I mean, I think it’s less about people having interests that I don’t, and more about just the realistic car culture. There are people who are into cars in a cool, healthy way. But in my experience, the majority of them ARE sad, empty people who don’t know who they are, and are trying to buy a personality, who think having money makes them good and that showing their money via their car to others makes others perceive them as good. They are often very childish people trying to impress others and fill some kind of void in themselves that they don’t know how to fill. I say this knowing at least 5 pretty intense “car guys”. It IS very sad to observe, and they don’t even seem to enjoy their “hobby” (which really just consists of inventing new reasons to spend more money) themselves. It’s just a continual race to one-up your friends cars, get more likes on Instagram, or emulate something they saw on YouTube, or reconfigure something, or trade this car for a different car, like a high-rpm hedonic treadmill. Just objectively speaking, these people all seem pretty depressed. Admittedly they have other shared traits that make my sample not rigorous. But even the common social conception of car people seems to agree. A lot of them are obnoxious losers, even their own community has a whole bunch of archetypes that they agree are obnoxious losers.
I think there are many very cool ways to be into cars. It’s just than the majority of people who are actually into cars, are not into them in those cool ways. It’s like how playing a guitar, fundamentally and intrinsically, is a pretty cool interest to have…but if 70% of guitar players you know are lonely shells of people with underdeveloped personalities who only started playing guitar to flex their wealth on others and because they thought it would make girls want to fuck them - you might say “guitarist culture is sad”.
I mean, I think it’s less about people having interests that I don’t, and more about just the realistic car culture. There are people who are into cars in a cool, healthy way. But in my experience, the majority of them ARE sad, empty people who don’t know who they are, and are trying to buy a personality, who think having money makes them good and that showing their money via their car to others makes others perceive them as good. They are often very childish people trying to impress others and fill some kind of void in themselves that they don’t know how to fill. I say this knowing at least 5 pretty intense “car guys”. It IS very sad to observe, and they don’t even seem to enjoy their “hobby” (which really just consists of inventing new reasons to spend more money) themselves. It’s just a continual race to one-up your friends cars, get more likes on Instagram, or emulate something they saw on YouTube, or reconfigure something, or trade this car for a different car, like a high-rpm hedonic treadmill. Just objectively speaking, these people all seem pretty depressed. Admittedly they have other shared traits that make my sample not rigorous. But even the common social conception of car people seems to agree. A lot of them are obnoxious losers, even their own community has a whole bunch of archetypes that they agree are obnoxious losers.
I think there are many very cool ways to be into cars. It’s just than the majority of people who are actually into cars, are not into them in those cool ways. It’s like how playing a guitar, fundamentally and intrinsically, is a pretty cool interest to have…but if 70% of guitar players you know are lonely shells of people with underdeveloped personalities who only started playing guitar to flex their wealth on others and because they thought it would make girls want to fuck them - you might say “guitarist culture is sad”.