“A Typical Day Buying a Car in America”
So, there I was, minding my own business, when I decide it’s about time I get myself a new set of wheels. You know, something reliable, maybe a little bulletproof? Can’t be too careful out there, right?
Walked into this dealership, looking sharp as ever in my sunglasses and a trench coat, ready to flip the script. The salesman, guy named Greg, looked up from his desk like I’d just walked into the sun. “Can I help you?” he says, polite but cautious. “Sure, buddy,” I said, sliding my .45 onto the counter. “I’m in the market for a car that can take a hit.”
Greg’s eyes widened. “Uh… we’ve got models that can handle themselves. How about the Honda Civic? It’s pretty tough for its size—bulletproof up to 9mm!” “9mm?” I repeated, unimpressed. “Buddy, my gun’s got a hair more punch.”
We went through the lineup: the Ford F-150 with its armor-like doors (though it admitted it’d leave a dent or two), the Subaru Outback with its reinforced undercarriage (can’t trust cars that hide), and then… there was the Tesla Cybertruck. “Think you’re funny,” I said, sliding behind the wheel. “Let’s see what this thing’s got.”
Pulled out my SIG Sauer, popped off a few rounds. The Civic? Dented like a can of beans. The F-150? A bulletproof glass shattered, but it held up… kinda. And then the Cybertruck. “Bullets,” I said, aiming dead center. “Go ahead. Hit it.”
Greg let out a breath he probably hadn’t taken since 2012. The bullets hit, and… nothing. Not a scratch, not a dent. Just like that, the Cybertruck became my new ride. “Sure, why not,” I said, shrugging. “It’s got range, style, and now, apparently, it’s bulletproof.”
Drove off, leaving Greg staring after me like I’d just pulled a heist or something.
The civic probably costs less than window and door replacements for the cybertruck
It’s a common pattern to see a $8,000 Civic driving around with $14,000 of after-market upgrades. Maybe bulletproof shielding is the new trend!
I mean, aim for the windows?
Where people’s heads and hearts are? That doesn’t seem fair.
I wonder what a Super soaker full of hydrogen peroxide would do. I’m assuming it would rust like hell, but maybe not
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I don’t get the whole car being someone’s identity thing. Whether it’s their whole identity or just a part of it, doesn’t matter.
A vehicle is a tool to get things done. Transporting people and things from location to location. But so many people are making it into a statement. I have no idea why.
I never wanted my car to make any statements, nor stand out in any way whatsoever. The reason of simple: no matter who you are, what you value, what you believe, there’s always going to be people that disagree with you. A nontrivial number of those that disagree with your viewpoint, have the aptitude and willingness to mess with your property, especially when you’re not looking.
So you’re going to leave your opinion, on one of the most expensive things you own, while it is parked in public spaces with (more often than not) zero security against people’s access to your shit.
I just… I don’t get it.
But so many people are making it into a statement. I have no idea why.
If you keep chasing this question, you eventually get to a very dark place and realize just how little free-will our species has. I am dead serious, unless you want to wreck your entire perception of yourself and our species and deal with a very severe depressive episode, cease your investigations.
I think I’m like 90% the way there already, I dealt with it by simply giving up on humanity.
I see everyone who is working class as essentially slave labor with extra steps. You get the “freedom” to live how you want, as long as you are working to earn a living because you’re not worthy of being alive if you aren’t helping someone pursue their capitalistic dreams. You’re also “free” to choose where you want to live, because every square inch of the planet is “owned” by someone (with few exceptions), and you’ll either end up having to pay someone to buy land to live on, or pay someone with land every month indefinitely to use their land to live.
Comparing today’s working conditions to slavery: slaves are frequently provided food and shelter. They’re also frequently provided medical care (though, there’s a limit where you’re not worth keeping alive). Everything is provided for you by the master. You’re not paid, but you also don’t need money to continue to live. In modern times you “choose” your job from an array of equally bad options, all of which barely pay you enough to buy food, and afford rent, and often, they pay less than a living wage, so you need to pool how much you make with others too have a place to stay. You don’t get to rise up or progress to a more prestigious position in society, you’re at the bottom and that’s where you will stay. Except for you being given enough means to provide for yourself the same things you would be provided for free as a slave, there’s little difference between the two.
The most notable difference is that you can’t whip employees. There’s no lashings for stepping out of line. Though, we could draw correlations between lashings and what happens in prison, but I digress.
Economically, most of society might actually be better off with working for room and board, since then they don’t need to worry about how to pay the bills, that’s all taken care of for them.
The choices we have available to us as the writing class are a farce to convince those that cannot see the bigger picture, into believing they are free. The educational system has been eroded and dumbed down enough that the vast majority of people fit the criteria of just smart enough to do the work, but not smart enough to question it, or anything else.
Seeing the truth of the social picture is yes, the first part.
The last 10% is the hardest part, because that’s where you find yourself in the picture, and the hopelessness of the larger picture.
The blackest pill I’ve had to swallow as an adult is the empirical, material reality of what we are, what our qualia actually is, and film-strip that everyone is trapped in, thinking we’re making our own choices. Or more correctly, not thinking at all.
We don’t actually think about things, it’s an illusion your mind makes to “explain” things. Like the decisions you make to fulfill survival imperatives. We all live in this state on various levels, but none of us live outside of it. We’re having an experience, yes, but we don’t use free will.
I know we have some form free-will, but I genuinely don’t think we have access to it in most cases. Maybe some tiny, buried spark of something, a teeny seed that in another several million years may turn into a creature that really does make choices and understand the universe.
We’ve got a long, long way to get there though. The keys that pushed me over that last threshold was trying to understand where my own thoughts originate, where all of our feelings and experiences originate from, how we form language in our minds and trying to find what forms those “words” and that realization alone was terrifying but then realizing that not everyone even has THAT much, that most people are walking through life just reacting and experiencing and not even attempting to think with language and abstraction.
Most people don’t read. 21% of the American population is functionally illiterate. This is a failing on many levels, but the fact that it’s a failing at all means that we broadly don’t care enough to make the most important thing we have, the only TRUE thing we each possess, a priority. We do not care. We rather live a life of experiencing and reacting and believing our post-hoc rationalizations than try to break free of ice-age instincts and survival tools. And this shouldn’t be a surprise, we were living in that world less than 100 grandparents ago. We’re the SAME creature. We’re not conscious yet. We’re just really good at tricking ourselves as we manipulate our world in increasingly complex ways.
The abstraction of thought is an interesting consideration, one I’ve done some research into. Our mind is the only known thing which has named itself.
With that being said, I think you would enjoy “thinking fast and slow” (it’s a book). In that book he goes into detail about fast thinking which is heuristical and what we refer to as “muscle memory”, “habit”, or “doing without thinking”. The interesting assertion he made about this “system 1” as he calls it, is that it lacks any ability to consider a statement as false. Every statement that goes into system 1, is considered to be true unless otherwise determined. System 2, or slow thinking, is more sapient and contemplative. This is what we would think is “us” as an abstract concept. Almost all of the information that goes into system 2 is filtered by system 1, so unless we reevaluate more carefully directing system 1 to examine everything, we are working off of incomplete data. Only what system 1 believes is relevant for the circumstances for system 2 to know. The rest is filtered out (to varying extents, depending on what executive function you have) as unnecessary. Things like background noises, other people speaking to eachother, signs, text, and other visual markers that are not important to what we’re currently doing (and have not historically been important). System 1 just discards that data constantly.
I would say that universally, we all use the faculties of system 1 quite extensively, but we are largely unaware of it… We operate on “autopilot” more or less. There’s a nontrivial number of people who seem to actively refuse to engage system 2, and do any cognitive and logical thinking. When they must, they do the bare minimum, and often opt to follow whatever tribe they identify as a part of. Whether that tribe is a sports team, a country, a political system or politician, or it’s a religion or something. They turn to those people whom they trust (for better or worse) to make the best decision for them, and tell them what to think. This is especially bad because often, those people are making selfish choices. They’re directing people to achieve an objective that benefits them directly, often at the expense of those who are following along.
This whole thing has more or less been beaten into us, both by family, friends, and communities, but also ingrained into us as a survival trait from when we hunted and gathered primarily. Where the survival of the tribe was the most important thing, at the cost of all other tribes and people and creatures.
We no longer need that survival trait of going along with whatever tribe we were born into, but it’s not one we can easily disregard, since it’s been ingrained in our cultural persona since we started walking around, many millennia ago.
There’s still plenty of people walking up to the fact that they don’t need to follow along to what others want of you, or do as they tell you to do. Getting away from the strong tribalism that is now mostly just a plague on humanity.
The problem is that the thinkers are independent, and neither want to follow, nor lead.
So here we are. Trajectory set to failure. Following these tribal leaders serving their own interests above all others. Removing one tribal leader just creates a part vacuum where another will step in to take their place, someone who is just as bad or worse with few exceptions.
This might be the first time I actually read a book recommended by someone on the internet. I feel like you’re dangerously close to how I think and feel, for better or worse, and while the revelation and understanding made me despair, I think pushing through and learning more might be the only way forward.
I am seeing our species’ future, where it’s just going to be cycles of back-and-forth, fighting our worst survival instincts or giving into them as we just make fascism and oppression over and over again because we’re not built to form a universal bond. Likely because for the million years or so before we even started agriculture or mastered fire, we were killing each other in wars without record, countless bloody fights between tribes of humans until we all just learned to hate and distrust anyone even slightly different than us. It made our brains grow so fast that our heads are now lethal weapons against our own mothers, but it also made the idea of a unified, borderless and compassionate world strictly unattainable. So what’s left? What’s the alternative?
Barring an actual threat from beyond like a 3-body-problem alien (a fantastic story btw) that would unite us all against a common enemy, then I don’t see us getting past this current state of shuffling pieces around on the bored to make little pockets of group-think and superficial relationships like skin color tribes, video-game culture tribes, religious tribes, and so on. We have brains forged from threats and enemies, and that is what we will see in each other before we see friends every time, and any little differences will always be amplified through that “System 1” as we invent rationalizations for not engaging our System 2.
I get it, 100%.
My best advice for where you are right now, is “be the change you want to see in the world”
Where you see indifference, show compassion. Where you see ignorance, learn and try to educate anyone who will listen.
Be the kind of person you wish this world was occupied by. Be better.
Three only reason I’m still alive is because I know how many people would be significantly harmed if I were to do something different. They’re some of the only people I care about, and I don’t want them to be sad. My strongest motivator is that I would rather suffer though a life so they don’t have to suffer as much though theirs. I am a helper. I provide assistance. Always have, always will. The only reason I accept any money for helping ever, is because I require it to have a home, food, and the resources with which to assist others. That’s my purpose.
I will also point out that this is the reason I will never have children. I didn’t ask to be put in the position I’m in. I didn’t request to live a life. If someone asked me, I probably would have laughed in their face. Are you kidding? Do you see what life is like? No thanks. I’ll choose oblivion over dealing with the vast majority of people that currently occupy the world; and with that said, since I can’t ask my future children if they want to exist at all, I’m going to err on the side of caution, and not condemn someone who I would surely care about deeply, to a life, here. I’ll save them that sufferage.
Always remember, exceptions exist. Exceptions will always exist. Examples like the late, great, Mr Rogers. He’s a shining example that exceptions exist. There’s a lot more I could point to, but I’ll let you ponder that at your leisure.
Unfortunately, for every positive exception, it seems there are a hundred exceptions the opposite direction. People who knowingly and willfully harm others for personal gain. There’s a bias here though. Good, nice, and kind people, don’t generally make headlines. So the media and by consequence, the majority of people of our culture, crave and glorify sensationalism. So we see and hear about the ridiculous, cruel, evil and terrible people far more often than the random acts of kindness that people show to eachother every day. Recognize the bias and work against it to train your system 1 to learn that what we’re being told is almost always skewed towards the negatives. That the world isn’t 100% good, but it’s not 100% evil either, the truth lies somewhere in between.
Be well.
I also made this decision on children for the very same reasons. I am very much also in the role of “helper” in my world, I don’t know any other way to be but I kind of lost touch with how to want anything for myself so there is a danger to it.
Anyway, thank you for the intelligent exchange, it’s rare as praseodymium lately.
People make themselves all about one thing all the time. Car is just one possibility. Surely you’ve met those incredibly dedicated sports fans that build their entire lives around whatever team they follow. Some people are very proud they use Arch Linux. Others build their identity around Elon Musk or Donald Trump. It’s just a form of tribalism.
Fun fact: The windows are not bulletproof. Also the most common rifle in the US is the AR-15… and the cybertruck’s doors are decidedly NOT resistant againt .223/5.56x45mm rounds. And if they’re using green tips or even regular FMJ rounds, you can forget about any semblance of protection.
I was shooting thicker steel than that yesterday with cheapo .223, went through it like butter. The bullets are hilariously small, but they’re hauling ass at 3,400FPS.
Yeah military 5.56 will go through cinderblocks. Maybe not in a perfect straight line but modern military rounds would chew up any car, even the lame cybertruck.
Basically unless you’re behind the engine block or axel (the dense metal parts of the car) assault rifle rounds are gonna get through. Don’t hide behind cars.
People don’t realize just how penetrative .223 is. And the stuff you are firing is civilian grade stuff. Imagine some VIP was driving a cyber truck thinking he is safe and some guys with actual military ammunition fired at him. His car might as well be made of paper mache.
Probably shot by paintballs but washed off.
Testing? Testing with what? The cheapest crappiest frangible 9mm they could find?
The real ballsy move is riding two wheels, where I’m going I don’t need imaginary armor panels around me.
Probably an airgun and not a very powerful one.
I went down a rabbithole recently because I was convinced of the same. Apparently this is the only claim that’s actually true. You can take your pick of videos on youtube. You can find things that will pen it, but not your random 9mm or other handgun.
Having said that, it makes complete sense to me that the “I must be ready to dispense death at any moment” crowd also thinks they need a vehicle that is prepared to repel other people dispensing death at any moment.
Most of that crowd seem to be against the idea of electric vehicles though.
according to some dude with a lots of guns, youtube channel and a cybertruck it will stop 9x19mm and .22 LR, but not .17 HMR, .223/5.56x45mm, or presumably anything bigger. .17 HMR will stop in doors, but will go through external plate
anyway this is movie plot scenario relevant only to edgelords. maybe it’ll be easier to avoid being shot at by not being in a car associated with shitheads
Places that have metal protecting you (legs), places not bullet proof, head and chest.
Doesn’t sound that useful. Also the bridge I currently take to go to work as the main bridge is closed for updating for the next few months only supports 3 tons. So a cyber truck couldn’t get to my residence without taking a 7 mile detour each way.(Not that I was ever considering one nor could afford one)
Edit to also add fun fact for those that maybe didn’t understand the size of a .22lr or a .223 listed above. .223 is also known as 5.56 NATO. though they sound similar in size, a .223 round has 10x the energy of a .22 (they are much larger and travel much faster)
wait how come this thing is over three tons (metric)
who is this thing for and for what purpose
Not sure who they are for. I have seen a few. I have never seen one tow or haul anything yet though. So I think they are just for looking strange.
Kadyrov put a NSV machinegun on it, but it’s only for celebratory gunfire and joyrides, it’s nowhere near capable of frontline use
4wd swastika
Wait are the windows Bulletproof? Because I don’t think you can do that and still comply with safety regulations.
Cars with bulletproof windows definitely exist and can be driven on the street?
Interesting. Must be some sort of safety exemption?
I guess you could have a bullet proof layer seperated by some air and some extra layers of plastic in-between, sounds like it would be hella chunky though.
Back a couple decades ago in the industry it was kind of a trade off between splattering your skull on the window, or stopping rifle rounds. Seems like improvements might have been made.
comply with safety regulations
Given that the Swastikkkars haven’t had any sort of certification from NHTSA or any other testing institute, I think we can safely say they don’t.
They definitely look to be dents from spheres to me. Maybe just a slingshot.
Even if not, I doubt competitors are “shitting their pants” over this. Can’t say the bulletproofness rating topped the list of features I was looking for in my next car purchase
If I could afford a new car, I might consider that feature given the potential of the next few years…
If I could afford a new car, I’d rather move to a neighborhood where my car doesn’t get shot at.
You can DIY bulletproof your own car with phone books if it really matters to you.
However, as Clarkson demonstrated in Iraq, you can’t bulletproof a car with sandbags.
I haven’t seen one of those in years. Lol.
The local ibrary might need to weed some outdated encyclopedias though. 🤔
Man I’m so glad I was tired of throwing them away.
More important will be the ability to repair it yourself when things inevitably break. Given that musk is insanely petty and political, you would need to count on whittling Tesla parts from a piece of wood.
He can just shut it down if you’ve gone to [insert any liberal location Musk decides on]. Those things are tracking you and have remote everything that Tesla can control.
Yup. You’d have to replace the computer with one made from wood.
Or the fact that Cyber trucks rarely make it more than a few hundred miles (if that) before they shut themselves off. Also, if you are ever in an accident and it loses power, it may very well lock you in the vehicle while it burns you to death.
(Pre morning coffee brainwave)
If someone wants DIY fix their Cybertruck, they should consider adding an isolated, self powered emergency door release mechanism. With explosive bolts. Now that would make it cyberpunk as fuck. Wait, that makes it more vulnerable to weapon fire. Shit now I really need my coffee
Just get a Toyota Tacoma, doesnt matter which year really they are all abominable and will outlast the Cybertruck.
Imagine making a social media account just to rusty trombone a corporation
There’s even a Lemmy user that’s done that @[email protected]
Hello!
I always find it interesting to see which people assume my username represents an endorsement of the person…
This looks more like desperation. An “investor” desperately trying to keep themselves afloat.
My mother in laws car looked like that after a heavy hail storm, this is not a gun being used lol. What a pathetic publicity stunt.
They re did that stunt at release. They changed it up to gingerly throwing a tennis ball instead.
Everyone should watch the Top Gear Hilux episodes, and ask if a Cybertruck could go through that.
Some YouTubers have beaten up more modern trucks too.
Some youtuber got a wankpanzer and, I think, an f150 to do “durability tests” with. Since the actual point is to create internet content, and the creator might kinda like elon for some reason, it’s obvious that the tests and their results are ridiculous. It’s like:
“Oh, no! The cybertruck’s frame snapped off! There goes your trailer! The air suspension broke! The stupid tablet became a disco party of red warnings! …but the f150 couldn’t jump 5 feet into the air, and also the door has a hole in it from when we used explosives, issues which the cybertruck doesn’t have. So they’re neck and neck, really.”
whistling douche bag
Yeah I saw that one, TBH that guy has major ADHD (which I can sympathize with).
This guy is in to Telsa. Like enough to make an account for them. Odd.
There was just stronger wind picking up some pebbles…
Are the bullet holes shopped on instead of shot on?
It looks like the same hole with the same shadows pasted all over the car.
The spread is also weird. Not random, not cluster. Like someone tried to evenly space them, but only on the door panels.
There have been a lot of videos of proud Cybertruck owners shooting up their own car doors to own the libs. And I wish any part of that was a joke. Just search youtube.
This is likely the result of one of those “tests” using the lowest-grain hollow-point 9mm rounds they could find so they can drive around feeling invincible until they have to spend a large portion of the vehicle’s cost on new doors. And in this case, new body panels as well because aiming is for cucks I guess. But it’s okay because the primary consumer of Cybertrucks are crypto-bros who found themselves on the top of the pyramid/edge of the bubble and have more entitlement and money than sense and will just buy another.
I hate it here.
Considering the Cybertruck is just a standard stainless steel alloy, I’d ask why they aren’t just buying sheet from a metal yard to test, but I already know the answer.
They can’t tell the difference between us laughing at them and us becoming enraged by them, they’re just like mistreated dogs who have learned they can get attention by pissing on the floor and any kind of attention will do.
I genuinely think algo based social media ruined a people who use it as their primary way they interact with other people. Any attention, good or bad, means ENGAGEMENT. We’ve commodified the behavior that kids who can’t disguise between good and bad behavior.
A lot of the most pernicious and insidious effects of the social media algorithm have a lot to do with unchecked capitalism just turning everyone’s attention span into currency that can be infinitely divided and pulled apart.
This was done with a hammer.
