Cigs & The Return of Zoomer Nihlism

(NEW YORK, NY) – Rejoice! For something has overtaken American popular culture, in the street corners, hidden in the lyrics of some of the most popular songs of this year’s summer, something embedded in last year’s popular excuse for a party (otherwise known as “brat summer”). The American Cigarette culture has returned in full force, once again, the cool kids smoke cigs, bum a different type of f*gs, and don’t care about lung cancer (or even invite it). As seen in other popular magazines and cultural commentary, the nihilistic ideal of the popular disillusioned youth smoking a cigarette and ashing it out by stepping on the street has returned. Instead of disgusting, repulsive, and stupidly dangerous, cigarettes look cool again- and the vape has returned to the dark abyss of looking stupid, being unpopular, and tasting too damn sweet. 

The return of the cigarette (much to the joy of Gen X smokers) is also in line with another thing, something far more dangerous, far more stupid, and way less cool- the return of the American smoker, in my mind, is concomitant with the return of disillusioned nihilism. While I’m all for a good smoke, I have previously written on this website that "nihilism is the coward’s way out” and I stand by the statement with my whole soul. Nihilism, and its root cause, disillusionment, are the folly of youth, the easy to digest analysis of culture and government that allows for young people to waste away their vital voices and votes and is what allows for the result of low youth participation in democracy, and allows for highly motivated groups (like in 2024, republican zoomers) to overtake the youth vote. 

Nihilism is still the coward’s way out- we do not need the non-chalant and unenthusiastic coolness of Gen X to make a comeback, we need a new greatest generation. The time that we live in calls for the return of some sense of absolute morality (to the chagrin of my own morally relativist self), we cannot allow for Nazis and Fascists to take over the American government in any further capacity that they already have, we need a Greater Generation to rise up to the occasion and undermine the autocratic and plutocratic goals of the Trump Administration. We must not allow for the return of the glorious cigarette to herald the return to a more nefarious era of active refrain from participation in the democratic engine of America. We instead need a generation that is, in line with the events of Los Angeles (L.A.), to rise up when things are wrong, call out that what we see today in Trump’s administration is not jsut not normal, but in fact the beginning stages of a fascistic take over of the American Government and the beginning of the destruction of the American democratic state, and the dissolution of American liberal democratic institutions. 

We must not allow the rise of cigarettes to herald the fall of American democracy, instead, we must allow the lit ends of our cigs to light the fire that forces Mr. Trump to leave office for the last time, and ensure that he never comes back. We must smoke and look cool while establishing a new liberal democratic apparatus and socialist economic state. 

Moral of the story: be cool and fight fascists while smoking your cigs