If this is not art, then nothing is art.
If this is not art, then nothing is art.
If this is not art, then nothing is art.
RealCigReviews is a YouTube channel with over 1000 subscribers that has not posted a new video in more than a year. The channel’s proprietor has reportedly quit. What remains, however, is a back catalog of more than 40 reviews by a group of teenage boys of different brands of cigarettes.
The reviews run about ten minutes long — the boys are nothing if not thorough — and every episode sees each teen smoke a representative of each brand from start to finish (excepting Djarum Blacks, which are notoriously long-lasting). Most episodes are set in a garage in front of an American flag hung lengthwise; a few take place outside and are accompanied by the soothing sound of crickets. All of them are deeply Zen. The boys talk quietly among themselves, light up a cigarette, and smoke in silence before describing the cigarettes to us, their faithful audience.
One of the boys — he usually sits to stage left — wears two bandanas in almost every video, one on his head, and one around his neck. In three of the reviews, he is inexplicably not wearing a shirt.
On Djarum Blacks (featuring guest star Ian):
“The taste is amazing.”
“Yeah, the taste is amazing.”
“The taste is amazing, it’s not like any other cigarette.”
On Camel Crush:
“Yeah, this is the first pack I bought when I was eighteen, we’ve all tried these. I actually skipped school to go buy these.”
As one commenter points out, “These guys are chill as fuck.” A little before 2:00 on the Camel Crush video, Two Bandanas (who is, confusingly, not wearing any bandanas) puts on “Mississippi Queen” by Mountain, which his friend declares “some classic shit.”
“We’re into all types of music, honestly.”
“My dad actually told me about this band. Uh, he saw them live — I don’t know when — but he said it was the best show he’d ever been to. So I had to check ‘em out.”
Please do not mistake my wild enthusiasm for irony here: I love these little dudes so much it makes my heart ache. I want to roll myself up in masculinity and muscle tanks and live in a garage smoking cigarettes with them and talking about music and our dads until the Last Trump sounds.
When the brand in question is Kools, a young lady joins the boys. Her name is Lindsay. She doesn’t smoke.
The channel features only one non-review video (although it does feature smoking); it is a Megal Gear Solid tribute.
It is seven minutes of silence — broken only by the music from Metal Gear Solid – as the boys smoke in the fashion of Snake from the opening sequence.
If this is not art, then nothing is art.
Tags: cigarettes, dirtbags, living your best life, teens
Bathrobe guy is like a young Arthur Dent
P sure I had wood/metal shop with these dudes in high school.
Seriously, though, the Toast’s recent dedication to coverage of teen dirtbags makes my heart ache with memories of my own misspent youth & the neighborhood I grew up in. I was visiting my dad a few months ago and there was a group of long-haired teen boys wearing sleeveless Megadeath t-shirts standing on the corner just lighting stuff on fire. It was so good to see that something gold really can stay.
The weather was nice this weekend and I saw a squadron of babygoths walking up the street and it made me believe that spring might just be returning.
This comment made me SO HAPPY.
The only thing that could make my life more complete is if these teens also did video reviews of various MD 20/20 flavors.
My own youth was spent in going to church dances, etc. I feel like I missed out on being a teen dirtbag. Maybe I can become one now; I’m only in my twenties. (without the smoking on account of having the respiratory health of a ripped paper bag already.)
Yes. My own youth was very Good Girl. I made up for it in my twenties IN SPADES. I highly recommend the experience. If you can’t smoke (which is a pity–I still love to smoke the occasional…well, the occasional ANYTHING), go crazy with everything else. Good times, bb. GOOD TIMES.
I could smoke, if I wanted to. But I’m predisposed to sinus infections and have pretty significant allergies. I don’t like the idea of smoking, really, other than wishing I could look cool like in the movies. All noir-y, etc.
NGL, watching B&W movies as a kid is what got me smoking in my 20s. I was probably the only pre-teen I knew who had a crush on Robert Mitchum. NO REGRETS.
Humphrey Bogart. Cary Grant. Gregory Peck (sometimes.)
I still wish I looked like Audrey Hepburn.
Ugh, IKR? It looks super cool and mysterious in the movies but one puff and I’d be hacking up a lung and looking for my inhaler. Inhalers are so not noir.
I’m definitely making up for it in terms of drinking! But my drinks are probably too fancy for real dirtbag status :C
I am having terrifying visions thanks to your incredible metaphor.
I think I am, like, culturally a teen dirtbag? I was the good dirtbag – good grades, didn’t smoke/drink. But I knew how to skateboard and hung out with kids who were legit the worst (and also the best.) “The Where Are They Now: Teen Dirtbags of My Youth” is a very, very sad story about “consequences.” Every time I think I am reformed or have outgrown dirtbaggery, I do something like punch someone in a public place & then I am reminded of my dirtbag roots.
Oh, my memories of teenage punks and their teenage punk shows. (My sort-of-friend’s band was called The STDs and I went to a lot of their shows in weird locations.)
My terrible job made it impossible for me to participate in the comment thread in real time, but oh! The terribly band names of youth. I had many friends in many (terrible) bands, but the best band name was definitely Crack Your Fucking Skull.
I’m on the train right now and the WiFi doesn’t allow streaming of videos.
What am I supposed to do right now? How am I supposed to live my life.
Are you near some cigarettes? Are you near some teens? Can you pretend there’s a lawn-chair? You can recreate these scenes on the train with the right lighting.
Are you near some teens
The internet is simply the best.
The weather channel told me it’d be “teens tonight” so I hope it means this happens.
The most magical mental images…
just based on these blurry screencaps, the kid on the far right reminds me of Harris from Freaks and Geeks.
(also: this is absolutely wonderful. god bless the internet and teenage dirtbags everywhere.)
COS IM JUST A TEENAGE DIRTBAAAG BABYYY
Toast stance: Kareoke: Revoked.
I woke up with that song in my head this morning.
Oh my god can we get them to act out scenes from Hamlet?
This is all I want from this life. Forget family, friends, career–just Dirtbag Hamlet on YouTube forever.
Lindsay is lying in bed at 1 a.m., listening to “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl,” and thinking about the way the smoke curls from their mouths.
Oh Lindsay, sweetie, someday you will not be a teenager anymore, and it will be better, I promise.
I mean, if someone said that to me as a teenager, I would have wanted to punch them, but the point still stands. Lindsay!
Oh, Lindsay. Going to activities you don’t care about because some dirtbag you like invited you. Sitting awkwardly, so bored, trying to show you are game without knowing what’s going on, while said dirtbag’s friends resent your presence. You have your own interests and personality and opinions, and yet here you are. I know that feel.
So cool…. I wish I were that cool.
I must differ with your conclusion. Art, as I understand it, involves some remove from real life. Here this is no remove. There is no guile. There is no cunning to their presentation, no artistic filter. Our watching it might constitute art, but there are no artists—only teens smoking cigarettes.
And I’m not saying you’re wrong, understand. Just that maybe the second half of your proclamation is the correct half. Nothing is art.
FUCK OFF I KNEW YOU WOULDN’T “GET IT”
Maaaan. These kids have a sophistication that always (and still does) eluded me at that age. And they’re not even high, the conversational flow and coherency are too smooth.
Waterbed??!
Is it weird I expected them to display the cigarettes as one would do in a makeup tutorial, palm behind the cig?
There are times that I regret being a Good Girl in my teenage years. Right now I regret it A LOT. God damn these kids are awesome.
i am hopelessly in love with double bandana. where is he now? will he grow his ponytail back for me?
I am pretty sure that I would have had such a huge crush on Leftmost Dirtbag in high school. Look at those angelic little dirtbag cheekbones! It would have been the sort of crush where you never actually speak but once locked eyes during a detention you got for losing the brown paper cover of your Calculus textbook. You hiked your cheerleading skirt up a little more and drew the Wu-Tang symbol incorrectly on your new book cover in case that was something he was into, in case he might notice.
GOD YOU COULD NOT PAY ME TO BE A TEENAGER AGAIN.
That was so very much what being a teenager with a crush was like for me. “I’m too nervous to talk to him or make eye contact for more than 2 seconds, but if I wear the right outfit or just hope fervently enough, maybe he’ll notice me and totes ask me out!” Haha, sigh. Not enough money in the world to go through that a second time.
It doesn’t matter that I avert my eyes every time my crush looks in my general direction—he’ll totally notice the cool lip gloss I obsessively applied before class!
Ahahaha, exactly! It remains a mystery why I did not have young men falling at my feet on the regular…
Right? I would have been so painfully in love with these dirtbags when I was in high school. It’s sending me off on a heartachey reverie about the actual teenage dirtbags I was painfully in love with in high school (where are they now, how disappointed would they be to see how uncool I’ve become, etc.).
The major dirtbag I never spoke to was named Richie. I remember this cable-knit sweater he used to wear (o piquant contrast to his fundamental drooginess!) and his wispy little protostache, but I forget his last name. In the age of Google perhaps that is a mercy.
“The major dirtbag I never spoke to” is such a wonderful phrase, and also incredibly painfully familiar. I’m SO glad not to be in high school anymore, wow. My major dirtbag I never spoke to was really good at biking and skateboarding, had an asymmetrical haircut, and probably said thanks to me one time when I held a door open or something.
My teen self would have been all over Right Hand Dirtbag because Eyeglasses.
Gods, yes. Without the glasses, I would’ve found him too intimidatingly cool to even fantasize about.
Re: KOOLS –> “We’ve gotten a lot of requests to review these”
I love these kids so much. Oh to be back in my wifebeater and cargo shorts, pack of Marlboro Reds in one pocket and a bottle of Black Velvet in the other, both middle fingers extended while wearing too much eyeliner.
Fuck their assessment of KOOLS, though.
If you don’t like Led Zeppelin you don’t like music
The only way to smoke a Crush is to smoke it regular and then crush it halfway through. (Cigarettes, I miss you, sort of.)
Would it spoil the magic if I said they might be creating their own version of a podcast done by grownups? Before Mallory hurls an object at my head, though — wait! — the podcast, called Getting Doug with High, is basically an infomercial for cannabis products in which Doug plus guests smoke dope onscreen and review it — BUT STILL WAIT — the one I saw featured Aubrey Plaza and Alia Shakwat, getting high in real time on camera. Which caused me to fall in love with one of them even more than I was already in love with other. [Have I escaped object-hurlage?]
I don’t mean to dismiss it as art, though!
Oh shiiiiiit guys Buzzfeed has jumped on the Teen Dirtbag Love Train
“Yeah, I’m a little tired, I just got back from visiting a college, so.”
OH GOD, HIGH SCHOOL FLASHBACKS. Oh god, wow. I would have been so into these assholes, at least in a distant way. *facepalm*
Nostalgia!
Mallory, your love for teenage dirtbags keeps me going.
I was just congratulating myself for having inadvertently kicked my drunk-smoke habit. Now that old-ish pack of Blacks in my nightstand is calling my name so hard.
I once found a pack of Mores (I fucking love More Menthols, sue me) in the glove box of my car. I estimated they’d been there for at least three months of a blistering Kansas late summer/early fall. I smoked them anyway because those things are nearly $9/pack and they were DELIGHTFUL.
Not that I’m encouraging you or whatever. I would never do that to another teenage-dirtbag-with-eyeglasses crusher. I’m just. You know. Relating my own experience.
I really miss my teenage dirtbag days. Smoking across the street from school and hating the MAN; running away from the security dude so he wouldn’t catch us smoking weed behind school. Some of the dudes I hung out with then are gone now and it’s still so hard to articulate to how important their friendship was and still is to me. They were really good people, and the world sucks nads now that they’re gone.
What is a teenage dirtbag, tho? I am an Old.
I will play the voice of Mother here and say I am glad they quit smoking. They’ll have more years ahead of them to post more videos.
I just hope they live life to the fullest.
I.e. no “un-boxing” shit.
omg this is just so purely itself. I love it. (I don’t love the way it’s making me crave a cigarette, but…)
My terrible job made it impossible for me to participate in the comment thread in real time, but oh! The terribly band names of youth. I had many friends in many (terrible) bands, but the best band name was definitely Crack Your Fucking Skull.
The only thing that could make my life more complete is if these teens also did video reviews of various MD 20/20 flavors.
I think I am, like, culturally a teen dirtbag? I was the good dirtbag – good grades, didn't smoke/drink. But I knew how to skateboard and hung out with kids who were legit the worst (and also the best.) "The Where Are They Now: Teen Dirtbags of My Youth" is a very, very sad story about "consequences." Every time I think I am reformed or have outgrown dirtbaggery, I do something like punch someone in a public place & then I am reminded of my dirtbag roots.
I never knew I could care this much about cigarettes. These guys are great.