Nowadays in the United States, you would be hard-pressed to find someone who still smokes cigarettes. Cigarettes, after being bombarded by anti-smoking movements and government regulation have become so rare that something new has emerged to deliver nicotine to those who crave it. Vaping, using electronic cigarettes has skyrocketed in the United States as an alternative to smoking and using tobacco products. Just like yesterday, people of today have attempted to stop a generation from becoming smokers. New advertisements and movements have been circulating like an anti-tobacco and vaping group called The Real Cost that despite its differences, shares a very stark resemblance in its kairos, commonplaces, and effective use of fear-mongering to attempt to alter the behavior of millions of substance abusers in a similar manner that was done by anti-smoking groups to create a civic of health and void of substance abuse and vice.

The Real Cost is an organization that creates advertisements and rhetoric that is guided towards preventing youth nicotine addiction, whether it is vaping, smokeless tobacco, or cigarettes. The Real Cost publishes a great amount of rhetoric around vaping in the forms of online advertising and posters. One of their online advertisements in question depicts a variety of teenagers in a high school setting with deformations on their skin of irregularly sized veins, views of disgusting parasites in their blood, brain, and lungs, and an eerie voice that compares it to a deadly epidemic while listing the health risks of vaping. Commercials like these have become so prevalent in the US only of late despite the fact that vaping has been around for two decades. This, coupled with the fact that vaping has only seriously impacted teenagers as of recently displays the kairos that is being taken advantage of by groups like The Real Cost. These commercials depict vaping in a scary fashion in order to impact what is only recently, a large demographic of teenagers, and worried parents. These commercials began coming out very recently with headlining stories of injuries caused by vaping, and even the possibility of COVID-19 affecting those who vape. The Real Cost is clearly exploiting a time where there is already fear of the dangers of something that has existed for far longer with no reported deaths until recently. If there was a propitious time period to release anti-vaping ads, it would be now, and The Real Cost understands this and is pushing their rhetoric out because of this.

The Real Cost’s rhetoric in their “Vaping is an Epidemic” commercial uses kairos to garner attention and add effectiveness for its argument but also some very hard-hitting and effective commonplaces that hit home with the audience it is targeting. The commercial is clearly targeting teenagers and youth with its anti-vaping message. The basis of the commercial is a setting that revolves around primary education. It depicts high school bathrooms and home studying, youth sports with a shot of a boy in a locker room preparing to play baseball, and the average social lives of many teenagers. The setting of the commercial is a commonplace that is relatable to the audience that it wishes to target. Not only this, but it effectively uses a commonplace that every teenager understands well, the desire to fit in, and be attractive. Nowadays, with unrealistic beauty standards and a need to fit in and be accepted in an age of social media and pop culture, teenagers understandably have problems with their self-esteem and body image. “Vaping is an Epidemic” brilliantly targets this by depicting teenagers with horrific abnormalities on their faces in the form of bulging, discolored veins. What this accomplishes is a worrying feeling that the audience will internalize. Teenagers who see these stomach-turning deformities will subconsciously associate vaping with unattractive qualities. Vaping, unhealthy as it is, does not cause the deformities depicted. The Real Cost is trying to sell these physical changes as “the real cost” of vaping to a very vulnerable audience when in reality it’s a very far stretch of the actual consequences associated with vaping. The Real Cost uses these commonplaces to first strike a relatable engagement in a specific audience, and then further exploits the commonplaces in this audience to drive its message home. This combination is very effective and understandably turns many people away from vaping.

Not only does The Real Cost exploit a variety of teen commonplaces, but it also fearmongers using rhetorical logos. In the commercial, an eerie voice uses a loaded term and refers to vaping as an epidemic. It then continues to talk about the dangerous side effects of vaping by showing close-ups of damaged organs like a brain and lungs. It talks about potentially dangerous chemicals that can be inhaled by vaping such as formaldehyde and acrolein. It tells you that it can lead to irreversible lung damage and changes your brain. These messages overplay and generalize the effects of vaping in a logical way that appeals to the audience’s logical reasoning. The Real Cost tries to make it easier to vilify by comparing it to a parasitic disease both visually by showing worms in people’s brains, but also through its diction by saying it is an epidemic. This appeal to common sense and logos effectively incites fear and spreads a subtext that vaping is a parasitic disease that does horrifying things to the body. Although there is some truth in the commercial, overall, it purposefully overplays the detrimental effects of vaping and effectively fearmongers by appealing to the audience’s logical reasoning and common sense. The Real Cost does its best to instill fear in its audience by first planting a seed of logic in the audience’s mind and reasoning, and then hyperbolizes it to create a feeling of urgency and unease about the consequences of vaping.

BODY PARAGRAPH 4: COMPARISON OF AD AND POSTER

CONCLUSION.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYuyS1Oq8gY