A Tesla Cybertruck owner says there is a concerted effort to publicly shame people who drive the all-electric truck. He recounts several instances where people pointed and laughed at him while driving his Cybertruck.
My opinion of Musk has nothing to do with it. For the price of it, its ugly as fuck.
I'm not a fan of priuses either, but priuses don't a) take wild swings in design in order to be "edgy" and b) price themselves according to supposed "cool points".
With or without Musk, your choices reflect who you are. This guy bought an overpriced vehicle in order to be "cool" and now he's butt hurt that no one agrees with him.
He laments people laughing at him, and likens his purchase of the cybertruck to that of the Toyota Prius. Unfortunately, what he fails to consider, is that the Prius is an economy car. You can make fun of a crappy car, but that mockery ends before it affects the owner, because the majority of us understand that buying a car is more of a financial matter, rather than one of taste. i.e. most of us buy the car we can afford, not necessarily the car we want.
That goes out the window when you take into consideration the cybertrucks price tag. If it was an economy electric car (like the Prius), we would poke fun at the vehicles design and that would be it. But this is a bloated, over-priced, unreliable, gimmick truck; whose only purpose is to serve as an ego-boost to one of the richest, dumbest men on the planet. The man that got bullied into buying and abruptly tanking one of the largest social media companies in the world. The same man jumping around like a pick-me dipshit at a fascist rally for a convicted felon, bankrupt businessman, convicted rapist, and self-described sex-pest.
People can laugh at not just the cybertruck, but also the owner; because paying what amounts to a third of a fucking house so you can fanboy a man sure to go down as one of histories most public dumb-asses, makes you ripe for ridicule (and deservedly so).
Agree 100%. Also, re. "a third of a house"; I bought an old (1941) but comfortably livable 2 bedroom house with garden and driveway in Columbia, South Carolina for only $86k last year.
Most of the cyberfuck owners paid MORE than my house for their dumb cars...
"I drive the equivalent of a 2024 Yugo that is laughably poor quality sold by a huckster and I paid enough to buy 4 reasonable cars. It's the most gaudy design of any car ever produced since the dawn of time. Why would people laugh at me?"
My two closest friends that justifiably own trucks are women. They are dirty and beaten up base model chevrolets. They certainly don’t need to compensate for dick size. They just have big dogs and work together on a farm!
I live in the Bay Area and there are like 5 of them in my small, rural town, so I see them daily. I laugh every time. As silly as they look in photos, it's just so much sillier in real life. Especially out in the county where I live.
As others mentioned, it does look kinda ridiculous in person. Driving home Sunday with my sister we saw one, pointed and both laughed/chuckled to each other. I wasn't looking at the driver so dunno if they noticed, but if they were looking at our faces as we passed they might have been able to notice, and it was just a natural reaction, not meant to have the owner notice in an effort to mock or anything.
I've pointed and laughed at a couple of Cybertrucks. It's hard to really capture how funny they look in motion in person. That feeling of "this was drawn by a kindergardener" hit me so much harder the first couple times I saw a real one moving.
I think it's because it's stupid looking enough that the brain doesn't even classify it as a vehicle, it's just some weird contraption that isn't supposed to act like a vehicle does, so it's an uncanny valley effect.
He chooses what to drive. If he likes it, that's his right. It's also right of the others not to like it and find it ridiculous. There is no objective reason to drive a Cybertruck except to show off. Well, it backfired for him.
We are all aware. The terminology used for the two different drivers is the problem. You don't call a woman a female, that's insulting. He had no problem to call a guy a guy, no "male" or such. It makes him sound like a misogynistic asshole.
Not true. It would be a huge turn off to pick me up in any gasoline powered truck. An electric truck would be the only type of truck I'd be down to get picked up in
He claims he'd never mock a Prius while in the same sentence posting about how much he hates the Prius, and then doesn't think it's fair to be mocked for driving a certain vehicle.
To break this Möbius strip logic: Blame someone else.
His point is that it's fine to hate certain cars but that you still shouldn't mock the people driving them. I think that's kind of a dumb line to draw, but it's not hypocritical or inconsistent.
Exactly, few people are laughing at people in any other tesla. It's specifically this vehicle because it's a impractical hunk of junk AND ugly as fuck.
I have a song I sing whenever I see a Cybertruck. It's sung in a low, gravelly, MANLY voice. The lyrics go like this:
Cybertruck! I'm a douchbag with too much mon-eey.
Cyberbruck! I'm a fan-boy making bad decisions!
My mon-eey makes me cool.
Look at me compensating!
etc...etc
Does anyone remember how, back in the early 2000s, some people would take picture of their hand flipping off a Hummer they saw on the street? I'm getting a similar vibe.
I was taking a right turn out of a convenience store driveway the other day, waiting for the traffic to go by, and noticed the driver, a female, was apparently laughing hysterically at my truck. She was alone, pointing at my truck and laughing hard.
Many will opt to get a custom wrap because the steel could get scratched and start rusting, plus they are buying for clout and are now in too deep to stop throwing money away on making it "look" better.
Some have also opted into getting a third party service to chemically deposit a layer of gold on the surface of the steel. Making it an even bigger money sink for little benefit and basically not worth driving around almost at all except for showing off.
Guys, I just can't figure out why my coworkers laugh at me when I show them my picture wearing a maid costume! What could possibly be funny about that?
Like, even ignoring Musk's whole everything now, it's just one of the ugliest vehicles ever designed. Regular Teslas at least look okay if you ignore Musk himself, but the cybertruck looks like they just took a particularly untalented 1st grader's drawing of a vehicle and just went "Make that"
Apart from the S which looks good despite being too big, do people really think Teslas look good? Ok the cybertruck is the ugliest one by far but model 3 and Y are not great.
I actually like the general look of it, though it's done poorly. I want SO MUCH to drive a low-poly vehicle reminiscent of some 80's retrofuturism racing video game. But I fear the massive failure of the cyber truck will scare anyone away from taking a stab at the concept.
I’m laughing here because I realized that’s almost certainly what happened, Elon mocked up a picture himself or dictating to someone else of a truck that he thought would look cool and then told the poor engineers and designers “make this.”
I can easily imagine that, too. I saw an early concept render that went around a decade ago or so when I worked in a design office, and we half- joked they’d accidentally released a low-poly model by mistake. Or it was some sort of weird joke we didn’t get.
It’s so ridiculous and broken, it has Musk’s fingerprints all over it (and good luck; fingerprints are near-permanent on that ludicrous metal finish they chose.)
And that alone would be enough, but add to that the fact that they cost about 100 grand a piece, and yet they are essentially held together with bubblegum and shoestring. Bro, you paid a year's worth of salary for the average middle class person to drive around an ugly, falling-apart piece of shit created by a fascist. Yeah. We're gonna point and laugh at your dumb ass.
Exactly, the stainless steel "exoskeleton" is glued to plastic and pieces are coming unglued while driving. The towing thing is attached to a cast aluminum frame and multiple people have had it break while towing. It's a terrible car, and most owners are insufferable people.
$100k is about the average household income in the US, the average single income is about $67k. So about a year and a half of the average wage. And median income is much lower (median household income is about $44k) indicating that high income households have a much larger effect on the average than low income households so the average middle class individual income should also be much lower than the average individual income.
Don't devalue the Aztec for this. Yeah it was clad in tons of plastic and had a grill that was way too busy but it wasn't shockingly ugly like the cyber truck.
There was this great meme going around years ago when the truck was announced that had a crayon drawing of it and “by Elon” written shakily in big letters like a child would use. I’ll see if I can find a link.
I have a hearty chuckle every time I see one of these things. Like spinner wheels, they're functionless wastes of money to make a statement, and that statement is "I am incredibly, just absolutely unbelievably stupid."
This reminds me - I saw spinner wheels in public for the first time in probably 15+ years yesterday. I was genuinely shocked to see them. Man I hope they do not make a comeback.
Dude probably grew up around them, and now he's all grown up and can finally afford them. Live and let live. At least it's not a Hummer or a cyber truck
I like spinners and dont think they make someone an idiot. I probably won't ever buy them myself but they are at least fun. I haven't seen a set in ages though.
Some people work hard to tell everyone else that they are contemptible. It is now the job of society to make an artificial island in the middle of the Pacific so that they can live out the rest of their lives in a safe place, amongst their own kind.
I was watching the taxi thing, and they didn't know on which sentence to cheer. Some would cheer when others cheered for no reason, but always sporadically between small groups.
It's a cult and they reinforce their worth in their echo chamber (cyber chamber? No echo chambers work).
They’re only laughing because deep down they know they’re beta-cuck manlets who will never be an alpha-chad like you. It’s an involuntary nervous reaction to feeling viscerally outclassed and unmanned by your aura of effortless brocious dominance.
His whining at the beginning certainly had me wondering too.
And then there are the comments -- "There just haters there mad cause they can't afford one them self's..." Like really, did you even make it beyond third grade? And this is the kind of person who is sticking up for Cybertruck owners? Maybe there are a number of reasons why we point and laugh...
I think there is a large group of people in America who define their self worth based on how much money their family makes. For them they see the cyber truck as showing off their success.
Maybe this is just dumb rich people. What did they used to buy before this? Exotic cars that break down ever few hundred miles? Outfits that cost tens of thousands of dollars?
That's the usual line I see. Buddy, I could buy one in cash tomorrow if I wanted. I'd rather put that money in a barrel and burn it to cook my dinner than spend it on the PS1 titty shape truck.
Simple solution. Move to a town that isn't fully of pretentious haters. You could always live around normal people. But some towns are cursed with these kinds of people.
Rivians are silly. Much less silly than the Cybertruck but still excessively large and heavy with pedestrian-murdering front ends, among other gripes like not having a glovebox or a power button
When they only made the S, and they were super rare space age tech, Tesla was kinda cool. Now they make road going appliances, and the owner is a terrible person.
The cyber truck is, at this point, a malfunctioning status symbol. I suppose a 100K truck that sucks at being a truck is intended to communicate the driver is a successful tech guy but, whenever I see one, I think "there goes a rube". I have a similar reaction when I see those gaudy designer bags or "luxury" branded tee shirts. I don't think "there is someone who is successful" I think "that person is an idiot."
There should be a catchy term for status symbols that communicate the opposite of their intention. Stupidity symbol? Status irony? Status error? None of these really roll of the tongue.
I think the question is, why do those people not seem to react the same way to a cyber truck.
Price does matter right? I saw a comment in the original post on the Tesla forum saying people wouldnt laugh if it cost 15k. I think they are right but I dont think they realize why it would be less embarrassing if it was a budget car.
Whatever effect it has should be named after that one Indian guy who was so rich, he made an entire polo shirt woven from gold fabric just because he could.
”I was taking a right turn out of a convenience store driveway the other day, waiting for the traffic to go by, and noticed the driver, a female, was apparently laughing hysterically at my truck. She was alone, pointing at my truck and laughing hard.”
There’s a Tesla showroom near me and dozens of cybertrucks out front, all in a couple of lines. They look even more ridiculous when they’re like that, like the point is really driven home about just how ugly they are.
Despite how he's painted in the article, I actually quite like the guy. He bought an overpriced product but genuinely seems to like it and is a bit annoyed that people are laughing at him not because the product is expensive, but because of the association of the product with the manufacturers shitty politics.
It'd be like laughing at someone who bought an Apple Mac after the founder of the company has repeatedly been seen washing his feet in a toilet. Despite how overpriced and unnecessary the Mac is, people seem to like it and no one is making toilet associations with them. He's asking for the same concession to be made for him.
Well I would, but I really hate the manufacturer, so I'm guessing I'm standing with my fellow mob of pointing and laughing. Sorry about that, my dear.
I genuinely believe that Apple's fan culture is just as bad as Tesla's fan culture... with the caveat that Apples founder wasn't visibly trying to sway an election with misinformation.
Again, I see a cyber truck, I point and laugh. I see a Mac user, I raise an eyebrow but say nothing.
I guess I kind of feel for some of these guys, but the Cybertruck was always going to be a political statement.
Putting aside how dumb it looks, or how terrible it actually is, it's a cultural signifier. Unlike the other Tesla cars, that can easily be separated from Musk and his "brand", that can't be done here.
Musk and his brand was baked into it from conception to production, so, I don't think this is going to resolve itself anytime soon.
Let me jump back to my first point though, I feel kinda sorry for anyone who bought this simply because they have really bad taste, poor financial decision making skills, but who also genuinely weren't aware of the political implications or cultural baggage it would carry.
Although, now that I think about it, every time I've seen a Cybertruck driving, I have also started laughing, but only because it looks just so dumb, and I can't help but imagine the driver losing his finger trying to close trunk.
Someone in the Tesla forum posted that if the truck sold for 15k it wouldnt be laughed at. What do you think? It would certainly make it less ridiculous to own one. More of a peculiarity than a gigantic red flag.
The trucks are cool to a point. I like the way they look, but they were built so poorly that they must be a nightmare to own, and nowhere near worth the price.
You genuinely like the way they look? I'm not trying to poke fun here I am legitimately curious, what is it you like about the aesthetics? I don't see the appeal.
I didn't like the design when it was unveiled but it has grown on me a bit. I don't hate it and I'm excited for the day I get to see one in person.
I think the vast majority of modern vehicles all look the same. I welcome anyone whose trying out something new. This applies to vehicle modifications as well; even if I don't like what you did to your car, I'll still rather see customized ones like that than the boring gray goo that is the rest of them.
I like the styling too, its got a wicked 80s cyberpunk/Delorian/Tron vibe. I dislike... everything else. I get why a lot of people wouldnt like it, its a love it or hate it deal.
But now that Musk is such a polarising figure and the truck is such a polarising design I think a lot of people cant or wont separate the two.
Yes, but I think it's mostly due to my affinity for Brutalism, which the Cybertruck adheres to at an absurd degree. Most people nowadays don't seem to like Brutalism either, except for architects. The real problem is that some forms of Brutalism, like most modern office buildings, are way too simplistic. Like, Brutalism is inherently simple, but mere rectangles are not design.
I saw one painted black, that was the second time I thought "huh that looks kinda cool."
The first time was when they first unveiled it. Concept models always look futuristic on the floor, but would look ridiculous in the real world. Unfortunately the cybertruck never evolved past the concept model stage.
I kind of did at first, and at certain angles I still do, but now that I've seen them at a lot of angles, I had begun to see them as a bit of a laughing stock. Like it's the goofiest design ever when you see what it actually looks like
I kinda like the way it looks too. Not 100% but maybe 80%. But I generally like the look of the 80s style retro futuristic, highly angular vehicles like the DeLorean, Lamborghini Countach, and the Hyundai N74.
I don't want the cybertruck simply because I don't want a huge ass truck and the build quality, but if they had made a Ford Maverick sized one without the quality issues I'd be seriously considering it.
I would never own one because of (a) the disrespect for my right to repair and modify and (b) Piss-baby Musk baggage, but I admit I kinda like the styling too.
I'm also a fan of DeLoreans and other '80s sports cars.
To me, it's not even just about what it looks like. It's what it represents. One cyber truck, if were unique, could be a legitimately cool work of art. But as a mass-market vehicle it's just ridiculous.
Like, if there was only one cyber truck, and it was something a local gearhead had welded up in his garage, I would legitimately respect it as a cool and unique work of artistic expression. It would show that they have creativity and are willing to make a bold statement to the world.
But if you just buy one of thousands of cyber trucks that exist in the world? That no longer represents your original creative expression. That just represents having bad taste and having poor personal finance skills.
Building your own art car is cool. If Ford decides to start making them by the millions, then that would just be sad.