Few objects in student culture possess the same social utility as the vape. Simultaneously a nicotine delivery device, conversation starter, social bargaining chip, flirtation mechanism, and communal ritual, the vape has quietly become one of the defining artefacts of contemporary youth interaction. While vapists run the daily risk of popcorn lung, empty bank accounts and profound parental disappointment, it cannot go without saying that vapes perform a special role in Scarfie culture. In an era defined by social anxiety, lingering post-pandemic awkwardness, and the death of spontaneous interaction, the vape has become the most unlikely bridge between strangers.
The Vape as a Social Currency
Owning a vape can instantly make you socially relevant at any flat party. Serial vapists enjoying a hoon will often find people they’ve never spoken to materialising out of thin air to ask, “Can I hit your vape?” They emerge from the shadows like nicotine-starved vampires, drawn to the faint flow of mango ice.
For a few crucial seconds, the person with the vape controls the social interaction. It’s the modern equivalent of being the person who carried a lighter in previous generations. Those few seconds can be the difference between securing a party to drink at next Friday, or spending the night alone in bed with your Womanizer Pro Rechargeable (not a bad outcome either, to be fair).
The time spent outside vaping creates the perfect environment for forced small talk that somehow escalates into finding common ground, drunken confessions, and unpacking your character flaws. Before long, you’ve acquired a new person to exchange blank forehead snaps with six times a day.
Of course, there’s always the risk that some people will become known primarily as the designated vape supplier. These vulnerable Juul owners may find themselves valued less for their personality, and more so for their ability to provide a Mint Solo on demand.
The "Can I Hit Your Vape?" Relationship Scale
Acquaintance: Politely asks.
Friend: Already reaching for it.
Best friend: Takes it from your hoodie pocket without making eye contact.
Situationship: Sharing a vape is somehow more intimate than holding hands.
Intimacy and Germ Theory Collapse
Vapers appear to suffer from immediate amnesia regarding every post-pandemic hygiene habit the second a vape enters the room.
It usually starts innocently enough – a flatmate passes it around, and everyone operates under the unspoken assumption that nobody's secretly incubating meningitis or herpes. But once alcohol enters the equation, the net is cast wider. Before long, your vape carried out more social networking than you have – making its way through friends, friends of friends, and people whose names you’ll never learn but whose saliva you’ll apparently share.
Let's be honest: getting drunk absolutely annihilates our standards of personal hygiene. A sober student wouldn't dare let their skin touch a club toilet seat under any circumstances, opting for the classic hovering squat. Fast forward four vodka Red Bulls and that same person is happily perched on the piss-soaked floor, violently refunding the $11 bottle of wine they demolished at pre-drinks.
Against that backdrop, communal vaping hardly seems shocking. Even the self-proclaimed germaphobes abandon their principles, performing the obligatory “wipe it on shirt” ritual – a gesture that provides roughly that same level of sanitation as thoughts and prayers.
Flavour Personalities
Blue Razz = BCom student
Watermelon Ice = First-year
Mint = Recovering smoker
Tobacco flavour = Social pariah
The Economics of "Just One Hit"
There is a distinct, unwritten economy that governs social vaping, anchored entirely by the illusion of "just one hit." Nobody ever actually asks for a single puff. Instead, friends who swore six months ago that they were buying their own device today are still happily running a full-blown nicotine welfare system off of yours.
It’s a quiet, one-sided transaction. The vape owner watches helplessly as the battery drains, the juice level disappears, and an entire social circle develops collective ownership over a product they did not purchase. Eventually the device is handed back. The owner takes a well-earned draw and is rewarded with a mouthful of dry, metallic burn – a clear sign the tank was sucked empty approximately three hits ago. A real tragedy of the commons.
What starts as a simple favor quickly becomes a micro-tax on your wallet, proving that in the social vape ecosystem, generosity is rewarded with a ruined coil and a dead device.
The Sovereign State of the Vape
Ultimately, every social circle that shares a vape inadvertently operates as its own fragile micro-economy.
You have the long-suffering owners holding all the assets, the perpetual leechers running a full-blown welfare state off them, and the absolute legends who keep the whole system from collapsing by always carrying a spare USB-C charger.
It’s an exhausting arrangement that permanently teeters on the edge of economic disaster. The second the battery flashes red, the entire system risks collapse. Borders close, diplomatic relations deteriorate, and people are on Google maps seeing how long the walk is to Night ‘N Day.
However, despite the burnt coils, stolen juice, and forgoing basic hygiene, vapes remain the undisputed glue of student life. It’s a piece of plastic that’s almost guaranteed to give us all cancer down the line, sure. But it’s also the ultimate excuse to drag strangers out of the shadows, turn drunken banter into lifelong friendships, and warm up an uninsulated North Dunedin shitbox.
For a generation that often struggles to connect, that's a surprisingly powerful thing for something that tastes like blue raspberry and battery acid.
