Me personally? I’ve become much less tolerant of sexist humor. Back in the day, cracking a joke at women’s expense was pretty common when I was a teen. As I’ve matured and become aware to the horrific extent of toxicity and bigotry pervading all tiers of our individualistic society, I’ve come to see how exclusionarly and objectifying that sort of ‘humor’ really is, and I regret it deeply.
smoking. growing up in the 80s, everyone was smoking - in bars, restaurants, airplanes, even hospitals.
everyone I knew, their parents smoked tobacco or chewed tobacco. I started smoking myself, around 16 or so, as did all of my friends & even people I didn’t associate with. it was just part of the culture - and yes, I was aware at the time that it was a dangerous activity, but kids are stupid.
and then around 15 years ago or so everyone stopped or switched to vaping. now I really only see homeless people smoking. it’s quite the culture shift.
I live in Germany. A fourth of men smoke. They started prohibiting smoking in public places and restaurants at some point and then stopped for some reason. The neighbour below me smokes like a chimney on his balcony and the smoke goes right through my windows. It’s 37C during the day and I can’t air my apartment out at night. It’s disgusting.
My neighbours have protruding balcony, just beside my living room window. I swear there must be some chimney effect taking place when they smoke, because it seems like all the smell is sucked right into my living room.
Definitely depends on the crowd nowadays. I personally see about a 50/50 split between smoking vs vaping among people in the restaurant industry, and those of us who don’t do either are definitely the minority. Hopefully tabacco/nicotine products will stop being socially acceptable someday, but I can’t imagine it’s going to be any time soon with how popular vaping is.
Come to the Midwest. A crazy number of people smoke here, like straight up cancer sticks smoke. I moved here from Florida, where I felt like you: was a low class thing of the past. In Missouri the booze is cheap and the tobacco plentiful. It’s wild.
I feel like the more depressed the economy, the greater the chance that a particular place is a antiquated blast from the past. Years and years ago (2000s) my friends and I took a local road trip to Ford City outside of Pittsburgh. When we got there, there were street lights on, there was a neoclassical town hall building, but not a single car on the road or person on the streets besides us. We went into a bar, and there was NOTHING to indicate that we were in the year 200X. The bar was a time capsule from the early 80s. The TV was old and was playing old reruns, the decor was various shades of brown, yellow marbled glass lights above a pool table. A BUCKET of beer bottles cost $1 and a burger and fries cost $1. It was utterly surreal being in this place - it was the closest thing to a Twilight Zone experience I’ve ever had.
I know two adults who smoke cigarettes now. At 25 maybe half of my friend group smoked and 25 years later none of my friends do and those two guys are from work.