the_dunk_tank

Peasant rebellion is a big historical interest of mine that I have a lot of solidarity with. There just isn't another word that describes Tesla owners better than serf. They aren't humiliation fetishists and they're so far beyond rube or goober. It's a legalistic relationship where they have to show utter deference to the richest man in the realm who thinks he has a hereditary divine right. They defend his honour and what he provides for them in exchange for their loyalty and grain, even if any outsider will use their material conditions as an insult for centuries after. They can't imagine a world beyond Tesla or Elon, so when they dissent like this it's to replace a wicked lord with a noble one or make some minor adjustments under the current one. It's as economic as it is political, cultural, and religious. Tesla and especially cybertruck is such a fucking weird phenomenon that I don't know a better word for them that captures how deep that devotion goes.

The art lol I'm dead

It's what attracts me to crypto goobers, Tesla owners, and pyramid scheme rubes. All three are Debordian spectacle at its latest stage, when it's some bizarre mix of cargo cult and Millerite apocalypse and libertarian revolution all embodied in the same terrible commodity fetish. As these things fall apart their owners will have such a malignant sense of sunk cost fallacy that they're going to go genuinely 𝓂𝑜𝓃𝓀𝑒𝓎 𝒶𝓈 𝒽𝑒𝓁𝓁.

back like a 10+ years ago, i took this class called "Sociology of the Environment" or something like that. it was one of those classes where we'd read a book or some articles, and then come in and have a mediated class discussion about it that might pop off with a brief lecture to discuss terms.

anyway, one of the standout lessons was about this phenomenon of technological adoption. how, quite literally, people who purchase a type of technology tend to become overnight advocates for that technology's place in society, particularly if that technology has a dependency on others also adopting it. and it isn't always something they do or understand consciously.

with teslas, it's pretty drastic, right? this ain't no trivection toaster oven or whatever. you drop $100k on this vehicle. you have pushed your chips in and are materially committed. you don't want to admit you got fucked (why people who are scammed rarely come forward / why people tend to act like they got a good deal on their car, house even if they didnt). but, maybe you're also vaguely aware that if Telsa goes tits up, your car might brick. certainly your maintenance and repair situation is going to become dodgy, and there isn't really a network of mom and pop garages that can deal with that thing. its very likely it becomes another piece of discontinued tech that is orphaned by capital.

i think all of that combines into an emotionally charged defense of the purchase and the company that they are discouraged from examining. certainly, musk's business model thrives on this: "if you buy this thing, you're a forward thinking genius and leaving the rest of the fools behind as you reach for the stars."

blaming your dead wife for her death

Future r/cybertruck post

People in this thread are asking if I blame my dead wife. On that steep hill the nav crashed. The the brakes failed. Then she screamed VERY LOUDLY. Then we crashed. Then the impact made the truck flip over a few times. And she died. Of course I blame her. Who else am I going to blame? Elon?

I love when an Icarus story combines with other types of Guy. Cybertruck represents the most pathologies per Guy^2^ in one Icarus story. I haven't been so excited for a new cautionary fable since antivaxxers took on COVID.