Interesting article in Slate/Quora about car buffs vs Tesla.
He makes the argument that car buffs are enamored with nostalgic memories of good times in the past and will ignore improvements in favor of these memories.
"Because car buffs are almost all nostalgia weenies. Most love a specific marque, often because of something that happened decades before. They obsess about the history. They've owned half a dozen of that marque and wish they could own a dozen more. I've known and know Porsche nuts, BMW nuts (my hand is up), Mustang nuts, and more."
People who don't like dual-clutch automatics and paddle shifters aren't interested in the fastest 0-60 or lap times; they are interested in slower, but more nostalgically pure, shifting.
And people who don't like the Tesla are mostly making **** up that justifies their aesthetic preference for being slower. The Tesla doesn't make noise like nostalgists enjoy because it doesn't waste energy making noise.
People claiming to be true car buffs who don't like the ascendancy of electrics are really nostalgists. They like grease under their fingernails as a signifier—mostly to themselves and a subset of their males friends—of a certain type of manliness. They are stuck in the past, not even surfing the present, never mind inhabiting the future with Tesla.
I think this can be extended to any "change". Witness the fury of some people on TMC who are vehemently opposed the the new v7 UI even though they have only a few snaps of it. They are nostalgic for the old UI and blind to the possibility that the new streamlined UI might be better.
Anyway... an interesting short read:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2015/10/11/tesla_why_do_car_buffs_dislike_it_but_nerds_love_it.html
He makes the argument that car buffs are enamored with nostalgic memories of good times in the past and will ignore improvements in favor of these memories.
"Because car buffs are almost all nostalgia weenies. Most love a specific marque, often because of something that happened decades before. They obsess about the history. They've owned half a dozen of that marque and wish they could own a dozen more. I've known and know Porsche nuts, BMW nuts (my hand is up), Mustang nuts, and more."
People who don't like dual-clutch automatics and paddle shifters aren't interested in the fastest 0-60 or lap times; they are interested in slower, but more nostalgically pure, shifting.
And people who don't like the Tesla are mostly making **** up that justifies their aesthetic preference for being slower. The Tesla doesn't make noise like nostalgists enjoy because it doesn't waste energy making noise.
People claiming to be true car buffs who don't like the ascendancy of electrics are really nostalgists. They like grease under their fingernails as a signifier—mostly to themselves and a subset of their males friends—of a certain type of manliness. They are stuck in the past, not even surfing the present, never mind inhabiting the future with Tesla.
I think this can be extended to any "change". Witness the fury of some people on TMC who are vehemently opposed the the new v7 UI even though they have only a few snaps of it. They are nostalgic for the old UI and blind to the possibility that the new streamlined UI might be better.
Anyway... an interesting short read:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2015/10/11/tesla_why_do_car_buffs_dislike_it_but_nerds_love_it.html