All Hail The ‘Fridge Cigarette’

According to Bloomberg, Gen Z’s low smoking and drinking rates are costing the UK billions of pounds of booze and tobacco tax money in what they call a lost “sin tax.” 

But if a recent TikTok trend is anything to go by, it seems the clean-living generation isn’t without its crisper, colder vices. 

In a viral video, app user @reallyrachelreno recently shared a clip of themselves cracking open a chilled can of Diet Coke. 

“Overheard someone call Diet Coke a ‘fridge cigarette’ and nothing’s been more true to me since,” she wrote over the video (which has garnered almost four million views as of the time of writing). 

It’s not the only vice in the cigaverse

Responding to the poster’s original video, commenter C H wrote: “flavoured sparkling water is fridge Nicorette.” 

And in a follow-up video, the viral poster clarified that caffeine-free Diet Coke is “just a hand-rolled cigarette.” 

Speaking to the New York Times, @reallyrachelreno shared that “the crack of the can is like the spark of a lighter”.

Once you take your first sip, she added, “all the worries and cares in the world go away.” 

At the same time, clips that show posters “ashing” everything from curry sauce-dipped chips to entire bags of crisps are racking up hundreds of thousands of views with the caption, “Just a little something to take the edge off.” 

They’re fun, tongue-in-cheek posts  – but they’re part of a broader Gen Z trend, which sees younger people rejoice in the exquisite minutiae of daily life. 

Free or cheap vices seem to be the way forward

Take viral videos posted to Matt Berry (yes, What We Do In The Shadows’ Matt Berry)’s Take My Hand, where refreshingly earnest posters write “almost forgot this is the whole point” over some seemingly banal scenes. 

One TikTok using the trend shows a man led back, two pets lying peacefully on the sleeper’s torso. 

Another shows a poster’s child in “stained glass” cardboard and film “fairy wings,” whose plastic panes leave a rainbow-hued reflection on the tarmac. 

These moments – a cool can of fizzy drink, a sweet moment with your partner, a homemade outfit – have gained newfound appreciation, as a generation with less money and opportunities than those before meets the endless distressing news of the moment. 

They are free or cheap, they are relatively harmless, and they don’t promise to solve all of life’s problems or permanently rid you of your existential dread. 

Nope: all that is asked is a way to “take the edge off.” The fridge cigarette, if nothing else, can certainly do that.