About

My Grandfather Smoked His Whole Life is a bait-and-switch copypasta in the vein of That Post Gave Me Cancer memes that was popularized in the early 2010s. The copypasta begins with a touching story about the poster's grandfather being encouraged to quit smoking in order to see his children grow old, but dying of lung cancer anyway. The copypasta continues, with the poster claiming to have learned a valuable lesson, ending with "At 28, I have never touched a cigarette. I must say, I feel a very slight sense of regret for never having done it, because your post gave me cancer anyway." The copypasta can be traced as far back as DOTA Steam boards from 2014.

Origin

The earliest known post of the "My Grandfather Smoked His Whole Life" copypasta is a DOTA 2 Steam Community^[1] post by user "Nikki" from August 21st, 2014, titled "How To Become One With The Pasterino" in Russian.

The copypasta reads:

My Grandfather smoked his whole life. I was about 10 years old when my mother said to him, "If you ever want to see your grandchildren graduate, you have to stop immediately." Tears welled up in his eyes when he realized what exactly was at stake. He gave it up immediately. Three years later he died of lung cancer. It was really sad and destroyed me. My mother said to me- "Don't ever smoke. Please don't put your family through what your Grandfather put us through." I agreed. At 28, I have never touched a cigarette. I must say, I feel a very slight sense of regret for never having done it, because your post gave me cancer anyway.

Spread

The copypasta spread over the following months and years, making an appearance on Reddit's^[2] /r/copypasta on November 16th, 2014 (seen below, left), as well as a Twitch^[3] copypasta database on December 22nd, 2016 (seen below, right).

On January 13th, 2017, the copypasta was then posted to Genius^[4] (seen below).

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References