Jalopnik: car hipsters.

I like cars, and I like to read and talk about cars. As much as I love Jalopnik, Gawker Media's car site, I'm saying this here because it goes to the core of who I am: I have no time for anyone's haughty ridicule or righteous indignation. Jalopnik has unfortunately become a car hipster site.
What do I mean when I say hipster? (Note: I have not actually visited that link, for reasons that should be obvious.) Think of the Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons. Or there are film critics writing today who arguably hate films. They heap praise on film noir but have nothing positive to say about anything current and widely distributed enough for you to have a chance to see it.

Perhaps most familiar, music hipsters are fans who'll tell you your favorite band sucks, and argue amongst themselves whether any band could ever be as great as Pavement was.

Stan Lee, film noir, and Pavement are all great, but that doesn't mean that everything else is worthless. To say so is to gradually suck the joy out of the lives of those around you.
When Jalopnik wrote the Awesomeness Manifesto, I applauded their commitment to staying true to what they love. I assumed they'd soon be writing three or four posts a day instead of the usual twenty or more. Not so: they kept up the pace. Instead of describing a mediocre car as being better than the others in a class that's not to their taste, we got these snarling dismissals:
"2011 Infiniti QX: everybody point and laugh"

"The most ridiculous Lamborghini spoiler you'll ever see"

"Porsche Hybrid 78mpg ... Yeah, Right"
I won't quit reading Jalopnik over this, but I had to get it off my chest. They're at their best when they write about the 24 Hours of Lemons, or the Texas Mile, or even the "carpocalypse" the industry is going through. There's enough love there for me to scroll past the hate.

4 comments:

  1. Haterz will always find each other and cling together because nobody else will have them. It's far easier to piss on everything from a great height than climb down and do the hard work of finding out what's possibly good about it. And with the buy-in for Internet publishing being so low, doing the easy thing is tempting.
    Re Pavement. They're reuniting for a tour. The first 4 shows sold out immediately when announced 12 months in advance.

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  2. regarding the links, if that's the best photo of the truck that Infiniti could come up with, it's got serious appearance issues. But that shouldn't be all an automotive journalist can find to say about it.
    And the lambo spoiler is pretty absurd, but see above.

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  3. I have to agree with Ross. Both in that it is easier to be negative than positive and that the Infinite is not an attractive vehicle. Though I find very few of that style of truck attractive. The fact that nothing else is said about the truck - power, handling, towing capacity, whatever - is what makes the post weak.

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  4. Sorry to be so late replying, we were out of town for the weekend and now we're fighting illness.

    In a way I feel bad coming back to the topic of hipsters, because I try to define myself positively. Concentrate too much on what you're opposed to, and you become it.

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