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Comment by CaptWillard | Hacker News Reader

> 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"

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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.

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

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.

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