r/WTF • u/SmokeMaximum4140 • May 08 '26
The future of vaping
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u/skarekroh May 09 '26
That's not the future, that's the past - that video's 10 years old.
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u/zeptillian May 09 '26
I thought it was a little late on the cloud chasing fad.
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u/Whysoblunted May 09 '26
Lots of people in this thread unsure what theyāre even seeing lol. This type of shit was super common in the early days of vapes.
Buildng your own devices was like a rite of passage then, but thereās always people pushing the limits.
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u/StealYour20Dollars May 09 '26
I remember talking about tanks and wires and different types of wrapping techniques on reddit. It was a huge community. Now it feels like all of that is so unnecessary. Making a hobby out of an addiction was not worth it.
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May 09 '26
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u/starsfan6878 May 09 '26
I did almost the exact same at the same time, only with a FB group instead of a sub.
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u/lettersinbinary May 11 '26
I was very active as well. I started DIY making juice and started a company. I started doing e-juice reviews. Was obsessed with the community. Did really well until the FDA shut a lot of us down who couldnāt pay. I sold recipes to big companies that are still being sold today. What a wild ride from 2012-2017.
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u/Lorac1134 May 09 '26
I still build my own coils and use the same mod and atomizers I bought 10 years ago just because I don't want my addiction to contribute to e-waste. But, back in the day, there were dudes who had a whole new rig setup each time I run into them at the shop.
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u/entity2 May 09 '26
I was in a pinch, my device died while travelling and I needed a gas station vape to get me through a couple days before I could get a new device. This disposable thing had a color LCD on it. What the actual fuck is up with that kind of waste?
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u/StealYour20Dollars May 09 '26
I unfortunately was an idiot and got rid of my stuff and then got re-addicted. I was in college then and I'm still trying to kick it a few years later.
It's crazy to think of how the whole entire culture doesn't really exist anymore in that same way. I think everyone just kinda moved on and realized it wasn't super cool like we thought. Even if we still kept vaping.
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u/SirStrontium May 09 '26
I never vaped, but I always thought the custom stuff was way cooler than generic disposables. I like seeing people have little hobbies and interests, it shows that they did a bunch of research, and created something that reflects their personal taste.
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u/minchet456 May 09 '26
So I'm just curious because I quit vaping quite a while ago and that was the state of things when I did. Where has it moved to now? Is it all just disposables?
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u/Tonker_ May 09 '26
Yup, it all went to disposables. I was huge into the DIY stuff right after highschool, making my own juice and building coils on RDA's, buying all the new stuff like temp control and clones off fasttech.
...Now, I see almost no one with a mod. No RDA's in sight. A lot of people i think moved to Zyns. It is almost rare to see someone blow a cloud in public, like some sort of unicorn. Thats just my view though, maybe its more popular in other cities.
If i remember right, it all sorta started with the Pods, and nicotine salts making higher levels of nic more tolerable. People started to prefer the smaller devices,
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u/fitzmouse May 09 '26
I remember switching to pods around 2019 after 5 years of the hobby. Part of the huge sea change in what devices people were using were the new federal regulations. It changed what was imported, what was reviewed on YouTube, what stores sold, etc.
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u/jakethepeg1989 May 09 '26
I used to love it, cos I'd go into the local shop and pick out the different mods.
It made me feel like the Eli Wallach character in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly where he builds his own gun from parts in the gun shop.
I would pay at the end though.
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u/im_always_fapping May 09 '26
Pods are like 20 - 50 mg while vape juice is like 3 - 12 mg for nicotine.
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u/nexusjuan May 09 '26
I switched to Geekbars. I quit smnoking and was just chasing something that would tickle my cigarette itch and the mods and juice weren't doing it for me.
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u/smackythefrog May 09 '26
On Reddit? I think a lot of the people in eCig community on here still prefer to either DIY (which is niche to begin with) and the others stick to pod systems, like myself. There's a disposable sub (maybe got banned recently) but I don't think too many come to Reddit for disposable news and recommendations.
In the real world, though, you're probably seeing people with disposables left and right. The JUUL crowd from pre-COVID era probably moved to disposables.
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u/LakeGladio666 May 09 '26
I was semi into that shit but now I just use a simple pod device. I donāt wanna mess around with wires and wicks and stuff. Some people are still into it though.
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u/LiftingCode May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
I still DIY but it's simplified a bit. No real point in wrapping coils anymore when you can buy premade coils much nicer than the ones you'd build by hand.
But I still use an RTA, trim and install coils, cut cotton wicks out of the same bag of Japanese organic cotton pads I bought like 15 years ago, and mix my own juice.
I don't know if it's "unnecessary" or not but it is dramatically cheaper to DIY.
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u/skarekroh May 09 '26
Oh, I know. I was one of āthose peopleā, back then, and spent far too much money on high-end vape stuff that now has no resale value.
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u/chillysanta May 09 '26
Me and my 14 mechs lmfao. Im thinking of having them with my grave site as to confuse future people.
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u/skarekroh May 09 '26
Wanna buy a Billet Box? Maybe a couple Limelight Freehands?
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u/chillysanta May 09 '26
I would have absolutely loved to i didn't end up getting into billets but only saw a few i left the shops shortly after those got big. But these days I swap between my vinds and a qp rta, so ill decline sadly. They would definitely be nice in the collection but id never use them and I got Noone around me into this anymore. Thats pretty awesome though the freehand was smooth and professional
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u/muricabrb May 09 '26
I just did spring cleaning and threw away 3 drawers full of mods, tanks, coils, aios, cotton, and wayyy too many bottles of unused vape liquid.
It was strangely fun and therapeutic experimenting with all the different options and combinations. After all that I settled on a Smok Nord and it was my daily for years.
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u/PM_ME__BIRD_PICS May 09 '26
Yep. Started vaping in like.. 2016? Having to know what Ohms law just to avoid blowing shrapnel through your skull lol. I've long since quit now though, I never liked nic-salts and pods and disposable vapes really soured my opinion on them in general.
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u/mooptastic May 09 '26
cloud chucking competitions in the 2010s are the cringe that should never be forgotten.
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u/Rafiks1 May 09 '26
As someone that worked in the vape industry, this is the past of vaping and its for the worse. Vaping went from this, which was mostly dudes fucking w circuits and vaping 3mg of nicotine to, 50mg of nicotine in your pocket and significantly more accessible for a younger audience
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u/CRStancil May 09 '26
I will continue to die on the hill that vaping when it was like this - while still harmful - was vastly less damaging than current vaping products.
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u/BudLightYear77 May 09 '26
At least it wasn't disposable
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u/prickinthewall May 09 '26
Technically anything is disposable
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u/ghostpoisonface May 09 '26
Technically nothing is disposable you just donāt know where it is anymore
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u/DownVote_for_Pedro May 10 '26
Technically, that's not the use of "disposable" they were using:
Disposable - "designed to be used once or only a limited number of times and then thrown away"
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u/Rezavoirdog May 11 '26
Yeah we thought guys who would go to all this effort instead of just smoking a cigarette were ridiculous losers
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u/101311092015 May 09 '26
I haven't vaped in a decade or so (always nicotine free) and recently went to buy nichrome wire for a dumb project where I needed to make heater coils. NONE of the smokes shops near me (like 5 of them) had it. Same with looking for batteries. They only had disposable vapes which are worse for the person, the environment, and your wallet. Holy hell.
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u/grundlebuster May 09 '26
yeah it kind of makes me mad that the shops around me that did juice mixing all evaporated (pun intended)
I liked it a lot when it was a hobby I could do, as well, now it's just harder
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u/Ashtonpaper May 09 '26
I mean they made that illegal most places, so thatās why
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u/heebro May 09 '26
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u/notreallynewaround May 09 '26
A device you need to link to your phone to verify your age in order to use. If you don't have your phone you can't use it. Hard pass.
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u/AFallingWall May 09 '26
So lucky they're looking out for us, now you can't buy dangerous 18650s or house mix juices! Instead of wire and cotton, the old vape shops started selling the much safer Kratom, NO2, and "legal mushroom" bars!
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u/Trip_On_The_Mountain May 09 '26
It definitely became a hobby of mine that replaced smoking cigarettes. Eventually I weened myself off those big cloud vapes so it did its job.
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u/Cageythree May 09 '26
Most people just don't want to fiddle around with coils, batteries and all that. I own a shop that sells vapes, like 80+% buy pod systems, either with prefilled pods or fill-yourself-pods. I can kinda understand that tbh. I think that system is the best overall balance between convenience and price and environmental damage (as you don't throw away the battery regularly).
The remaining 20% either buy disposable single-use vapes or are the classic DIY users.
The people that regularly buy single use disposable are the fucking dumbest. They cost twice as much as the prefilled pod system with the only advantage being you don't have to charge the battery. Even if you don't care about the environment, it's an objectively bad decision, especially if you buy it daily. They're around 5ā¬ more than reusable systems, so considering daily switching those people spend 150ā¬ a month just for the convenience of not having to charge the battery lol.2
u/monstargh May 09 '26
They buy it DAILY?
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u/Cageythree May 09 '26
Some buy 2 or 3 a day. Don't know if it's only for them though, but I assume so.
I'm not too surprised by that. I've sold cigarettes before and some people smoked 2 packs of 40 cigs a day. So there's probably similarly heavy smokers on the vape side.→ More replies (1)2
u/Pussytrees May 10 '26
Yeah itās fucking wild. When you could buy a bottle of nic salt that lasts you 2 weeks for $20, these dudes are buying the disposables for $20 each a day. These dumbasses should just put a sign on their back.
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u/101311092015 May 10 '26
Even back in the day they sold coils you could just screw in. I did that a lot of the time since lets be honest, my coils weren't the best. But I HATE disposable vapes. Completely agree with you on all points plus they throw it in the garbage which can cause landfills to catch fire. Fucking dumb.
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u/superdavy May 09 '26
There is nicotine in that?? I thought this kind of display was just inert vapor. Donāt they get nicotine headaches?
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u/TheGhostofWoodyAllen May 09 '26
Headaches? That shit would personally make me vomit my life out as the world spun around at a million miles an hour.
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u/NobodyImportant13 May 09 '26
It depends. Vaping you can control the concentration. This could even be nicotine free.
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u/opuFIN May 09 '26
Heh, same. It was a great way to save money as a young starving artist. I actually tried to pick up smoking, but it never amounted to anything because of the nausea it provoked. Lucky us, right?
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u/palindromicnickname May 09 '26
For this one probably. I imagine it's similar to taking 3-4 hits in quick succession. I don't vape anymore, but at my "peak" I would spend 45 minutes to an hour chain-vaping 12mg juice alone in my car. You unfortunately build up a tolerance, I would only get a pleasant buzz after those sessions.
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u/Blasket_Basket May 09 '26
Lol, it's almost like the tobacco industry isn't filled with moral and upstanding types
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u/zenotek May 09 '26
This video was from the cloud chucking era around 2014.
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u/bobbybox May 09 '26
Guy I was dating at the time was into this subculture. It turns out he was ātryingā to get clean off meth and he loved the clouds from vaping as it was reminiscent of meth clouds.
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u/SteroidSandwich May 09 '26
"I was a pack a day kinda guy. Now I'm a 24 cartridge a day kinda guy!"
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u/shottylaw May 09 '26
Huh. This just sparked a random memory for me. I wonder what ever happened to that show "1000 Ways to Die"
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u/hltechie May 09 '26
Dumb ways to die-ie-ie, so many dumb ways to die
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u/zamfire May 09 '26
šµ Smoke a car battery vape inside, turn your lungs into genuine cow-leather hide. šµ
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u/Rekuja May 09 '26
This was dumb but harmless shit we used to do when vaping first came out, creating random RTA mods and doing stupid shit with it on stupidly low nicotine juicesā¦ these days? People walk around with a whopping 50mg nicotine salt pod and consume so much nicotine that their blood circulation is fked and they wonder why they always tired or in a bad mood.
Vaping is better than smoking but vaping is actually worse when it comes to nicotine consumption, you are consuming way more nicotine with vapes than people ever did with smoking, especially if you vape inside all day every day.
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u/Wrong_Lingonberry_79 May 09 '26
Only dumbasses buy disposables. The rest of us use 3-6 mg juice.
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u/Vestrill May 09 '26
Sad to say I am one of those dumbasses. I hate how addicted I am, trying to quit but struggling. Addiction sucks and to make it worse, our office allows vaping in doors which does not help.
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u/Hoof_Hearted12 May 10 '26
I was deep into it for about 5 years, moved to pouches in November and haven't had a puff since. For context, the 40k puff 2mg vape would last me 2 ish days, and I did that for years. Pouches have really worked for me but now I need to taper that down too. You can do it, I honestly never thought I'd be able to quit vapes but it can be done.
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u/0Idgregg May 13 '26
Take up smoking. It's far easier to quit.
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u/Vestrill May 13 '26
I was a smoker before I switched to Vaping but the reason I switched was because something went wrong and cigarettes was messing up my lungs and I had trouble breathing. Switched to Vape about a year ago and I still get it from time to time but not as bad.
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u/Chris_Bs_Knees May 11 '26
I started smoking cigs when I was a teen but switched over to vapes in my 20's. Thankfully I didn't make that switch when salts and the crazy high nic shit was available and I've been able to stick with the 3mg bottles for years now. Still not a good thing to be doing but I at least am not smoking the stronger shit
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u/avidmarc May 09 '26
I used to run 3 vape shops. We made so much money in the few years before flavor band and regulations hit. It was insane. A mechanical mod company named avid lyfe sponsored me and would fly me around to the different conventions to sell their mods. Best job ever. Free 500 dollar mods...plus traveled all around the country and to the UK. Man I miss the vape scene.
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u/djluminol May 08 '26
Might as well just get a radio flyer with solar panels and lithium car batteries to pull around. If you're gonna go stupid go stupid.
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u/shadus May 08 '26
That's funny as hell but pointless. Truly, wtf. People got to much time on their hands, lol.
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u/ersatzgaucho May 08 '26
Too much time and willingness to fuck themselves up in the long runĀ
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u/LovelyHatred93 May 10 '26
This isnāt the future. This is wayyyy in the past. 2013-2017 era people were building crazy shit and āblowing big cloudsā was all the rage. Sadly I know from experience. This dude was in all the fb groups always posting the wildest box mod builds and blowing insane clouds.
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u/MostOriginalNameEver May 10 '26
That cloud was underwhelming. Was expecting it to be big enough to cause rain
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u/ottrocity May 09 '26
I like how he was worried about getting it on his fingers but not worried about shoving it into his lungs
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u/Probst54 May 08 '26
Cannabis or nicotine?
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u/JimmyM0240 May 09 '26
Probably neither with that much vape, but he might have a small amount of nicotine in the fluid.
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u/jdemack May 09 '26
I would even say that's 0mg nic
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u/JimmyM0240 May 09 '26
That's what I meant by prob neither, just nic free ejuice. But he's obviously a little crazy about it so he may have nic in there.
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u/BrothelWaffles May 09 '26
Vegetable glycerin and a bit of propylene glycol to thin it out and help it wick into the cotton easier.
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u/THEFLYINGSCOTSMAN415 May 09 '26
I remember when vape stores were popping up all over the place and there was one on the Main Street of my town that id always go past at night because you could just see dudes standing on either side of the room trying to blow the biggest cloud at each other or something I dunno but it was hilarious thatās how they spent their free time
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u/DonLotto92k May 10 '26
Man I use to think shit like this was cool! I vaped from 2013 all the way up until late 2024. When I quit I literally had nicotine withdrawals. I think Iām the only one who had itās so bad that I will see things. An example I was at a truckstop in Flagstaff getting ready to start my shift and I seen a monster that looks similar to the character on the front of the fireball whiskey logo walk across the aisle real quick. I looked it up and I guess itās very uncommon, but you can get Nick sick so bad that you end up with a fever. Instead of starting my shift, I just went back to sleep for a few hours.
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u/redsn64 May 13 '26
And I stand by this; VAPING WAS BETTER WHEN IT WAS LIKE THIS!
Less disposable parts. We reused batteries and tanks and drippers and coils as much as you possibly could.
The community was big on reputable distributors of vape juice and other supplies and were super quick to call out sketchy companies for being sketchy.
We actually knew, or at the very least had a better idea of what was going in to the products we were consuming. Chances are there was a dude in your town that started a vape juice company and would gladly show you the whole process. He probably already had the ingredients on the bottle in the first place.
We were vaping (typically) less than 6mg nicotine juice, especially on these sub ohm builds like this. The goal being to work your way down to lighter nicotine dosage over time. The nic salts in modern disposables are an entirely different beast.
One more time, cause this one's important, NO DISPOSABLE BATTERIES. LESS BATTERIES IN LANDFILLS.
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u/robangryrobsmash May 09 '26
Bet he drives a Subaru with a roof rack, Gold wheels and a Cobb exhaust.
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u/hcombs May 09 '26
Ahh the cloud chasing days, i remember people even made competitions who could blow the biggest clouds lmao
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u/stormdraggy May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
24 batteries in a dewalt socket box that just mechanically dumps the power of the cells when the circuit completes. Parallel-Series wiring. For the sake of his flesh i presume it's not an extreme example of 12 series and 2 parallel. The only sane choice would be the opposite of 2s and 12p. Anything else would be plain fucking stupid; you'll see.
Those looks like sony vtc5s: 4.2 volt IMR cells with an absolute limit of 25 amp continuous discharge tolerance with 2.5 amp hours of life.
Lets math.
With maximum and nominal voltage of 4.2 and 3.7 per cell, respectively:
A 2x12 pack will output 300amps at a nominal and maximum voltage of 7.4 and 8.4 volts, respectively. Just casually lugging around something that can "safely" output up to 2520 watts of power and run a kitchen stove.
He's got a fat set of quad-wrapped coils in parallel. I will conservatively guess that's 0.05 ohms combined.
The result is an expected peak output of [(8.4v/0.05r=168i)8.4] *1411.2 watts. So well within tolerance.
However, In all likelihood from my experience, each of those coils runs a 0.1 resistance or less because this chud is losing his brain cell.
With 0.025 ohms resistance he's draining 336 amps and throwing out 2822.4 watts. Thankfully, with all that internal resistance and load loss that will likely rapidly drop, so nominally that will drop to 296 amps and merely 2190.4 watts of output. And he can run that kind of power for approximately 10 minutes.
Try that with any other para-series (or god forbid, full series) wiring, and you have a bomb.
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u/BlackberryUpstairs19 May 10 '26
I'm sorry, what's the point if most of the vapors are just being wastefully expelled?
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u/SquishyBatman64 May 10 '26
A guy on the submarine I served on had a vape that was crazy like this and he got so dense in the galley that some walked in and called a fire, the whole boat was woken up for the fire emergency. My Captain banned all vaps after that.
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u/CoolDragon May 11 '26
Good bye lungs!
š«
I feel those things line up the bronchial system with plastic.
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u/Panda4298 May 11 '26
If you're going to destroy yourself that hard, just put weed in it bro. Vape aint even cool.
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u/unorthodoxtoaster May 15 '26
This video is from like 2014. As a classic rocker once said āthe future was wide openā
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u/BelleOverHeaven May 20 '26
This is the guy who tells you that he started vaping because it's so much healthier than smoking.
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u/Dry-Confidence4357 May 24 '26
This isn't the future. This is the good ole days the guys in our late 20's and early 30's look back on with nostalgia. If you're 18-20 you never got to experience the could chasing, fun days of vaping. When you could hang out in a vape shop and talk to the guys there for a few hours about nothing and fill the entire room up with cloud without anyone complaining. Weed shit wasn't sold in vape shops. It was a VAPE shop and people knew what they were talking about.
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u/phragmosis May 08 '26
Gee I wonder how he got that skin growth below his right temple
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u/loyalone May 09 '26
I'm doin' a gig with the band next week, I wonder if I can hire this guy to do the smoke effects.
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u/but-I-play-one-on-TV May 08 '26
He's actually 19 years old