There have been, like, five societal things that have improved since the 90s, and banning smoking in basically all public spaces is one of them.
I can’t even imagine air travel before the smoking ban. Mega yuck.
I’ve lived through both eras.
Take all the tech companies away from the far-right, raise taxes on the wealthy, break up the media monopolies, overturn citizens united, ensure one full-time income can support a small family, restore actual journalism, make universities places for education and research again….
And you can smoke wherever the fuck you want. Do it in my living room for all I care.
Sorry, but this is a really ableist take. Not everyone is healthy enough to tolerate secondhand smoke; I would rather live in a literal 1984-style dictatorship than somewhere that smoking everywhere was normalized. There’s not a political system out there worse than feeling like you have the flu every day for the rest of your life.
RIGHT, your comfort is what’s most important. Blocked. 😀
Okay then.
Are you perchance a race and gender that hasn’t historically been persecuted under fascism? There are a few things worse than a flu.
I think you’re underestimating the flu a bit there. Pretty hard to fight the power when you struggle to remain upright. At least if you’re healthy under fascism there’s, like, a chance things will get better. I can’t imagine a fate worse than being sick all the time and unable to do anything about it because, ya know, you’re too sick to do anything about it.
If you can’t imagine a fate worse than that go read a history book
Also smoking bans are so usa centric. Going to Europe is insane because they are so insanely rude with how they smoke compared to the usa
I remember flying into Germany in '06 and being able to light up anywhere in the airport, went back in '13 or '14 and they had little booths.
I was in Germany in the early 00s and I hard associated the Frankfurt airport with the smell of smoke. Went back a few years ago and I almost didn’t recall things because that olfactory link wasn’t there anymore.
Wiiiide variety over Europe. You gotta specify
I’ve been in a good few European countries and it hadn’t differed in any.
Oh I guess that covers all of 'em then.
The UK has very little smoking in public.
Germany had a shit-ton, though it has decreased quite a bit.
It was enough of them that I felt comfortable making a generalization
Depends where, and sometimes it varies wildly in the same country.
Hamburg, I didn’t see a single smoker. Berlin, fucking rife with them
Not just US. A few years back japan banned it in restaurants (but not bars) and public buildings unless there’s an actual smoking room in them.
Japan’s smoking situation has gotten so much better over the last few decades. Which is good, because it used to be everywhere.
Continental Europe maybe but as a Briton it’s pretty shit to be a smoker here. Extremely expensive unless you go black market, you have to stand outside in the pissing rain in virtually all cases, and people can be very judging about it.
Source: ex smoker
I recall reading that in some ways air quality was better when smoking in airplanes was legal because they had to cycle air through the outside through ventilation systems.
Now they don’t so the air is more stagnant and circulates germs etc.
I have no idea if that’s actually the case, or if so, if that’s actually better. But it was a point I hadn’t considered.
In hindsight, it feels like the sort of “study” that a tobacco company would put out. Like a petrol company funding one that says “climate change is good actually!”
It’s not like anything was stopping the airlines from continuing to run the ventilation systems even after smoking was banned on flights.
But think about poor old $$$
Literally everything. You know credit scores were invented by boomers?!
Man it’s almost like as soon as banks were legally required to stop discriminating against women and black folks, they invented backdoor methods of accomplishing it
You know Boomers didn’t have credit scores until after they had GenX and Millennials? Boomers didn’t grow up with as much red tape as we do
*if they were white
And male
Yeah women didn’t have bank accounts without a “hubby”
So now we see where we went wrong? /s
Yeah, women should have gotten their rights much earlier.
Not that it should have to be either or, but I’ll take less leg room over their gross smoke-filled cabin any day.
It’s going to be standing seats before too long. All the airline CEOs have been drooling over those for years.
It’ll probably radically shift to laying down. They’ve wanted to bring this seating arrangement back for a lot longer
A Canadian comedy site on CBC radio had a fake story about how flights could get cheaper if people stood for the entire flight.
Hundreds of listeners from Alberta and Western Canada called in to support the idea.
Bonus points: they simply wont take you if you are above a certain weight.
I remember being shown pictures like this in school as a kid and the images have never left my mind.
Fully crossing a fucking ocean like that.
Humans are the fucking worst.
Do like the standing roller coasters! Then we can just use AI to fly the planes (no need for high cost/high stressed pilots). If the AI flies like shit, everyone is already secured with metal shoulder thingies to keep from flying (pun intended) all over the cabin.
But how to deal with bathroom breaks? Mandatory catheters! The cost of “sanitizing” between flights surely isn’t that much, and if people refuse - they can be held liable for any accidents.
/s
They’ll sometimes hand you a small off brand clorox wipe to clean of the catheter before you use it
Banning smoking on planes is NOT a fumble
Omg yes. I am old enough to remember the tail end of the period when smoking was still allowed on planes and JFC it was awful. They had a smoking “section” but it was still an open cabin so you could smell smoke everywhere. And if you were in the same or next row as a smoker you couldn’t escape it for the whole flight. Flying sucks now, but removing smoking is absolutely an upgrade.
People who are too young or, frankly, not thinking hard enough really do romanticise what the world was like when people could smoke fucking everywhere because people really did smoke fucking everywhere. Restaurants and pubs had a visible smog in the air, the odor permiated all flavours and everything was slightly sticky unless it was wiped clean a few minutes before. Being trapped on a bus with a bunch of smokers was nightmarish enough, but being at the back of a plane - the cheap seats - where air was very, very slowly circulated front to back was hell, especially for asthmatics.
your clothes stunk unless you hung them out the next day. Disgusting addiction.
Now everything smells like Green Apple.
So now we’re complaining about the enshittification of everything driven by the need to maximize profit in a capitalist system and blaming it on our grandparents? More divisive intergenerational warfare bullshit. If you want to find who to blame for this shit look at the capitalists demanding more and more profit from airlines, manufacturers, literally every part of the economy. It always comes down to class war.
Is this really enshittification?
Prior to the deregulation of the airlines under Carter, the federal government fixed all domestic airfares. Airlines could not compete against each other on price and could only compete on perks. Flying was insanely expensive. NY to LA was $820 in today’s dollars and you couldn’t just shop around airlines for a better price, while you can get the same flight for less than $240 now.
It’s not like flying got shittier while also getting more expensive. Flying is cheaper than it ever has been. The perks went down, sure. But so did the price. By a LOT.
Not really disagreeing with you, but I was curious if that $240 includes all the crazy fees they tack on now.
Yeah that is all in, fare, fees, and taxes. Flying is dirt cheap lol.
I feel like it should be expensive because of the externalized costs , but I don’t have any real data for that
They call them “externalized costs” specifically because they can ignore them. Things like pollution don’t cost a firm money in a measurable way unless they’re carbon taxed or something like that.
long distance calls from airplanes were $5 a minute.
Thank you. I’m always having to point out that boomers haven’t been voting significantly more conservative than liberal, and younger generations haven’t been voting significantly more liberal than conservative. It’s a stereotype, and an incorrect one. In fact, in 2024, GenX voted more conservative than boomers did.
Am I crazy or does the image you post directly contradict what your comment says? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
Like it almost seems like you got the what the red and blue represent swapped entirely in your mind? Like you’ve somehow read it backwards of something.
If you look at the 2024 election numbers there is barely a red margin for boomers (65+). It’s men 50+ that have a significantly larger likelihood to vote Republican.
Boomers are older than 50. They’re included in that group.
The youngest boomers were born in 1964 (the last year of that generation), so they were 60 for the 2024 election. So yes, there a little overlap because the poll age ranges aren’t exactly the same as the generational ones, but the older boomers would be 70, so mostly in that bottom bar.
Yes, the bottom bar that also went for Trump based on the chart.
The only bottom bar that didn’t go to Trump is women 50+, and they went +1% toward D.
Every other boomer cohort goes right (weirdly, to the left on the chart which is why I suspect it’s been read incorrectly).
I said that they haven’t been voting significantly more conservative than liberal. There’s this notion that Republicans won because boomers so vote red, and younger generations all voting blue don’t quite offset them. The reality is that, while more boomers voted red than blue, the difference isn’t huge, and younger generations aren’t all overwhelmingly blue either.
This post misses two aspects: flying used to be an expensive luxury, only, and smoking on flights was fucking disgusting.
People don’t remember that the whole world used to smell like cigarettes.
Ever go to a casino in Las Vegas? Like that, but everywhere all the time.
Do they allow smoking inside at Las Vegas? I always wanted to go there. Not anymore if that’s the case
Yeah, you’re not going to find casino floors (with some minimal exceptions) smoke free in Vegas. Chain smoking slot grannies are like a majority of their revenue.
While your playing at the low risk $10 a hand blackjack table, Margaret is over there on the penny slot machine with her pile of cigarette butts betting $12 a spin, and spinning 100 times before your hand is over.
Not sure, but even if they don’t any more. It might still just smell.
Can’t get that out easily without ripping up every carpet/fabric.
Even their airport smells like cigarettes. Honestly, the LV airport is the nastiest, dirtiest one I’ve ever seen (and not in a good way, lol)
the one thing i remember from the last time i was there was the penny slots at the departure gates… they literally want you to leave every cent you have behind
The world used to smell like Easter Europe
Ftfy
Used to? Oh you naive summer child.
Dude I’m 26 and got to smell the dying drag of that era. It doesn’t smell nearly as much like cigarettes, at least in my neck of the woods in SoCal don’t know how much the Finns or Franks smoke so mayhaps it’s different elsewhere.
Not everywhere are people so polite and kind. EVERYONE here lights up. People smoke in cafe’s, I cant eat in a burger place without smoke forcing me to cough.
They laugh at me for coughing, I’m allergic to the stuff.
It’s not out of kindness, it’s laws that many cities and states passed in the 00s to ban smoking in various places (and eventually everywhere indoors altogether in most places).
I think it’s a state and local level thing here though, so it’s going to vary by location. I’m referring to the US if it wasn’t clear.
I think it’s less so a matter of politeness or kindness and moreso because one of the few great projects within the US over the last 50 years was the war on smoking. From the banning of smoking adverts to the anti-smoking PSAs of the late 00s and 2010s there’s been a consistent push against cigarettes specifically, also it’s expensive with high taxes noone has the cash for that.
How did this even happen in America of all places anyway? I’d 100% vote for it here.
A mix of the collapse of the tabaco lobby, economics, and a general cultural trend away from addictive narcotics since it’s also affecting alcohol. Also I suspect the broad decriminalization of weed and it’s general cultural acceptance probably helps.
Saying naive summer child is redundant. Summer child means naive.
They used to have a lounge with a bar on the airplane. With smoking inside. Would you even notice a 6 hour flight? 2 martinis and a stop by the mile high club and you’re already at LAX
What’s the mile high club?
Ask your mum
She’s too busy getting fucked in an airplane shitter.
When you engage in coitus at altitude, typically on an aircraft.
It’s not a place or group, it’s an interval of time. Approximately 15 seconds.
Snoop Doggs private jet.
I mean enshittification doesn’t just affect software and internet. It works the same way elsewhere too: create demand for a product by making it high quality, once everything is structured around that product so that it can not be easily removed from society, enshittify it by significantly reducing quality while keeping most of the profit because now everything is shaped around your product.
Also, the company is allowed to absorb the competition to the point where no new players can compete for that market
My stepfather was a lifelong smoker. He smoked a full pack of Marlboro reds every day, and my mom smoked a full pack of menthols. I calculated out how much they spent yearly on cigarettes alone and it came to over $5000, and that was in the late 90’s; it’s probably much higher these days. Both of them had been smoking since the 70’s.
When I talked to them about quitting, they both said that they enjoyed smoking too much, it’s a stress relief, it’s something to do, etc. They were aware of the health risks, but believed the risks were overblown and that emphysema is an “old person’s” disease.
Last year he was diagnosed with stage 3 emphysema. The man is a dyed-in-the-wool hard-as-nails army vet boomer, and his obstinate machismo made him ignore years of poor health and lung disease symptoms all to finally end up as an old person with an “old person’s” disease. Credit to him though, he did quit cold turkey the day his doctors delivered the diagnosis; the same obstinacy that pushed him to never give up smoking is what pushed him to quit. Me and my family love the hell out of him, and we’re glad that he finally quit, but it’s so aggravating that there are still so many people out there who discount the risks of smoking.
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In my country there were ads that showed a smoker who had emphysema as part of an anti-smoking campaign.
They described it like taking a deep breath and then exhaling just a small puff, then inhaling that puff and repeating forever until you die.
Sorry for your stepfathers diagnosis.
Every time sometime says they smoke a pack (if not more) a day, it blows my mind.
That’s twenty cigarettes. I mean Jesus Christ people, like how??
I’ve never been able to make it through a full cigarette before feeling nauseous and putting it out.
I’m aware how tolerance works, but 20 cigarettes every day just seems insane to me.
I mean there’s a huge reason for the loss of luxury on planes that everyone conveniently forgets
Planes were EXPENSIVE, they were a luxury, and around the latter part of the 80s they figured out how to reduce the price. Tickets went from $500 to $50 for the exact same 1 hour flights to the exact same locations.
There’s a reason Ryanair became an instant success. People want to pay nothing for services rendered.
It’s not just that, they figured out a factory line that made the production cost of planes drastically drop too
They’re still not cheap to produce, but they went from exorbitantly expensive, might only have 10-25 flights per day to an airport has 1000s of flights per day
“We had it all” is the message some people get from “you could never get away from the bloody cigarette smoke”?
If you were on a plane they had food you didn’t have to pay an arm and a leg for, they’d even do kosher and vegetarian options. Before that they would just give you something else you usually had to buy. The message is “boomers bitch and moan about how hard they worked when they had it easier than any generation before or since, especially white American boomers-they were handed luxury goods for free!”
No, you did have to pay an arm and a leg before entering the plane instead, and then you couldn’t even opt out of the toxic smoke that OP is finding so great.
All the post does is glorifying the past, like many boomers also like to do.
And the average ticket was far more money back then as well. It was an event. You spent all that money so you dressed up for it. That’s the difference between a luxury and a commodity.
Prices were also regulated and fixed by the federal government. The federal government through the Civil Aeronautics Board set ALL domestic flight fares based on a fixed distance calculation.
Airlines literally couldn’t compete on price, so they competed on perks.
In 1977, just prior to the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, the average round trip domestic flight was ~$135. That’s about $746 today. Round trip NY to LA was $148.20, or $820 today. Just looking at google flights for the next 6 months, The cheapest I can find pretty consistently for the same route is $239, and the highest I see is around Thanksgiving and Christmas for around $540.
Call it enshittification, call it whatever. Flying is so much more accessible and cheaper than ever. And that has its benefits and drawbacks. The drawback is that people now look at price first and foremost and are generally unwilling to pay more for the perks beyond a little more legroom. The benefit is that it’s ridiculously easy to just pack a backpack and go on a weekend trip across the country for dirt cheap.
The drawback is that people now look at price first and foremost and are generally unwilling to pay more for the perks beyond a little more legroom.
The bigger drawback would be the enviromental damage but I get where you’re going.
Well, yeah I’m just talking from a consumer standpoint.
Total global aviation only accounts for 2.5-3% of global CO2 emissions. Energy generation is 74-75% of global CO2 emissions. There are much bigger fish to fry on emissions.
Not disagreeing in general, but under a “fixed distance calculation” a NYC-LAX flight would have been quite expensive but today it’s driven more by market efficiency and NYC-LAX is one of the most market-efficient flights so they can charge less per seat. You might get different results comparing something like LAX-Des Moines or NYC-Little Rock. Or maybe not.
Lead is a helluva drug.
Restrictions on in-flight smoking started in '88, when the oldest boomers were 43 and the youngest were
1424. The Greatest Generation were the ones who smoked like chimneys.The youngest boomers were about 25 not 14 in 1988.
You’re right, 24. My point still stands though
It also used to be obscenely more expensive to fly
you weren’t getting the equivalent of ryanairs £13 gatwick to holland flights
Prices to fly seem pretty obscene right now tbf. Transatlantic over $700 per seat round trip at my last look.
even with the recent uptick in prices it’s still a lot cheaper than it used to be
https://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/history-of-flight-costs
