Simple. Cigarettes make you cool and hot, offering or bumming a light outside is instant chemistry to chat somebody up, and although I haven’t been a chronic smoker in probably a decade now, a drunk cig outside on a chilly night still hits like crack.
It’s not the heater itself, it’s everything else about them that is 10/10.
It's funny / overall-positive to compare how we seemingly see them to how my daughter's generation (18) sees them. In my 20s in the 90s despite being a mainly-non-smoker I felt/thought as you. That's not how my daughter or her peers think though.
It’s not the heater itself, it’s everything else about them that is 10/10.