Hacker News Reader

Comment by FatherOfCurses | Hacker News Reader

So much of American car/motorcycle culture seems to be about that nowadays. And it's not limited to the Japanese mod scene, either.

Loud exhausts everywhere - pickups, domestic V6/V8's, motorcycles.

Super-bright headlights/aux lights improperly mounted or operated, blinding you at night.

Stereos you can almost feel before you hear them.

All these guys (and let's face it, it's 90% guys doing the irritating stuff) are being sold a dream by the mod manufacturers that if they just install this $1500 catback or this $1000 sub they will finally get the respect they deserve.

They get online forum/Facebook/Insta/TikTok validation but very few people around them are impressed with their choices.

I mainly hate how people are being taken for a ride (pardon the pun) by marketers and putting money into things that aren't really going to improve their car-driving experience.

View on HN

Glad someone pointed out motorcycles. While cars with modded exhausts are loud and obnoxious, there are relatively few modders out there, so they're pretty rare. And one has to go out of one's way to make their stock car ear-splitting.

Motorcycles on the other hand, especially cruisers, are a simple straight-pipe mod away from "totally obnoxious." And the average motorcycle is going to be louder than the average car.

It's not even automobiles. The entire concept of American masculinity is about inflicting yourself on as many other people as you can. The more insufferable you are, the more "manly" you are.

Or maybe it's an attention thing. Like a dog chewing your new shoes for attention, these people feel insecure when they aren't the center of attention, and making everyone around you mad and annoyed is still better than no attention at all.

> The entire concept of American masculinity is about inflicting yourself on as many other people as you can.

Haha, what?

You're describing a mindset and behavior that is indeed more prevalent than it should be or used to be, but it's got nothing to do with the "concept of American masculinity"

Yea, it's not just masculinity, although I'm sure if you tallied up the car modders, one gender is going to be disproportionately represented.

The USA population in general has swung really, REALLY far into the "I'm going to grief others, and you can't tell me what to do!" attitude. It's much worse now than probably any time in my life. So many people out there just wake up every day looking for ways to inflict themselves on the public, act loud, aggressive and tough, and in general be "antisocial and proud of it."

Maybe I'm just oversensitized today, but this is the third thread I've seen in the past hour where someone brings up gender in a conversation for no good reason. As if there aren't women who are inconsiderate assholes, nor men who are kind and compassionate.

Of course there are, but women tend to be inconsiderate assholes in different ways. While a population of 300 million means you could probably find plenty of counterexamples, obnoxiously loud cars and motorcycles are overwhelmingly driven by men. This isn't because men are worse than women, it's because our current culture directs antisocial men to loud vehicles, and antisocial women to other things.

We're talking about hot-rod culture here, which has been explicity coupled with projections of notional masculinity from its inception.

Counter point - driving down the beach in a convertible with good tunes blasting and the sea breeze in your hair is fun.

Like yeah it sucks for everyone listening, but if every other car is blasting tunes it isn't out of place. Some beach drives are known for this, right place at the right time.

When I visited Floria Keys I sure as shit rented a convertible and played bass thumping EDM as I drove over the ocean. Hell I think I may have even been wearing Ray-Bans.

Don't do that shit in a family neighborhood at 4am, but I never objected to people peeling out of the Microsoft parking garage in their lolwtf over priced garage princess sports cars. Bailing at 4pm with your coworkers to go hit up the bar is a perfect time to let loose.

Granted I don't have hair anymore but I've never driven in a convertible and felt a "breeze". Anything past 30 mph is...exactly what it is, like sticking your head out the window while driving.

> Counter point - driving down the beach in a convertible with good tunes blasting and the sea breeze in your hair is fun.

The annoying thing now is the guys with the full dresser bikes or Polaris Slingshots that have 2500W stereos installed.

You can be all the way down by the water and hear their music clear as day, as they are idling through traffic on the A1A

>The entire concept of American masculinity is about inflicting yourself on as many other people as you can. The more insufferable you are, the more "manly" you are.

By that metric obnoxious whiny complainers who want the government to force their preferences on all of society are far more manly than someone rolling coal or whatever.

Edit: Maybe that was your point.

> The more insufferable you are, the more "manly" you are.

That's just the usual compensation. Real heavy hitters are actually eerily quiet. They don't have anything to prove. It's the insecure who constantly engage in overt displays.

> Real heavy hitters are actually eerily quiet. They don't have anything to prove.

I've had the rare privilege to meet former SOF soldiers from a couple different nations, and working US cowboys, ranchers and farmers. While I know there are exceptions, in my personal anecdotal experience, to a man they were all quiet in the stoic sense. Nothing to prove, indeed.

Don't forget the pickups "rolling coal".

Anecdotally, this seems to be going out of style, I have not seen anyone legitimately roll coal in several years. Could just be my area, of course, but we did have some coal rollers in the past.

The EPA cracked down on one of the big shops a few years ago, I believe. Probably scared off other shops from performing the mods.

> Loud exhausts everywhere - pickups, domestic V6/V8's, motorcycles.

> Super-bright headlights/aux lights improperly mounted or operated, blinding you at night.

> Stereos you can almost feel before you hear them.

So no different than 30 years ago.

> they will finally get the respect they deserve.

I believe this is a big part of it. With the rise of corporations and media, we have seen a loss of any sort of public commons. A consequence of that is that I think many people here in the US don't feel like they are part of a community. They don't feel seen by any sort of meaningful tribe, outside of their job, which is transactional and subject to the whims of corporate overlords.

So much pathological behavior in society today makes sense when seen through the lens of "this is a person who feels isolated screaming out for any kind of acknowledgement of their existence".

In addition to these reasons, there is the economic side. They're spending money on frivolous but attainable luxury items because the traditional economic path of a house and family seems impossibly out of reach.

You can save for 6 months to buy a car mod for 1500, but when local median house price is $1,000,000 they may feel like it's pointless to even attempt being a home owner.

Except people have been doing obnoxious shit to feel better about themselves since forever ago. Look two hundred years back and you will see European men duelling each other over the most random stuffs. If anything, I'd say I am seeing less modded cars and hearing less bikes with more decibels than jet engines than I did 20 years ago.

I feel like you just grasping to any social phenomenon to try to insert your own agenda.

Dueling is a very different phenomenon. Duels were typically done away from urban centers and involved only the participants. They were not done to annoy other random people.

I'm no expert, but you could do a whole deep dive on the sociology behind dueling to get a better sense of what socioeconomic conditions led to it.

Just saying "the stegosaurus is like a peanut butter cookie" to establish an analogy doesn't immediately confer wisdom. An analogy has to actually be between things that have meaningful similarity. If we were, say, talking about street racing for pink slips, then maybe the dueling analogy would be more useful.

Around here it's a part of gang "culture". The point, IMO, is to remind citizens that the police is not doing anything and gangbangers are free to do whatever they want. As any blatantly illegal behavior it benefits criminals via intimidation and suppression of reports of their activity. Also "swangas".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com