Some people have an irrational hatred of vaping and pouches. Other people’s entire raison d'être depends on promoting lies about these harm-reduction products, whether that’s directionless politicians, clicks-obsessed media, or the NGOs and lobbyists that make up tobacco control.

Between each of these groups, there is a voracious demand for death or serious illness from vapes or pouches. However, despite tobacco control’s wishful thinking, reality stubbornly refuses to deliver the mangled or dead bodies their far-out prophecies predict.

As Aristotle once said, nature abhors a vacuum. With demand for vaping or pouch horror stories so high, but supply unable to cough up even one measly death, something needs to step into the breach. Welcome to the bizarre world of Vapehausen-by-proxy syndrome.

The attention economy

When people started talking about the attention economy, I thought it referred to companies competing for our hearts, minds, and eyeballs. However, once ordinary people began talking about themselves as a brand, it was clear that something darker was afoot.

If you’re someone with a lot of talent, breaking through the noise is straightforward. If you’re prepared to do mean or ridiculous things, take off your clothes, or turn yourself into a lightning rod of hate, that works too. But what about for the rest of us losers? Where is our taste of the limelight? What do we do to grab some of that sweet, sweet dopamine?

Well, there’s one avenue that seems to have become increasingly popular. And it’s being tapped like an Alaskan oil field.

Vapehausen-by-proxy

Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSBP) is one of the sickest and mind-bending forms of child abuse. As most of you will know, it happens when a caregiver or parent deliberately fabricates, exaggerates, or causes real symptoms of illness in a person under their care to gain attention or sympathy for themselves.

While I don’t want to make light of this terrible disorder or the impact it has on the person under care, it’s hard not to see some parallels between the desperate, cloying, and manipulative stories about vaping that are just as laser-focused on our attention and sympathy.

If you have a kid who has a pre-existing health condition, bad lungs, or some kind of allergy, it’s unfortunate, but it’s hardly headline news. But what if you could convince the world that this harm was caused by vaping? Well, in that case, there are people who are more than prepared to enable that warped fantasy because it accommodates their own warped fantasies. Worse still, there are plenty of news sites that will print your story with zero verification required. Like I said, it’s a supply and demand problem, and these people are parched.

So, let’s take a look at the different types of Vapehausen-by-proxy we’ve seen in the wild.

The different styles of Vapehausen-by-proxy

#1. The almost-bereaved parent

This strange woman is credited with reviving the popcorn lung conspiracy theory. There is a lot to see here, including the classic and oh-so-authentic dispatch from the car.

The claim that vaping is “a million times more dangerous than cigarettes” is interesting. Smoking kills 8 million people each year. If vapes were a million times worse, they would wipe out the entire population of the world annually.

#2. The non-sheep

The ratio of distant, unverifiable claims to recorded cases is out of control. But for this poster, it’s an opportunity to set the record straight and tell people how they should think… by telling them to think for themselves.

It’s confusing, but I don’t make the rules.

#3. A friend of the hospitalised

I’ve vaped since the late 00s. Almost everyone I know has switched over from smoking to vaping. No one has been hospitalised by vaping. However, there are some people who claim, without evidence, that they know multiple people who have been rushed to the hospital because of these products.

I don’t believe them.

#4. The amatuer oncologist

As many as 20% of people with lung cancer are never-smokers or never-vapers. It’s a complex illness with complex causes, but not for this amateur oncologist.

#5. The autopsy-turvy

I used to think that autopsies were stored and managed by medical or forensic authorities. However, it seems they’re rarely documented at all, except in the shattered minds of pathological liars.

#6. John the Gullible

You could read countless studies or listen to the advice of independent health professionals. Or you could take what you read on Facebook at face value. Your call.

#7. The legislator

A lot of people confuse illegal THC vapes with nicotine vapes. Even today, people still attribute EVALI to being caused by nicotine. However, creating laws to ban nicotine because an already-illegal product that has caused the death of a citizen is hard to square, chiefly because it won’t do anything to stop EVALI deaths.

#8. The odd comparison

Finally, we have one of the strangest stories of all. It’s not immediately clear if the lung capacity was reduced down to the size of a small chicken’s lung capacity or if youthful chicks are being used as a unit of measurement.

Either is nuts.

Final thoughts

Social media has revealed many strange things about the human psyche. One of the worst is the steady flow of people prepared to lie about anything just for a little attention or to win an argument.

Remember, vapes have a grand total of zero deaths after 20 years.