Smoking or gay commercial

In the middle of April in the year twenty twenty-one, a video on TikTok was said to present an anti-smoking public service announcement, or PSA, that stated, "It's gay to smoke." The concluding part of this very short video claimed: "Brought to you with support from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

The TikTok Video

"Let me see an advertisement that would not be deemed acceptable in the current era," the TikTok video commenced. A camera was then displayed, oriented toward a screen which played the particular "It's gay to smoke" short video.

In what was claimed to be a PSA, a couple of teenage boys were seen smiling at one another in a school hallway. They proceeded to walk in each other's direction and almost caused their faces to make contact. After this, the pair retreated towards a bathroom entrance and verified to ensure nobody else was in the vicinity.

One of the two boys muttered something into the other boy's ear. With their respective hands positioned closely to one another, the boy doing the whispering extracted a couple of cigarettes from his pocket. Following this, the pair proceeded into the lavatory.

"Are those two smoking, or could they be gay?" the voice-over queried.

The expression "It's gay to smoke" can be found, succeeded by a mention of the CDC.

The Original YouTube Video

This was not a real, legitimate public service announcement (PSA) coming from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The TikTok user oriented a camera at some display in order to showcase the short clip. They seemed, or she seemed, to be exercising caution in order to avoid revealing that it had been playing a video that was in a full-screen display, originating from The Onion's YouTube channel.

To put it another way (in other words), considering the fact that The Onion represents a satirical publication, the PSA came into being as satire.

The Original Video

The Onion's satirical video was actually uploaded in excess of ten years prior, namely in two thousand and ten. It has accumulated approximately two point nine million views. At the same time, in a time frame of under seven days, the video shared on TikTok had been watched in excess of three point four million instances.

The original video exhibited the "Today Now!" brand (logo) located in the lower-left region. This specific brand (logo) was not displayed in the TikTok video, resulting from somebody having oriented their recording device rather closely to some display in order to get it on camera.

To summarize or, in sum, the supposed CDC public service announcement which made the assertion that "it's gay to smoke" in fact was satire that originated from The Onion.