Instructions for use
Please keep these instructions for use to yourself, because they could damage the image of the website. You can already see how miserable the text is – so please think twice before you read so much. You can still go back!
Very well, then. Since you're here anyway, we'll make the best of the situation.
Seriously, on behalf of the operator of this website (hereinafter "the operator"), first of all, thank you for visiting this website and possibly even for spending some time on it. Your visit is a small part of promoting the site - and its continued existence and popularity are the site's best interests. If you want to do more for them, take a look at this page.
How did this website come about and what are its goals?
Long before this website and before the book "Start Smoking ..." there was a category "smoker's corner" on an old website of the operator with ironic texts about smoking. The contents of this category were to form the ideal basis for the book many years later. This in turn formed the basis for the creation of this website.
A clear goal of this website is to stimulate you to buy the book as expensively and as often as possible, and to encourage you to buy other books or products on this website, if they ever become available ... would want. Yes, that's it, now it's out!
Not that the operator could accuse himself of being particularly good at hiding this intention from you on the website - nevertheless, we want to talk openly and get everything out on the table. In short, do not insinuate purely altruistic motives into the website. That would be as laudable of you as it would be naive.
Another aim of the website is to entertain like-minded people who enjoy black humour. It is also aimed at smokers with a certain readiness for self-irony and self-reflection. Well, this goal may contribute to the achievement of the first one, so you can also consider it a subgoal.
If the website finally succeeds in making a small contribution to reducing (smoking-related) suffering or even preventing it from arising in the first place by initiating some smokers or prospective smokers and initiating some internal processes that would ultimately lead to smoking being stopped or not even started... this made them totally happy, the website. So be sure to let them know if there is any evidence for this - or even against it - and use the feedback page.
But all this also means: It is not the primary goal of this site to consider the feelings of (sick) smokers - simply because, in the opinion of the operator, such a goal would run the risk of competing with the previously mentioned goals. However, this does not mean that the aim is to hurt any feelings.
This website is intended to be an effort to fight the causes of smoking and to try to turn smokers back, not a symptom relief website.
People in pictures and videos on this website
It is absolutely far from the website to ridicule people who have fallen ill from smoking (unless this emotional injury would ultimately have lasting positive effects on those affected). This includes the people in the linked videos. It is hard to imagine the suffering of the individual people who all wished they could have turned back time and never picked up a cigarette. Every smoker should be aware of this.
These people deserve our respect for making themselves available for anti-smoking campaigns or for videos to show other smokers the tragic consequences smoking can have. Whether the diseased smokers "are themselves to blame" for their suffering or not, they deserve our sympathy, not our ridicule. We all make mistakes - only their effects are of varying degrees of severity.
The fact that certain texts on this website can very well be called mocking or derisive has simply pragmatic reasons (see Goals), not cynical ones. The texts address the reader, not the person in the video or picture. The hope is that behind the sarcasm the reflective reader will realize the bitterly evil truth.
There is so much suffering in the world, we don't have to contribute to it becoming even more. Make yourself aware of this as a smoker.
One more hint: in case you have watched the video at the bottom of the Electrolarynx page, possibly several times, and felt a slight guilty conscience when smiling:
1: It honors you.
2: In retrospect, it turned out that the video is simply a well-done satire. That means that if you can still laugh about it now, you can do it even more fervently.
So, if you want to communicate anything about the website, please use the feedback page already introduced and especially make active use of the recommendation page!
Thank you!
Your operator.