It's strange that yummyfajitas' post is flagged and killed, presumably for asking a legitimate question in a sarcastic way that rubbed some biased and oversensitive moderator the wrong way.

Contrast to this post, which accuses of him of being "one of them", presumably part of a conspiracy to spread apologia for poor food choices on a hacker interest forum!

An absurd claim, insulting, illogical, of no service to the conversation, but remaining alive and upvoted. We can see further content-free insults in replies to this post. This is the first time I've seen a post killed for reasons that are obviously wrong. In addition, they are wrong in a dangerous way, killing mere rhetorical sarcasm while allowing actual insults, of negative worth, to run wild.

> oversensitive moderator the wrong way.

Moderators didn't touch his post. His post was downvoted by users, and flagged by users.

I'm not a mod, so I don't know this, but it's pretty clearly what happened.

If you think it shouldn't be dead you should click the timestamp and then click the [vouch] link.

Thanks, I didn't know about the flag/kill procedure or the vouch link.

People are lied into drinking soda?

Yes.

Oh okay, moving along then. I just thought people drank sugary drinks because they liked it. Silly me. But you're right, it must be because they're oblivious to the fact they contain sugar, I mean what with the fact the media completely silences that subject... and it's not even written on the bottles. Fucking corporations amirite.

Analogy: swap out sugar for smoking. People smoke because they like it. And because they can't stop. One of the reasons they can't stop is that there are massive industries devoted to ensuring that they don't (witness, for instance, the rising levels of nicotine in cigarettes, presumably intended to make the product more addictive). I mean, what with the fact that the media completely silences that subject… and it's not even written on the packets with giant health warnings and pictures of blackened lungs. Corporations, amirite?

The above japery is to demonstrate that to a large extent, your sarcasm misses the point.

So your contention is that people can't stop smoking. Unfortunately that's contradicted by a fair amount of evidence. I'm going to go ahead and consider your theory falsified.

By all means continue to think that it is easy to stop smoking (no-one disputes that it is possible; the relevant point is whether it is easy, as I hoped was clear from the start), but as is often the way, the second paragraph of the Wikipedia page contains the appropriate information. Of all attempts to stop smoking without assistance, between 3 and 6 percent are successful (though the article later suggests an average 7.3% success rate).

Stopping with chemical assistance, the success rate rises to about 30%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_cessation