Rip Trippers, easily one of – if not – the most popular vaping personality in the history of the technology. His started to breakthrough to the mainstream with his fun personality, his product reviews, and his coil build tutorials. While he’s had his fair share of critics (including from DIYorDIE), he’s without a doubt one of the community’s most influential figures. A product Rip Trippers reviews favorably (or even not favorably), immediately calls in huge sales bumps. Maybe more than any other reviewer on the platform. He has been a staple of the vaping community almost since its inception. And imagining him leaving the craft would certainly be devastating, not only for the reviewing community, but the vaping ecosystem as a whole. Unfortunately, that may happen.
In Rip Trippers latest video, he goes on this semi-aggressive diatribe about the current state of vaping. It’s certainly a contrast to his normal videos, where a more happy-go-lucky Rip inspects products he enjoys, and usually throws in a few of his famous one-liners. This video takes a more ominous tone. The video starts with him reference his Instagram post where he spoke about leaving. He portrays his frustration with the community here as well. Rip seems visible annoyed at the laissez faire attitude many have taken in his comments. This is one of my favorite parts about this video. I truly believe many in the vaping community don’t quite understand the severity of the situation, and to have someone like Rip trying to wake up his viewers, is nice to see.
“…others, you’re just fucking clueless”
“It’s like these people…you think this is a fucking joke”.
Rip exclaims when speaking about the comments on his latest IG post.
Rip then goes on to state how there’s approximately 6 months left of the current vaping ecosystem – then retracting and saying some of his sources are saying more like 3 months. The next part of the video Rip talks about how advocacy videos made by Grimmgreen or SuckMyMod get a fraction of the views. As a channel who spends much more time on advocacy than others, I can attest. Not many people care too much about it (though, I don’t really blame them).
The rest of the video speaks to fighting the legislation and corruption of the state. One thing Rip does is make a point that his forte is not advocacy, and there are other channels who do it much better than he could. He also points out that one of the reasons he hasn’t posted much advocacy is because he doesn’t want his viewers being “conditioned” to his alarmist posts. Rather, when he does make an advocacy post, people will pay attention. Finally he goes off and tells people to join the vaping rally happening on Nov 9th.
Overall, you can see in the video Rip is frustrated and a bit scared of what’s to come. This is an industry he loves, and watching it fall has taken its toll. But this type of video is needed. His fans, and the types of vapers that follow Rip, need to be reminded that this technology is never going to be the same. Something I’ve been saying since 2016. If you enjoy vaping as it is today, there’s not much time to preserve it. We only have a couple months to make our voices heard. Say what you want about Rip, having him try to wake up his fanbase with a video like this is absolutely commendable.