Huge fan of the ’stack here. I appreciate your balanced coverage of hanging out. Unfortunately, I think you’ve missed something major. I’m writing, of course, about Zyn.
Back in ’21, I wrote what may have been the first article to identify “yacking” as a potential side-effect of Zyn. In the years since, my own relationship to the drug has gone from dry, cool, and detached, to moist, cool mint, and embodied. Over that period, I’ve watched as Zyn has completely disrupted hanging out.
Basically, my take is this: By enabling users to safely slurp down their own nicotine-tainted saliva, Zyn has effectively democratized dip. It has scrambled everything we thought we knew about the people who voluntarily ingest nicotine through their gums; with whom they’re liable to share their mouth treats; and where this might seem like a good idea.
Another crazy thing about Zyn is that you can rip it discreetly. You never know anymore when someone is going insane in the mucus membrane. The pros can nurse a pouch for hours, undetected, sipping cocktails and eating Doritos as the wintergreen nicotine dribbles into their bloodstream. Novices might show cheek bulge or start hiccuping uncontrollably. Still, sometimes the only way to tell if someone is Zyning is if they start saying completely out-of-pocket shit.
But these are just hypotheses. Hanging out is literally your job. Give me the download on Zyn and social dynamics. And I’ll respond with quotes from the medical literature.
HK:
Let me cut through the noise here. The only important hang-out implications of nicotine at parties are the following:
1) Will it facilitate meeting a potential lover?
2) will it put you in a riffing mindset?
3) Will it boost your overall swag.
1) Facilitating Love / Lust / S
First of all, cigarettes are like little penises.
RS: ……
HK: Second of all, I first watched the HBO show Entourage in the back of an RV in 7th grade when my dad was driving me and my brother across the country. There is an episode where “E” one of the main characters is trying to quit smoking cigarettes but then an astronomically hot girl asks if he wants to go smoke a cigarette and he says yes. I remember being like “i hope that happens to me one day.” Obviously meeting a lover while using nicotine is the gold standard of being alive.
2) Getting you in the Zone to Riff:
I’ve never done Zyn but I heard it makes you feel insane. Stuff that can make you yack does have a tendency of also being fun to do at parties.
3) Boosting your swag
An anecdote that i return to around this type of stuff is that when I was in college there was one guy who was extremely early to the Juul trend. He was slothing around the pre-game asking if anyone had a spare outlet he could ‘plug his juul into’ months before anyone else. It is no accident, I believe, that he was also the first guy I ever saw with a ‘fidget spinner’.
There is an undeniable negative S-curve relationship between swag and innovation in the nicotine space.
Thus, my rating:
RS:
Though I don't count myself among them, I can empathize with Zyn users. They are early adopters of new technology. I am a Waymo rider after all. This, like many of our discussions, comes down to techno-optimism.
I believe that new technology can be used for all sorts of shit we haven’t even thought about yet. This means I am frequently in techno optimistic settings where I hear about the newest and latest innovations. I see your cigs, zyns, vapes, and dip. I’ll raise you my OOKA:
The OOKA is the Keurig of smoking. Drop a (nicotine-free) pod in there and you’ve got up to 6 hours of oral fixation that’s a little bit less bad for you. You can even purchase the special backpack and bring it to parties.
HK: Ben, we’ve thrown a lot at you…what's landing? While you answer I’ll try to decide where this bizarre nicotine gizmo fits in my rankings…
BS:
This is all super helpful. I think what remains to be discussed is, is Zyn fascist?
When someone whips out the Zyn tin, things could go either way. Is the Zynner irredeemably bro-y or unexpectedly edgy? Is he disgusting or… kinda hot? Is he turning his friends into nicotine addicts or offering them a lifesaving harm reduction device? The literature is inconclusive.
HK:
You know Ben, this whole week as we’ve been writing this piece i’ve been hitting a wall when it comes to trying to get fired up about Zyn. The packaging isn’t ugly, the name is kinda fun, its not annoying to be around a zyn user. It is complete aesthetic neutrality. I’m starting to wonder if that actually is by design.
Is it possible that the overlords behind zyn saw what happens when a nicotine substitute gets too lit? Did they see the regulatory Icarus arch of mango juul pods, and elf bars, and four loco, and (hopefully) TikTok? Did they note that once 12-year-olds start making their Xbox username stuff like thaJuultheif_GayNineEleven or whatever, the next step is their product gets banned?
If that’s true then 1- zyn is fascist and 2 zyn is fucked
The Zynsurrection