This Man Is More Dedicated to Smoking Than Anyone You'll Ever Meet

He reviews cigarettes. Sometimes in the rain :(

by Joe Bish

June 29, 2016, 12:00am

YouTube is probably the greatest anthropological project ever launched. It has managed to expose the multitudes of the human condition more than any other medium ever created, and allowed people to express themselves in more diverse ways than at any point in history. This weekly column is an outlet for me to share with you some undiscovered gems, as well some very well trodden gems, and discuss just what it is that makes the chosen accounts so intriguing.

WHO: TheJRcigreviews.
WHAT: Cigarette reviews.
HOW MANY SUBSCRIBERS AT TIME OF WRITING: 1,517.
WHY SHOULD I CARE: Remember a couple of weeks ago we took a look at Cigar Obsession? And we noted how much we'd like to be him, gazing up at the stars with a thick Cuban in hand, blowing delicious smoke into the warm night air as the Tiki flame burns and a light breeze laps against your ears? Well, I think I've found basically the exact polar opposite of that vibe. It still involves a man who is an enthusiast about smoking, but instead of a balmy garden it's in a shed, and instead of a husky expensive cigars he's smoking fags and roll-ups.

JR is a Scottish man who really loves cigarettes. He uses Rizla green rolling papers, but isn't the most adept roller. He's more of a cig man, you see. He's only recently started doing the reviews inside his shed – the first iterations of his cig reviews had him just outside of it, and you could see the dampness of the wood from the rain that seems to never end. I haven't watched every single one, but the sun isn't shining in any of the videos I've seen. Inside the shed sits an old HP printer box, the top of a pile of other assorted detritus that remains off camera. The shed doesn't look particularly big, and while he's not ducking to save his head from a bumping, he looks like he's only just about comfortable in there.

Not to mention the subject of these reviews: cigarettes. Maybe I'm smoking the wrong fucking cigs, but they're not the sort of thing I can imagine gleaning a lot of pleasure from reviewing. They don't have the same kind of rich-boy leisure feel that a cigar does. Nor do they have the variation in taste and flavour that your vaping nerds enjoy. They don't do pineapple-flavoured Embassy Red. There's no cookies 'n cream Superkings. So why even bother?

This may be an unfair presumption, but JR doesn't seem like he has a great deal going on. The choice to smoke inside or just near his shed tells me that, for whatever reason, he's not allowed to smoke his cigarettes indoors. His cigarettes, his favourite pastime, his hobby, his lifeblood. He talks about the tar as if it's a good thing. He likes strong cigarettes that don't taste like chemicals (I'm with him there; smoking a Pall Mall is like inhaling the contents of a Monsanto test tube). All the while, he stands in the rain, like in the video below.

YouTube is great for the hobbyist. It lets you join forces and create communities with other like-minds. But smoking is an odd one. It's something that, in a world of NutriBullets and couple's workout Instagrams, is increasingly being sidelined as a filthy habit that only the weak and pallid would indulge in. JR stands in the gloom of Scotland smoking away, as if to bring about an early death to escape the damp drudgery and shed-based life he's somehow found himself in.

But that would be too cynical a conclusion, even for me. JR just fucking loves cigarettes. He loves the tar, the cyanide, the taste, the smell – and who are we to judge him for it? Is being into cigarettes any worse than being into sky-surfing, or going to a Blitz party dressed as a racist colonel? I'd rather get lung cancer than do either of those things. And at 1,517 subscribers three years deep in the game, JR isn't doing it for the ad money. He loves something everyone else kind of hates and thinks is gross. It must be how my girlfriend feels all the time.

@joe_bish

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