“Before we stood around staring down at our phones, we used to stand around staring at each other. Talking and talking while we blew smoke in one another’s faces.”
Gonzalez is half-joking about taking up smoking again and half not, which is the only honest way to write about it. The actual argument under the provocation is simpler. We traded a slow social ritual for a faster solitary one, and the new vice gives nothing back. Cigarettes will still kill you. Phones just do it on a different timeline.