The age of vapes, mocktails, and Beyond Meat

Jul 01, 2024

The Covid era ushered in a cry for us to stay at home and minimize social contact with the goal of stopping the spread of the virus. This was a calculation that concluded that socialization – be it through interpersonal hangouts, in-person schooling, community worship, and sports – were not as important as stopping people from getting an infectious respiratory illness. This was a tradeoff: the forms of socialization I listed have positive health outcomes like better mental health, particularly in youth, as well as the physical benefits from regular sports participation. But we decided this tradeoff was worth it, partly because the powers that be and institutions around us attempted to find synthetic replacements for these kinds of socialization: online school. Zoom calls. Online fitness classes and home workouts. Watching livestreamed Church.

Of course, these all missed various crucial elements of these activities. Home workouts do not bring the same community and camaraderie that one may experience at the gym, nor does livestreamed Church. Online school was correlated with a decline in educational quality, and mental health issues among youth.

Essentially, the synthetic replacements attempted to be just like the real thing, but much was lost on the front of socialization and community.

The Metaverse is the culmination of this direction. It is an entire universe where one exists and interacts with others through a fake body and fake environment. There are no risks of contracting any other viruses here. You also don’t have to leave your bed for your dose of interaction, nor put any effort into your appearance given that you do not appear as you physically look in such a medium.

I have since noticed that there are other components in our social trends that embody this kind of safetyism or health promotion. We have attempted to make fake or synthetic versions of previously more “risky” activities, but without the true feeling of abstinence. That is, we still try to have the real thing, but of course; worse.

I am writing this on a train in Portugal. As I have walked its streets, I have noticed a great deal of socializing happen through cigarette smoking. Often times, I see workers taking breaks smoking with each other. Other times, I see people stepping out of bars to have cigarettes with another friend that smokes.

This is a much rarer site where I’m from in Canada, where the vape is a far more popular method of “smoke” consumption.

Vaping, when it first came on the scene, seemed to be a tool to help smokers quit smoking through a “healthier” alternative. But now it is also a staple in our social landscape as something attempting to be less harmful than a cigarette. Importantly, it is also something less offensive than a cigarette: vapes have a far less harsh smell and the vapour does not travel as smoke travels. The vape can be smoked inside without leaving the same lingering smell and strength of smoke that a cigarette may leave. It is much easier and more convenient to carry around a vape and hit it whenever you want, wherever you want, than to have a cigarette and have to step outside (ironically, a vape user may actually be consuming more from the vape than a smoker from a cigarette for this reason).

Smokers must take a pause and take it outside. But a vape user loses the kind of social connections that such an act may form. A good friend of mine once wrote a great song about this that you should check out here. He writes: “I had picked up smoking for the few weeks I was [in Montreal] and found it made meeting new people incredibly easy. It got me thinking about some of the worst house [parties] I’ve ever been to and how easy getting alone time with someone you’re into is if you share the habit.”

The vape user loses the kind of social connections smokers make in the act of taking a pause from the party or job with another. The smoker spends a finite period (until the cigarette(s) are finished) outside with another that they bond with in the “break” taken from the main event. But the vape user need not take such a pause, and can infinitely (at least, as much as the battery permits) and passively hit their vape as the main event carries on. There is a type of interaction previously created by the cigarette that is lost in creating these conveniences for the vape user.

This is not to endorse smoking cigarettes, but to observe that the vape user tries to have their cake and eat it too. They want the pleasures of smoking without the inconveniences. But these were inconveniences that created valuable social experiences that the vape user inevitably loses out on (to boot, vaping still has negative health effects anyway).

Like vaping, quitting alcohol has become in vogue. My government has aggressively promoted anti-alcohol campaigns and heavily taxed its consumption. This also coincides with the rise of the cannabis industry, selling a far less social drug. Alcohol is traditionally a social consumable that fosters interpersonal interactions, dancing, going out, etc. Cannabis is a more sedentary consumable promoting staying home, ordering food, and sleeping.

Obviously the health risks of alcohol are real just as the health risks of seeing your friends during the pandemic were real. But increasingly, we are discouraged from making any tradeoffs at all. We must squarely sit on the side of safety even if doing so takes away what we have traditionally done in the process of human bonding and connection, letting loose, and having fun (not to mention getting out of the house). Of course, getting drunk carries a risk and potential inconvenience. You lose your social inhibitions and can risk making a fool of yourself, and may not feel your best the next morning. But that is also what makes it fun and primarily social. For women, the washroom at the bar is a universally recognized female bonding experience. We sound silly, but connect with people we’d maybe never otherwise connect with.

Part of the riskiness of alcohol and the skill it requires is not taking it too far. You do have to develop a type of mindfulness and intuition that makes you not cross the line between a good time and total embarrassment.

We attempt to have our cake and eat it too here with the development of the mocktail. The mocktail tries to give us a safe way to experience night life without the traditional risks.

It is completely fine to experience nightlife sober, but there is something particular about the mocktail as opposed to something like the traditional recovering alcoholic’s diet coke order. It once again, like a vape, tries to get close to the real without assuming the risk of the real. Like the vape, too, the mocktail isn’t exactly healthy, and is typically riddled with more sugar than a vodka soda would have. But it is making the sacrifice while pretending we can still have it all.

Beyond Meat is another instance of this pseudo sacrifice, particularly with all the context-free scare-articles about red meat “causing cancer”.

Vegetarianism is a noble pursuit to be sure, and one that I practiced for a while. When I was a vegetarian, I was often asked if I missed burgers and steak. Perhaps at the beginning, I would say, but you grow accustomed to the vegetarian diet and eventually just stop craving it or thinking about it. My personal dietary staple was lentils, particularly lentils with rice and onions. This was a perfectly fine and nutritious meal. It didn’t have to pretend to be an imitation of meat that the former meat eater had a longing for. It was simply a meal that did not require meat and provided a solid amount of protein and iron.

Beyond Meat, on the other hand, tries desperately to be meat. It is attempting to entice people into vegetarianism by saying “don’t worry, it’s easy to be vegetarian and you don’t have to give up anything”. All the while, the Beyond Meat and other meat-alternatives consumer is eating something ultra processed because they cannot sacrifice the meals of a meat eater; only the ingredients. This is not a moral judgment of the Beyond Meat eater, but an observation of another component of the cultural moment I have been speaking of: the need for resemblance. I cannot give up something I think is bad and find something new that is good; I must be able to have my burger and eat it too. It must taste like meat because otherwise I would miss meat too much.

The Covid era did not just push safetyism but attempts to say “it’s okay you have to stay inside and forgo interpersonal interaction, you can have a Zoom call!” as if interpersonal interaction can actually be replaced by this synthetic version. This is why I emphasize this is not a moral judgment of vapers or mocktail consumers: perhaps they are trying to lessen their abstinence’s feeling of real abstinence, but they truly are not having the real thing no matter how much they try. So they are not failing to sacrifice: they are sacrificing the real.

However, the “replacement” is simply not a true replacement but an attempt at mitigating the loss of the real with something inevitably less social. It fits a little too well with the anti-socialization brought to you by the Covid period.

Anyway, my train is arriving soon, and it’s time to have a glass of wine with a loved one.