A people's history of Zyn

25:59But they're quite similar. And what's funny to me is that it's almost like they're the same thing, but one just is branded as a trend and the other is just considered like a medical tool yeah absolutely i mean it's kind of one of those luck of the draw and honestly it's probably because of the hundreds of millions of dollars that pmi and the other companies put behind the marketing campaigns to make it cool and to make it into like this sort of cultural objects and again like it's so funny that that system is working without being able to see it because it's like very obviously successful like they're building a giant zin factory in Aurora, Colorado, to the tune of like$500 billion.

26:35It's a huge bet. And they're like, no, Zin is going to be the thing. Zin is going to be cigarettes and we're going to make billions of dollars from this. So even though we can't see the marketing happening in a lot of ways, it is still happening. And they were still trying to position this product as the next big thing in tobacco.

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27:30You can get access to Kujoplex along with our monthly bonus episodes by signing up for a paid subscription over at our Substack. That's theculturejournalist.substack.com. So you have this quote from the Lawrence Schlaussman, the throwing fits host that you mentioned earlier in your piece. And, you know, he says it's not as chic and classic as smoking, but it's nowhere near as corny and lame as vaping. which is just like that really struck me because I mean am I getting it wrong in that like I feel like zin is really just like the synthetic analog to chewing tobacco which to me I mean I think we can all agree like chewing tobacco or snooze or whatever at least in the U.S.

28:09like have like kind of a déclasse connotation you know like sort of it was like considered like bottom of the rung of like your nicotine or tobacco products of choice it's like a very classed connotation and I remember when I first saw a zin which was like maybe like a year ago or encountered a friend who used it I was like damn that's like that's like intense like you know like that's weird I don't know it just made me think of chewing tobacco I don't know that's why that's why it seems weird that it's like that's considered like less like again with this taxonomy if it's like smoking is like quote-unquote like the most chic that lip pill says it's like my favorite my favorite slang that come out of that community would actually be like a tier above vaping because of that association but it may be maybe it doesn't have that association or maybe it's part of this reclamation that we're going to talk about in the next question but working class aesthetics are completely fetishized in today's culture like we see that like is this a part of that working class aesthetic or is it different from that is what i'm wondering i guess and also i definitely like i knew several creative class men who dipped like yeah back of the times and thought it was cool but gross there's two things happening i think emily's point is is really well taken And, you know, we talked a little bit about this in the piece.

29:20There is such a shattered idea of like coherent cultural symbolism. And we kind of saw that like, I would say like the initial hipster wave of drinking PBR and dive bars and stuff is like where we really saw the start of that like fracturing where it's like, you know, my dad grew up in rural Colorado. And I remember talking to like a beer distributor guy, you know, a friend of his about, about Coors. He's like, people in Colorado, when I was growing up, you drank Coors Banquet or you drank Coors Light, and there was no other beer you were allowed to drink effectively. And it signaled who you were.

29:51People knew exactly who you were if you ordered a banquet or you ordered Coors Light. And he's like, now, he's like talking to me. He's like, now all you guys order, you have like five different domestics you might order. You have three imports. You have one premium. And we don't know what the fuck to make any here because we have no idea what you're going to buy. And it is so much more difficult because you guys do not have a cohesive taxonomy of like your tastes. And I think that, Emily, to your point, like that is like the working class visualization stuff plays into that. Like me ordering a high life at a bar, like used to signal something about me and now it doesn't signal anything.

30:22It might actually signal opposite things about me. It might signal like different things, but it's such a different way of like cultural objects losing their original intention that is very, very interesting to me. You could almost say that it serves as a gesture in multiple directions simultaneously, where it has a little bit of the connotation of the chewing tobacco, but then also has a little bit of a high-tech, future-forward podcaster veneer or something. Yeah, absolutely. And cleaner, healthier. It's like biohacking tobacco, basically. It's like, oh man, we have all the good stuff about tobacco and none of the bad stuff.

30:58This is great. Silicon Valley loves it. It is very much just like the optimizing your health, you know, biohacker style stuff. I should say that one other thing about this is that so the vast majority of Zin users are men. I think it's something it's in the high 90%. And the reason behind that in talking to some industry analysts about this is because women associated with chewing tobacco and chewing tobacco is very much not consumed by women in America. And everyone I talked to was like the timeline of tobacco consumption is very, very long. Zinn in Sweden, when it was introduced, was very feminine coded.

31:34You talk to fratty Swedish guys, they're like, yeah, that's for girls. We do snus and women do Zinn. Now that it's slowly changed where it's become much more 50-50 in Scandinavia. And so I think that thinking about this stuff as a timeline of consumption habits is an important way of considering how something I think Zinn fits into all these categories. Like it's not always going to be this exact consumer. I think that's what tobacco companies are betting on. It's like this is going to be everybody. So I guess on that note, Teddy, your article really mainly focuses on how Zinn has given rise to a cultural milieu that's like much bigger than the product itself, which our friend of the pod, Max Reed, who you cite a lot in the article, has dubbed the Zinternet.

32:17talk a little bit more about what that is and why do you think zinn has found particular resonance with male customers specifically one thing i love about this internet piece is that max is like you don't actually have to do zinn to be in this internet which is like a great right exactly like twist about it it's just the association with it and i like that he locates it you know within a bunch of different things that are happening simultaneously mostly in like sort of reactionary politics and sort of, you know, fratty cultural analysis and like happenings. It's a vibe one might say. It is. It is truly like this huge vibe of like frat guys who are looking for a political ideology and they have found it through Hak Tua and Zin and sports gambling.

32:59It is certainly a coalition. I think that for a lot of those guys, I think, again, it's like a little bit naughty in that Chuck Schumer wanted to take away and these guys don't like Chuck Schumer or libs or anything. I think that's a big part of it. and that you're kind of doing something a little mischievous. I think that's like, that's a huge appeal in it. Three guys that we found, we were doing this story. You know, they're at the Lower East Side. This is also when I was like, Trump's going to win. These three dudes were just sitting there with like three tins of Zin out in front of them. And they were just, you know, knocking back beers, popping Zins, talking about hockey.

33:35And I was like, this is just like fella time. These guys just like love hanging with their dude friends. and this is so like associated with that. And I think that it just, it sort of took on this sort of masculine association and a masculine affinity where it just became part of this like wider set of symbolic objects that you have in your pocket at all times. Again, it's one of those things you're like, we don't know really how it came to happen, but it's definitely associated with a certain brand of sort of straight white 25 to four year old male. And it is like part of that identity structure.

34:09Were there any specific figures responsible for it taking on this strong political connotation? Was it like Tucker Carlson, for example? Yeah. Like, was it Tucker first or the Nelk boys? We know that Tucker then disowned Zinn because he found out that Philip Morris had donated to the Kamala campaign. Yeah, he also said that it was because he talked about how Zin is a good erectile dysfunction treatment. And PMI was like, absolutely not. You cannot say that. Please, please take that back. And Tucker was like, now he thinks Zin is for women, I think was his exact words. It is, yeah. It was a very funny back and forth.

34:54And then, of course, he launched his own nicotine salt company. I want to go into the business of this as well because it's all very like, Zen is not like legal per se. They're like going through their marketing application review process from the FDA. So like it's the wild west right now for all this stuff. It's fucking crazy. But back to the political aspect of it. So you have, you know, your usual suspects of the like manosphere media personalities. So you have people like Joe Rogan and Andrew Huberman and Jordan Peterson who are like like talking about like health to a certain degree they like talking about you know sort of maximizing physical potential through different approaches and stuff so like Joe Rogan has a very like famous episode where he tries in for the first time and it's like this is fucking crazy he has like military guys special forces guys you like love talking about sin and like I will say that no one loves special forces like podcast appearances more than like gen z dudes living in like indiana and delaware and shit like they love it they love special forces andrew humerman talks about nicotine salts and nicotine generally being a performance enhancing substance and so there are quite a lot of young men who are like interested in that aspect of things in terms of like thinking about physical performance and thinking about being in the gym and all this kind of stuff that's one component of it and then the political aspect of it grew out of those associations where like the nilk boys doing Zinn.

36:20Actually, that's a big question. I actually don't know when they started sort of like being associated with it. There's an interesting twist here where I'm sure Tucker Carlson loves like grew up doing shooting tobacco and shit. I'm sure he loves nicotine products. But so much of the demonstrative association with something like Zinn for someone like Tucker Carlson is much more about associating himself with a media organization like the Milk Boys, who have young audiences of mostly men who Tucker wants access to as an audience. So there is sort of a cynical aspect to all this, a very old school marketing aspect where it's like, you have an audience that I want, so can I associate myself with you in order to have access to that audience?

37:02And Zin became the bridge there, which is interesting for like a tobacco product that has, you know, no sort of, no thinking of itself and no political associations and very little active marketing associations. But for those two parties to see this tin of nicotine salts as like a bridge between audiences is like interesting from like a media theory perspective. It's almost like how on TikTok, everyone will use like the same song to communicate like different people across different ideological lines will like use the same song or the same like hashtag or whatever to like hit people's feeds. Like it's almost like a hashtag or something.

37:44Yeah. Or like two influencers like doing like a dance together or something or like collabing. There is like this weird ecosystem of all that happening. And this is just an example of that, but using a product instead of like a song in that way, like you're so connect audiences together and like sort of benefit you both. Totally. So would you say it's, it kind of always had this sort of right leaning affiliation that just kind of obviously became much bigger than itself, maybe partially because of its, you know, origins and popularity with the military service? Yeah, I think, and honestly, I think the point about chewing tobacco is probably, it's going to bring up because I think the immediate association with Zinn is that you assume it's like chewing tobacco because snus isn't very popular in America.

38:27That the idea of like a tobacco you can't smoke, well, the automatic sort of thing that comes from your brand is chewing tobacco. So chewing tobacco being heavily associated with Southern, more conservative types as well as with the military is probably a valuable sort of jumping off point to think about Zinn as more of a right-leaning, right sort of coded product. Yeah, I think that's probably, you know, sort of a good hypothesis about why it's been more associated with right-leaning folks than, you know, pure average liberal. But not in Sweden, which is funny. But not in Sweden, where everyone does it.

38:59They're like the Stus uptake and Zinn uptake and nicotine pouch uptake in Sweden is incredibly high. It is like everyone does noose. Very few people smoke. It's very strange. So you mentioned in your piece that, you know, we have seen, you know, this kind of politicization happen with other brands like, you know, Goya and Bud Light and Starbucks. What's interesting to me is that in those cases, it seemed like those became politicized after the brands either attempted overtly political marketing and then had backlash or kind of otherwise, like in the case of Goya, became like attached to a political matter.

39:35But with Zin, its political affiliations kind of seem to have organically evolved alongside it. Do you think that this politicization that we saw with Zin is something that's unique to it? Or maybe is it symptomatic of the kind of like discursive cycle that maybe like all popular lifestyle products or trends are now subject to? I think it's more the latter now. I think you're going to see this very accelerated uptick of anytime a product gets even a hint of having a political valence to it, you will have people taking advantage of it in one way or another. So when Marjorie Taylor Green sees that Chuck Schumer, it doesn't, that's the thing.

40:10It didn't matter what Chuck Schumer was trying to regulate. If he was trying to regulate. Exactly. Exactly. That's all that matters. No matter what this product was, it could have been like a coffee bean or something. You know what? He could have been trying to say that Black Rifle Coffee is putting amphetamines in our coffee. We have to look into it or something. And she'd have been like, yeah, you'll take this from my cold at hand because it didn't matter that it was a politically coded product to begin with, but that it was a liberal Democrat trying to regulate something that she saw as a political cudgel and she could use.

40:40And you'll see that not just from politicians now, but from people who are associated with those political spectrums. And I think that's like it's opportunistic, it's cynical, but it's going to happen much faster and much more often. Right. Another thing that's sort of interesting to me with this is that, you know, to an extent, And we've talked about this a little bit already in this conversation. Like these kinds of semiotics have always been a part of capitalist society, right? Like conspicuous consumption or like what we were talking about with like, you know, hipsters and PBR, all of that.

41:07But what I'm wondering is like, why might a certain product pick up an explicitly political connotation versus something that's more maybe an implicitly like classed one? Yeah, I think with Zinn specifically, I think just felt it sort of was a perfect conflation of a bunch of different movements. I think that we talked about it being adopted by podcasters who are really popular with like reactionary young men as part of it. It being popular with the military as part of it. I think that there was just a bunch of different meaning points for this, that it got swept up in like very large political currents, which it would be hard to find like another product that has all those intersections in the same way.

41:44As much as I was saying that like you will see this happen to a lot more products. I think that Zinn specifically had so many ready-made associations with it before it sort of caught political fire that it was sort of tailor-made for something like this to happen. And also we live in this moment, like this exact moment, especially in which like the article was published where like class was so politicized. Whereas like you can look back at chewing tobacco in the past and be like, well, that was just a class thing. It wasn't a political thing. And it just so happens that class was so in the political discourse.

42:15Right. At that moment. It's funny about Zinn is that, you know, we were talking about sort of the popular imagination, the practical reality of who consumes Zinn. I think that the funny thing about smoking is that, you know, the excise tax on cigarettes was totally regressive. Like, rich people don't smoke. Like, that has always been the case. It was like smoking is very much a working class habit, like a poor person habit. So there was resistance to it, but not in the way that like that Zinn picked up. where like, you know, obviously people don't want to pay higher taxes. Cigarette's really expensive now.

42:44There was a public good associated with it for, you know, for heart issues and cancer, everything else. Zinn, because the popular imagination of Zinn is one that is so, it's fluid between classes, right? Everyone consumes Zinn that it took on this much larger political resistance, which I find interesting. And that like, actually the reality is that most of the guys who do Zinn don't look like the guy who's in the front page of the Times article. Like it's bartenders and firefighters and stuff. So it's interesting that it has this association with sort of cross-class appeal, but the reality is much more that it's like it's from a profile, so people would dip in a new smoke.

43:21All right. To wrap this up, I have an observation that just kind of came to me while I've been researching it and preparing for this conversation that I'd love to get both of your thoughts on, which was that I was thinking about how Zinn, you know, unlike most smoke-based or tobacco products, feels kind of inherently individualistic. like there's nothing social about it you know so many people would start smoking cigarettes or even vaping because it was like a thing you have to do outside with other people that had to do outside or maybe use it to like break the ice with co-workers or whatever there's nothing about it that can like you know impact others well-being and it's also something that can't really be surveilled or banned you know like it's like telling someone like you can't chew gum right I wonder how much of that do you guys think is maybe part of the undercurrent with its rise and, you know, the larger fracture lines that we're seeing kind of in society and politics right now and the rise of the individual.

44:17Like, you can't take this from me. Like, fuck community caring about others. I don't know. I might be going overboard here. But do you hear what I'm saying? It's more conscientious of others if it doesn't affect their health or that you could view it that way, maybe. Yeah, I don't think that's where people are coming from it, though. You're not wrong. But when I was talking to, shout out Marie Solis, my editor, who's wonderful. She really helped make this route into what it was. When I went to her with the story at first, I said the exact same thing. I was like, Zinn is so anti-community. It's stuff you do when you're gaming in your basement and don't have any like real life friends.

44:49And it's like sad. Like cigarettes might be really bad for you, but at least I made very close, like lifelong friends from having a cigarette outside of a bar. But Zinn is the exact opposite of that. Zinn is like something you do while you're alone and you're isolated and all that kind of stuff. in reporting this out i found out that like isn't really the kid like okay you you like bums in some people at bars and start conversations the same way you did when you would bum a cigarette like a lot of people do it like at work because they don't want to smoke it's much more like a a practical exercise like sure there are people who like play call of duty in their basement and like pop a zinn in but i was on the i was like this is like the perfect sort of product analog like products for the isolated male.

45:30And in reporting it out, I'm like, ah, that's, I, that was wrong. This is very much in sort of in line with what cigarette habits were in terms of consumption, in terms of like it being maybe not social in the same way, but certainly not isolating in the way that sort of my, my imagination had it. Also like this just made me think about like, why do we consider smoking to be social that you go out and you have a cigarette with someone? Is that idea even just like downstream of smoking becoming ostracized like when everybody was allowed to smoke all the time anywhere with each other was it considered a social activity to the same extent or was it only once it became considered unhealthy and ostracized it became this thing like people go outside together and bond over and then I also think of like baseball and like baseball I guess people were dipping a lot historically and now they chew gum I assume they're not allowed to dip and maybe they do but it's like in that case it's the same kind of thing but it is it's like being part of a culture to be like standing there next to the other guys and you're all chewing together right like even if it is kind of more of an individualistic habit it's still forging community around it there is a sort of nod right of like oh can i like you like i remember when I was reporting this, like chased a couple of guys who had like the outline of the tin in their back pocket to look for people to interview.

46:57And like even that, you're like, oh, that guy has one. Like I can talk to that guy. Like I have a reason that can go over to that person to bum one from this person. So there is like a little bit of this, like this club aspect to it. And let me do to your point about like smoking becoming a social thing. Like when you limit the spaces that people can do things, you make those limited spaces much more tightly knit. And so I think that like When you have to force people outside to smoke or into a smoking section, everyone in that sort of ostracization zone now has something to talk about because they complain about having to come outside or complain about the days when you could smoke inside.

47:32And now you have something common to you, which I think is a really unifying thing for people who sort of, you know, whether it's in or smoking or anything else. Whether it's good or not, you know, it's over debate. Another thing is just like speaking to the practical realities of like addiction to nicotine. you get sick of being ostracized after a while you get sick of having to go outside yeah and like maybe these sorts of alternative i sound like an advertisement but maybe these sorts of smokeless alternatives their popularity is like people wanting to be able to continue some of what they get from smoking but in a more socially acceptable way yeah i mean if i'm with a group of non-smokers and i'll like you know step up for a cigarette or something it is a very isolating feeling.

48:15I don't always want to talk to another smoker and I don't always want to have that conversation. But yeah, to your point, it's like if I just get a nicotine fix and pop a zinn and yeah, chances are there's not that same feeling of like having to leave and being conspicuous about it and all that. Is there any point that you wanted to make, Andrea, about how it could be individualistic to counter that? Well, I wonder if there's an element. I don't want to counter it. I think that's a good foil that you offered, Teddy. And, you know, maybe the community it's fostering is speaking to something deeper or is an offshoot of it, like, resonating more deeply.

48:52Because, like, I think maybe with conservatives, I do wonder, I'm probably galaxy braining this too much, honestly. But I wonder if that's part of why, maybe subconsciously part of why it got picked up by the right. Because it's this thing that could be done anywhere. They didn't have to worry about, well, you're not allowed to do this. You're not allowed to do that. Nonetheless, I think it does connote a certain amount of like individualism and just like total freedom, at least for now. You can still do it. Maybe they'll find a way to police it or restrict it. I don't know. Let's see when the science comes out.

49:21Yeah, I could still potentially be an influence on it, I would think, but maybe less than I thought. And they're complicated. These are complicated symbols, as you said. It could be just bring both towards that and towards like conservative people do want to exist in some kind of you know in community or whatever exactly like pry it from my cold dead gums yeah exactly and true to your point like i that was my exact perspective going in when i was reporting this i was right i assumed it was like that and then i was really surprised to find out that there wasn't yeah it's funny because i definitely like you know in my mind's eye i never thought of it like it was always kind of like social to me like i never thought of it as just something like for gamers in their basements just from my own like life anecdotal experience but I guess I was wondering is it more this like the fact that it is at least right now sort of unpoliceable it might be the thing that's giving it this undercurrent of like social momentum I don't know what if it's about podcasting so hard and for so long that you don't have time to take a smoke break well I do think I alluded to this a little bit earlier but I do think I wonder if like part of it and I would need to see if I have no idea if there's like stats that are more like more people are using nicotine now versus 20 years ago or 10 years ago or whatever but i wonder if just like the fact that so many people are using it and other nicotine products synthetic nicotine products and especially younger people you know to me that says something about grind culture and just the overall like stress anxiety like you know all the people that you cited in your piece like you know of whatever political affiliation like the through line of their responses of why they use it is because they're just like i'm working so damn hard and i need the energy right that's exactly it absolutely yeah there's a huge sort of central part of all this is like hustle grind what's the mindset thing like uh like grind set shit like that's like part of what zoizen is so appealing to people it's like oh man i'm like awake and i can do all this shit and i'm not going to slow down and doesn't matter that my heart is pounding out of my chest like I can go to the next party.

51:28I can write the next line of code. I can crunch this spreadsheet. I can finish this article, whatever it is. Yeah, I think that's a huge part of that. Mood regulation? Because nicotine also, it's not just pumping you up. It's almost like a form of self-medicating. It's like it's mood regulation. If you're feeling sad, you might want a cigarette because it alters your brain chemicals. And it's also a way of coping with anxiety. Yeah, it's a coping. Precarity. It's a coping thing, for sure. I think that's a really interesting thing that the overall trend speaks to is like this need to chemically cope right now.

52:04A hundred percent. Yeah, absolutely. All right, Teddy. Well, thanks so much for coming on the pod. Great piece. We'll be sure to link to it. That's it. Great. Thanks. Thanks so much for having me on.

52:19This episode of The Culture Journalist was produced and edited by Emily Friedlander and me, Andrea Dominic. our theme music is by Mark Donica to check out more head to our substack that's theculturejournalist.substack.com and if you like what you're hearing leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or share us with friends to help support independent journalism