Jack is a twenty-five year old non-medical contract transcriptionist who "looks quite a bit like the cartoon character in the video aside from the lack of facial hair which I left out because I couldn't get it to look right," he says.
Jack has been vaping for a little over a year now but did not really get into it, or entirely off tobacco, until about three months ago. "Before that I had smoked a PAC since I was 16, I replaced that habit with hookah when I was 20 and that slowly escalated to an absurd level over the next 5 years."
Jack stumbled upon the world of vaping and e-cigarettes on Reditt and started reading all about it. "I picked up an eGo battery and a ViVi Nova and then a month later I ordered my first mech and haven't smoked since," he recalls. "I kind of made the video on a whim. I have the entire Adobe Creative Suite that I got for free when I was in university because I was a Computer Science major and I participated as a mentor in a hack-a-thon that was sponsored by Adobe," he explains.
"A couple of months ago I got into cartooning and bought a cheap graphics tablet and started messing around with Flash. The idea to do the video came when I was reading a post on the sub and realized that half the words were some sort of e-cig jargon that would totally scare off new people. I really wanted to contribute something real and substantial back to the community for being so amazing when I was getting started. So I made the video I wish I could have seen when I started. Although all the swearing might seem off base, that's exactly what my inner monologue was thinking when I first saw these words. All of my knowledge came from this sub and just reading everything. I have a tendency to over-research essentially everything and can get very passionate very quickly when I like something," Jack tells us.
"This is actually the first video I've ever made, but I had such a great time doing it that I'd like to do it professionally, we'll see how that turns out, but I already have scripts in the works and it finally pushed me over the edge to buy a professional voice mic so hopefully the next one doesn't have so many mic pops. A lot of it was I just didn't think anyone would like it, but I was pretty wrong on that front."
When asked if he has anything to say to new vapers, Jack says, "That's kind of tough, I guess the biggest thing is I can now say, with quite a bit of certainty is that vaping has saved my life. At my peak hookah usage I smoked all day everyday. I work from home as a contractor so it was always accessible. I was dealing with a lot of stress and smoking was my outlet. At the peak it was something absurd, like 6+ hookah bowls a day. Half a bowl is enough to make most of my friends feel nauseous and I just chained it, when one bowl ran out I repacked and kept on going. If I kept it up I would be dead by the time I hit 55, or at least have some form of cancer. So if you think that you're too far gone, you're not. I was about as addicted as anyone could possibly be. The increase in my overall health is truly astounding. My sinuses are clear, I don't wake up everyday needing to blow my nose, my resting heart rate has dropped from 82 to 66 and I used to get sick like once a month which I blamed on my SO being a teacher and being around kids all day, but I haven't been sick once since I fully quit smoking."