Dating App Parody Video Wants You to See How Unattractive Smoking Can Be
Advertisements that air during the Grammys don’t usually get as much attention as those that are shown during the Super Bowl. But one of the commercials that aired on Sunday night during the music awards program sure caught the attention of my 11- and 14-year-old sons. They began yelling, “That’s King Bach! Look, Mom, King Bach’s on TV!”
I had no clue who they were talking about—and it turns out that that’s exactly the intention of the ad. Tweens, teens, and young adults know who the Vine and YouTube star is. Now my sons and any other youths who were watching the Grammys know that King Bach doesn’t think smoking is attractive.
King Bach is just one of the young Internet-famous celebs featured in “Left Swipe Dat,” a catchy new song and music video from the Truth campaign. The national youth smoking prevention initiative also harnessed the talents of up-and-coming music stars such as Becky G. and Fifth Harmony. A 60-second clip of the song and video aired during the Grammys specifically to catch the attention of a younger audience.
“Yeah, you work out. You are in shape, OK. I like the six-pack abs, not the six packs a day,” sings Becky G. on the track.
The song’s title and theme come from the term “left swipe,” which is familiar to users of dating apps such as Tinder and OkCupid. On those apps, if you don’t like the way someone looks, you swipe the profile to the left. In the “Left Swipe Dat” song and video, it doesn’t matter how good-looking a potential date may be. If he or she uses any form of tobacco (traditional cigarettes or a hookah) the candidate gets left swiped.
“We wanted to debunk a few things here,” Robin Koval, the chief executive officer and president of Legacy, the national public foundation that runs Truth, told CNN about the video. “One, [smoking] doesn’t make you more attractive, and we know the thing that young people care about most is connecting with other people, especially for romantic opportunities, and that social smoking, whatever you call it—light smoking, intermittent smoking—is smoking.”
As you’ll see in the clip above, the video has some seriously laugh-out-loud moments as it has a little fun with the fake dating profile selfies of smokers. (We hope no one out there would think lighting up while posing with a tiger is attractive.)
While Truth hopes that young watchers of the video saw it during the Grammys and will see it on YouTube now, it’s also eager to spark more than a passive viewing experience. It hopes to get teens and young adults engaged in the antismoking movement. It’s asking viewers to film themselves lip-synching their favorite lyrics upload a clip to social media, and tag it the hashtags #LeftSwipeDat and #PickMe. Truth plans to pick some of the uploaded clips to create a lip-dub video that will premiere in April.