Smokers are now being attacked for being too good….
You really couldn’t make it up….
A “Research Study” (oh how I hate those words) in New Zealand has concluded that “The tobacco industry may be using websites such as YouTube to get around a ban on advertising cigarettes” (note the word “MAY” in that sentence).
How have they arrived at this conclusion? Well, the researchers searched for five tobacco brands on YouTube and analysed the first 20 pages of video clips containing any reference to the firms. They looked at 163 clips in total and concluded that “20 looked very professionally made” .
Evidence of well-made pro-tobacco videos onYouTube is, according to these people who really ought to get a proper job, “consistent with indirect marketing activity by tobacco companies or their proxies,”
How disappointed must they have been? All that time slaving over a hot pc looking at shed loads of evil…. and their smoking gun (excuse the pun) is …….that 20 pro-smoking videos on YouTube look great ?
Who is to say that these brilliant videos were NOT made by a number of motivated, gifted individuals, with a video camera and/or some editing equipment, sharing their passion with the wider world? Why is it that the quality/brilliance of the videos is taken to mean that they are bound to have been made by the tobacco giants or their ad agencies…. Have these people not checked out just how many brilliantly made, professional looking, videos are being put out there on YouTube these days?
Of course not, they are too busy looking for problems relating to tobacco. Get a life people.
It is no surprise to find of course that this, frankly laughable, report was funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand, and that one or more of the authors of this report has several anti-tobacco “reports” under their belt. Well that explains the conclusions….
Yep that’s it folks. A research study that proves nada – apart from the fact that a lot of people, passionate about smoking, make videos about their passion, and some are rather good at it shock horror – concludes that public health organisations should press YouTube to remove the videos on the grounds of copyright and/or offensiveness.
Copyright is the domain of the tobacco companies frankly. As for offensiveness… If it is genuinely offensive – oh I don’t know like forcing a puppy to smoke a cigarette for example – then I can see a reason for YouTube to remove it.. But if offensive is defined as those videos that health quango’s don’t like – then I trust YouTube will tell them where to go.
But some good may come of this….. I am thinking of emailing the authors of the research study – Lucy Elkin’, knilu381@student.otago.ac.nz , Dr George Thomson george.thomson@otago.ac.nz, Dr Nick Wilson nick.wilson@otago.ac.nz – asking if they wouldn’t mind posting links to the 20 videos that looked “very professionally made” so that we cant put them up on LV. Long live freedom of expression.
August 27th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
It would certainly be interesting to see which vids they are talking about.
August 27th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
ASH have a Facebook group which you click the “like” button. They have deleted me at least once now, due to the off message comments I post. Also Kate and Colin too. Finally me naming 4 World Cup winners who smoked when they collected their winners medals comment went under the censor’s mouse click.
Also there is a Facbook group called Monitoring Tobacco Advertising. Paranoid and/or bigotted its a Brave New World.
http://www.facebook.com/MonitoringTobaccoAdvertising?ref=search
August 27th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Wouldn’t surprise me if all of these “too good” videos were made by keen amateurs who are so pissed off with the nature of things that they end up putting far too much time and effort into their work. Case in point, I remember Hairy Chestnuts, maker of “The Anti-Smoking League” spoofs on Youtube was actually mentioned by the Godfather himself, ol’ Stanton Glantz, in a “research paper” on “Fronts for Big Tobacco”, complete with a photo of Hairy in full Nazi regalia to boot! Now, Hairy’s videos have music, extensive use of green screen etc, but he films the lot in his front room.
Again, the antis can’t envisage the creativity involved because they lack all imagination (hence their being neurotic, believe-anything drones) nor can they imagine anyone putting hours of work into something without getting paid or funded to do it.
This paper – that tellingly says nothing at all in itself, actually says more about anti-smokers than it does about Big Tobacco. Mindless drones….
August 27th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
I have not included my surname as it is a brand of cigarette and I don’t want to be accused of belonging to the tobacco industry.
August 27th, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Dave…i noticed on the BBC website that ASH were quick off the mark to condemn the tobacco industry for using the web to spread their message. Without question concerning the quality of the research. They show themselves to be hysterical scream merchants and nothing more…no calm analysis.. No qualifcations.. No qustion about the validity of the particular study in question. Just mad ranting. It is surely about time that govt funding ..either direct or indirect is pulled on such lunatic fringe groups.
August 27th, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Dick . I agree . Show me these brilliant videos…I want to see them… Broadcast them… Create an awards event to celebrate genius… Any sponors willinng to fund please email Liberal Vision.
November 11th, 2010 at 10:44 pm
ASH are doing a pretty good job of alienating the moderate non-smokers out there. Their nonsensical finger wagging does them no favours
February 17th, 2011 at 4:15 pm
I totally agree with what you have mentioned. In reality, I browsed throughout your various other articles and I do think you are absolutely right. Best wishes with this blog.