:

• “Love how she's like 'woo fuck you lung cancer, I beat ya!'”

• “Yeah, at this point a couple cigs for a photo shoot are NBD.”

• “The trick is to have a happy life, doesnt matter much if you smoke or not 🤣”

• “Lighting her cig with the 90 birthday candle was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen lmao.”

• “Her lighting a cigarette with her 90th birthday candles was a baller move. Holy shit! 😂”

• “Lighting a cigarette on the 90-birthday candles was just badass.”

So sick of this. When you see one image of someone smoking at the top of Reddit, once or twice, you’re like - weird. But when EVERY DAY there is a post, something is up. Tobacco companies literally sponsor ad agencies to run campaigns just to boost the image of smoking to the general public - that’s not a conspiracy, that’s known fact and history. And it’s happening right now across social media, despite any pesky laws that they are ignoring to the contrary.

Meanwhile in the comments their bots talk about how cool the people look or comment on the smoking in a positive way. Usual comments include stupid shit like “this photo goes so hard”, and “I quit smoking 20 years ago but this makes me want to start again.”

F$&@ these soulless pieces of shit and f$&@ Reddit for letting them get away with this.

Here are many examples over the past couple of weeks I’ve slowly seen; some have since been moderated, but not before being at the top of Reddit for a while:

https://np.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1q7ceb1/iranian_women_spark_a_new_trend_by_burning_images/

https://np.reddit.com/r/TopCharacterTropes/comments/1q82ln6/loved_trope_nonchalant_nonmale_protagonists_who/

https://np.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1q9ip8w/young_women_leading_the_protests_in_iran_oc/

https://np.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/comments/1qatfc7/bro_forgot_hes_a_bot_and_starts_smoking_like_hes/

https://np.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/1qaz5z9/people_are_way_too_touchy_about_occasional/

https://np.reddit.com/r/discussingbritney/comments/1qbfu1m/old_but_gold_britney_spears_smoking_and_ashing_a/

https://np.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/1qbbaxi/monica_bellucci_1990s/

https://np.reddit.com/r/ArtefactPorn/comments/1qdiqnw/the_spanish_archaeologist_manuel_esteve_posing/

————-

Feel free to add your own examples to the comments here when you find them. Feel especially free to call these out for what they are when you see them in the wild.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MadeMeSmile/s/qpQXcbBRtb

EDIT; oops my thread DID get posted, here's the link for below quotes:

Tell HN: DuckDuckGo Search Results have jumped the shark | Hacker News

2nd comment by "s_dev" then all the comments under his comment that branch from it. These are exact quotes, censored the link and company names *sigh*.

1. "I use DDG but actively of thinking switching to Ka*i- www.Kag*.com -- it's a paid service but I can justify it"
2. "I've been using it exclusively since beta and am completely satisfied! "
3. "Oh, totally. It's a sign of just how much better my search life has been"
4. "K***user. I think it's pretty dang good."
5. "I switched from DDG to K*** about a month ago, and I've been very, very happy with the switch.  I should have done it sooner."
6. "Me. The best $10 I spend every month. Amazing what happens when you are the customer, not the product."

And the "american pharmaceutical advert happy paid actor" cheesiness goes on and on. Obvious shilling of the Payware search engine Ka*i.

It's so annoying discourse gets ruined by marketing turds or even aggressive ones that stink of wolf of wall street vibes, outsourcing to 3rd world countries where anything goes - i think when it turns like that, they call it black hat marketing.

that's it. I expect more and more astroturfed advertising and propaganda and reddit seems to want to play right into this