A new anti-smoking public service announcement enlists an ensemble of YouTube and Vine stars to team up with real-life versions of the Internet's biggest memes in warning of the danger of hookah as an EDM beat bumps in the background.
It would be hard to make a commercial more blatantly screams out its intention to appeal to young people in 2015. Yet the new spot from the Truth Campaign, which is set to debut at this Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards, manages to be entertaining all the same.
Now that habitual cigarette use is reaching new lows, public health advocates are turning their attention to other less frequent forms of tobacco smoking that young people generally don't see as a big deal -- the occasional cigarette during a night out, a hookah session with friends or flavored cigarillos.
A study published earlier this year found that a quarter of the teenagers surveyed believe that infrequent smoking is harmless. But the new spot points out that half of all people who have even a single cigarette in college still smoke four years later.
The campaign also warns that smoking hookah for an hour is the equivalent amount of smoke as around 100 to 200 cigarettes. According to the Centers for Disease Control, hookah smoke is at least as toxic as cigarettes.
"It tastes like kumquats. So it can't be bad for me," one partygoer says in the commercial, before a unicorn vomits rainbows on her in protest.
The new "It's a Trap" spot follows the campaign's "Finishers 2.0" commercial released earlier this month during the Teen Choice Awards.