Yeah, now that you mention it, I sort of got that impression too. And a lot of times I get to posts by checking out ‘newest’ without noticing the category at first, so it had kind of a MPSIMS vibe. And the OP just admitted he was half-jesting, so I don’t feel that bad about my somewhat flippant answer after all. So there.
But I do admire the valiant attempts to give the OP a serious answer!
Yeah, nothing wrong with the OP, no criticism intended. As @solost mentioned we have a rule that in GQ you’re supposed to wait until a good attempt has been made to give serious answers before joking around, so we were just apologizing for that.
Maybe some peoples eyes are more sensitive? Bc, I can’t remember this ever being a problem for me. I’ve had issues where there is too much smoke hovering above the grill making it difficult to see what I’m doing, but have never as far as I recall experienced discomfort due to smoke being in my eyes.
If you want a serious answer, probably 99.97% @What_Exit saying ‘confirmation bias’. You remember what bothers you, not what doesn’t bother you. And maybe .03% air pressure vectors or whatever that argument was.
@Riemann, I’m sorry to say I overlooked your post until I just now re-skimmed this thread. It’s far more witty and subtle than my flippant answer 
We have a BBQ place downtown where the smoker is right out front on the sidewalk by the curb.
I always smell BBQ cooking when I drive by, so there must be an applicable law to explain it.