This is why you're dead?

A friend we might call William Tecumseh sent along a link to an article called "The Dark Side of Food Porn"* I would have preferred reading an article on "The Sunny Side of Food Porn," particularly if it involved the cast of 8 Femmes whipping up a cassoulet. As Fanny Ardant makes the confit, Emmanuele Beart... I digress. I'm on the record of not understanding why the representation of food is "food porn," since unlike regular porn, it often shows food you might actually be having.

That said, the article is another, and fairly interesting, consideration of the This is Why You're Fat phenomenon. As the image at right indicates, the tagline for this immensely popular website is "where dreams become heart attacks." My question is a sincere one -- why are heart attacks funny, when cancer isn't? It's not hard to find XL burgers w/ names like "double coronary.," but hard to find tobacconists w/ names like "Lung Cancer Shoppe." Having lost a parent apiece to cancer and heart disease, I feel about the same way about each. I welcome your thoughts on the difference.

Comments

[Greg Rutter]

Because heart attacks are (seemingly) the result of a conscious choice whereas dying of cancer is somewhat random in its effects. A heart attack is funny for the same reason the Darwin Awards are "funny" - you were foolish enough to tempt fate and got what was coming to you.

That being said if there were pictures of people playing in radioactive waste or eating plutonium with a caption that said "this is why you have leukemia" it would be comedy gold.

[daniel]

Greg beat me to it. Spot on.

Though, the people making fun of fat people are likely self-conscious smokers in denial of what the cigs might later cause.

[daniel]

Also, in Kevin Smith movies, the characters smoke Nails brand cigarettes. I've heard friends refer to them as "cancer sticks" when asking for another.

[Sorbet Trio]

My analysis: Food choices can be arranged along a continuum from tepid water to TIWYF maximalism. You can dabble in eating food that's oooh, a leetle bit naughty, and also mock people who are noticeably elsewhere on the continuum than you are.

There's not really a continuum of cigarettes in the same way; there's a fairly definite divide between smokers and non-smokers, and definite divides are much less amusing to point out because of their lack of nuance.

If stuff like this was more everyday, there might well exist a hilarious This Is Why You're Coughing site.

[diabetes]

I agree, food choices can be arranged along a continuum from tepid water to TIWYF maximalism.

Sam Nisbett