We’ve all seen the videos. Someone drops their vape into a glass of water. Someone films it. Someone captions it “day one”.
Quitting has become memeable.
Not because everyone suddenly stopped vaping, but because announcing that you’ve stopped is now part of the performance. That alone tells you something has shifted.
This question didn’t start in press releases or because of government regulation. It started on Reddit. TikTok. Group chats where screenshots move faster than explanations.
Vaping didn’t vanish.
It just stopped feeling untouchable.
And once culture starts poking fun at something, it’s already entered a new phase.
The Aesthetic Collapse
For a while there was a very specific image doing the rounds online.
School kids with glow-in-the-dark, tutti-frutti, rainbow devices that look like toys you’d win at a seaside arcade.
That image has quietly done more damage than any public health campaign ever could.
Vaping used to sit in a cleaner visual lane.
Muted colours. Simple forms. Something you could hold without explaining yourself.
Now its screens, LEDs, chrome logos, gradients, names written like energy drinks.
Online, that doesn’t read expressively. It reads juvenile.
People don’t reject vaping outright.
They rejected what vaping started to look like.
When It Stopped Feeling Cool and Started Feeling Loud
There was a time when vaping felt slightly exclusive.
It borrowed from shisha culture, hip-hop visuals, that moment where holding a vape made you feel like you were in the background of a rapper’s music video.
It wasn’t the point of the scene.
It just existed within it — and that was the cool part.
Now it’s performative.
Clouds for attention. Devices that glow before you speak and have your pockets sounding like a kettle.
And to quote the rapper Travis Scott, every one became a fein and sounded like every kid on educating yorkshire, ‘miss just took my vape’.
On social feeds, understatement wins.
Anything that looks like it’s trying to be noticed usually gets noticed for the wrong reason.
The backlash isn’t anti-vape.
It’s anti-cringe behaviour.
From Subculture to Street Furniture
Vaping used to feel like it was chosen.
Now the stickers from disposables are stuck to every public bin in Manchester.
Once something becomes unavoidable, it loses its edge.
What felt underground became oversaturated.
That’s when the jokes started.
That’s when the screenshots started.
Not because people stopped vaping
but because it stopped feeling like a social lubricant and more like an epidemic.
When Convenience Flattened Everything
Disposables didn’t just take over.
They cheapened the entire experience.
They were everywhere. Identical. Disposable in every sense of the word.
Easy to buy. Easy to mock.
And here’s the part no one predicted.
The new wave of restrictions and chargeable disposables brought back the exact thing vaping had lost: friction.
Suddenly there was resistance again.
Rules. Scarcity. Upcoming taxes. A sense that you’re not fully supposed to have this.
That’s where the rebel energy crept back in.
They existed before disposables flattened the culture and stayed consistent while everything else chased convenience.
Online, the argument isn’t about products anymore.
It’s about what choosing one says about you.
Flavour Names became the Punchline
Flavour discourse has officially left the tasting room.
Our team went looking for the worst, most memeable flavour names currently doing the rounds.
Here are a few that had the office in stitches:
Blue Razz Ice Blast Maxx —
That’s not a flavour, that’s a focus group made entirely of men who thought they knew what would appeal to twelve-year-olds and one intern in the corner who said nah this aint it, they didn’t listen to the intern…
Unicorn Milk Candy Cloud —
No one knows what this tastes like. Including the brand. A flavour name that suggests Jason from product development who approved it, owns a Hello Kitty lighter and won’t explain why.
Strawberry Watermelon Bubblegum Freeze —
A sentence, not a flavour.This isn’t a flavour, this is indecision.
These names don’t suggest taste.
They’re just funny.
Brands like Pure mist, Elux and Vampire Vape never needed to turn flavour into a novelty act.
They trusted that if it tastes right, people will come back without being pandered to.
But these names are approved of course, for meme purposes only.
Caring Too Much Is the Red Flag
Using a vape isn’t embarrassing.
Being really into vaping is. We all know that one person, no names, but they have a beard.
He has the spec arguments. Collections. Daily posts about devices no one asked about.
That energy has retreated back into niche corners of the internet.
The dominant mood now is distance.
“I like this, but I’m not going to explain why.”
That detachment is the point.
The Internet Made Everything Funnier
Nothing disappears anymore.
It circulates.
The disposable left on the table in a group photo.
The pocket bulge in wedding pictures.
Teenage lads vaping in pics captioned ‘mums kicked us out again’ It all gets clocked.
But so does the good stuff.
Trying your mate’s vape was a defining experience on the lads holiday.
Standing outside between uni lectures, chatting nonsense, passing one around.
Pouring liquid before the pub, knowing you won’t get called out or go home smelling of cigarettes.
Vaping is social.
It’s easy and that experience has been reclaimed.
It’s low-stakes.
Online celeb culture has participated in making it popular again.
Bella Hadid between fittings. Doja Cat carrying hers like it’s part of her grammy awards outfit. Streamers muting their mics to take a pull so they don’t get banned.
The culture didn’t disappear. In fact it’s having a resurgence.
Where This Leaves Vaping
Not cancelled. Not dead.
Just re-sorted.
Restrictions and taxes chipped away at the edges and accidentally made things interesting again.
Desire came back through resistance.
Vaping isn’t aspirational by default anymore.
It had to earn its place through design, discretion, and knowing when to shut up.
Now people have better things to worry about like, the effects of AI.
Closing Note
The question isn’t whether vaping is embarassing.
It’s whether the industry has noticed that the tone changed.
People are watching, sharing, and reshaping opinions in real time.
They don’t need convincing.
They need things that feel normal, considered, and slightly unbothered — and brands that understand when to step back and let culture do what it does best.