Written by Smoke Signals | 31 August 2011

Revisiting an Old Favorite?
SMOKE SIGNALS MAGAZINE - September - October 2011

Many years ago, when the print version of Smoke Signals was the main method of communication between smoking fetishists (can you believe it!?), our annual reader survey was one of the highlights of the year. We took a lot of care in crafting the questions each year; and we took pride not just in the number of mailed responses we received each year (often close to 50% of all subscribers!) but also in the fact that people cared enough to send us interesting, detailed answers to the questions. It also was nice to hear so much positive feedback to the issue which reported the results each year.

As we lament regularly, times have changed. We don't think that most people these days would have the patience or the time to fill out a smoking fetish survey like they did 10-15 years ago. Even more importantly, we don't think they have the "need" to do something like that; quite frankly, we believe the reason we had as many as half our subscribers answer the survey was that it was just about the only way for most people to "interact in depth" with other members of the just-emerging smoking fetish community. These days, there are so many other places for people to interact, that the idea of a print survey seems almost as quaint as the idea that people used to save dog-eared photos of women smoking.

But that brings us to the point of this month's musings. We think that the community would benefit from a "mini-survey" of sorts. We're not talking about a survey asking when you developed a smoking fetish, or whether you have a partner who smokes, or anything else that we used to ask in the old surveys. We're talking about a survey that asks where you spend your smoking fetish time; if you spend it on websites, what you're doing on those sites; what's most important to you when it comes to the sites you visit; and how much (if any) money you spend on smoking fetish material.

It's obvious that information would help us greatly - and help other producers in the community - when it comes to delivering the types of sites and material you'd like to see. But we think it would also be of interest to lots of people out there. You already know, for the most part, when "people" developed a smoking fetish and whether it's likely that their parents smoked and how they handle telling a significant other and whether they like younger or older smokers --- all the stuff we used to ask. But do you know whether most people prefer to watch streaming video, or downloads they've saved to their computers, or DVDs they've had for years? Whether they're constantly searching for new material or rely on their old favorites? Prefer "smoking models" or amateurs who post video to the web on their own?

We think this would be an interesting "survey for the 2010s" - let us know what you think. Please just take a second to respond to this article - or to email us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it - and we'll see whether this is just a weird thought we had on our own, or an idea that other people can get behind as well.