Well... the make is usually written on the car somewhere.
So yeah, I guess I can read.
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
635 points (100.0% liked)
Fuck Cars
10978 readers
158 users here now
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
Rules
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
Posting Guidelines
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
- [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
- [article] for news articles
- [blog] for any blog-style content
- [video] for video resources
- [academic] for academic studies and sources
- [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
- [meme] for memes
- [image] for any non-meme images
- [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories
Recommended communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
In a tiny font on the back of the car? Like sure jerk off over your car knowledge but that’s the dumbest way to say “duhhh everyone should know every car make and model” I’ve ever heard
Being mad about people knowing readily available information is a pretty dumb thing to be mad about.
No, he's mad at you claiming you can read text on a car 20m away, even though that text is so small, that no normal person can read it a few meters away unless you already know what it's saying.
So in essence, what you're saying is not false, but the context makes it an obvious lie. Combined with the "hurr durr, I can read" subtext, it comes off as asshole behavior.
Hur dur, I can read. It’s called walking by parked cars. I read it then and remember it when I’m driving. It’s really not hard. You guys being so ignorant comes off as asshole behavior.
Not remembering random husks of metal on the street isn't ignorance, it's called "not being into cars". I know that's really hard to understand for some people, but for a significant chunk of the population cars don't matter at all.
And if you can't understand that your interests are not universal, that's kind of the definition of ignorance.
Random hunks of metal on the street? These streets are fucking made for those hunks of metal and entire cities designed around them. There are like 50 total models in any given country, we're not over here reading car encyclopedias for fun facts, we have just seen the same 50 "random hunks of metal" and remembered the most common 20.
Yeah, me knowing model names is more a product of the system we live in rather than my interest in cars. I’m more interested in the mechanics and engineering behind cars than cars themselves. But that could be said for a lot of things.
I’m not into cars, I just read things and start associating their names to the objects. Not fucking hard. You assuming that I like something just because I can read and name it is very ignorant. Or is that just something you do, avoid reading and learning what things are called just because you don’t like them.
Maybe if you weren’t such a condescending asshole you’d realize that we share the same disinterest in “random husks of metal” that are major impacts to global warming and micro plastics.
You don’t have to be into them to recognize some of the distinctions of something so ubiquitous. They’re all over the place, and have a huge impact on your life, whether you’re interested or not.
I’m not into birds, those pesky disgusting rats with wings, but they’re all over the place. I’m occasionally aware enough to recognize some of their differences and be able to identify a few types on sight. And they don’t even have the species marked anywhere I can read to feedback to improve my knowledge
Don’t you want some warning whether a particular one is more likely to poop on you or steal your sandwich?
load more comments
(1 replies)
Literally the only part I was okay with was you knowing it. Congratulations! Acting smug that others don’t is what makes you unbearable.
Maybe pay attention to the world around you. It’s literally readily available information that you can see with your own eyes. I’m not a car guy but I can remember reading things I see. Congratulations, you’re the asshole!
Maybe it’s time to invest in a pair of glasses?
I can read it because I'm tailgating them in city traffic on my bicycle.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Even worse, I can identify most cars at night using just the taillight/headlight shape
I can look at any car's headlights and tell you which way they're going.
load more comments
(1 replies)
yOu’Re LiTeRaLlY kIlLiNg ThE pLaNeT bY hAvInG bAsIc PaTtErN rEcOgNiSsIoN
load more comments
(1 replies)
Cool people do something similar with birds and plants. I can do it with dogs
I can do it with tallship designs from the age of sail, there’s more of them floating around than you might think.
I've slowly worked on my wife and now she properly identifies species of local birds unprompted. I'm so proud of her.
It was fun the first time I successfully identified a species of maple from almost a mile away (it was a silver, not super hard lol)
load more comments
(1 replies)
One of the things I absolutely cannot do. I just don't care about cars at all.
I love cars, but even I'm getting to a point where it's just "generic SUV", "generic hybrid crossover", "holy fuck BMWs are ugly now".
Whenever I'm in Munich, I see a lot of BMW test vehicles, with the new parts partially camouflaged. I never really liked them, but they're getting worse really rapidly now. Their new SUV looks like it's a cyberpunk parody of an overly aggressive car.
I'm one of these people that identifies vehicles by looking at them. It's a talent that impresses my kid so I'll take that as a positive! 😁
I can do that too. Cars: four wheels, lorries: many wheels, motorcycles (or mopeds): few wheels and an engine (or it's a bicycle).
It takes a fraction of a second to parse the list once you have it memorised. It's not that hard.
You probably smugly talk about 'sportsball' as well.
Not only am I one of those people, I'm also one who judges people for buying certain cars. Like "Ha, look at that loser who bought that early model Chrysler 300, enjoy your motor blowing up" or "is that a SUPRA that's actually just a BMW Z4?" Then usually whoever is in the car with me asks what the fuck I'm talking about and I just say "nevermind" and move on to judging the next car in silence.
Except for Tesla's, I will point at them and yell "ewwww" when I see them, but not because they're EVs, because of Elon.
Bro, you sound like a delight to be around. Judging people for what they drive is pretty shitty. Unfortunately, lots of people don’t have much of a choice. Like, sure, buying that ~~early~~ any Chrysler 300 seems like a real bad idea. But maybe the person who bought it got it for the $15 that it’s worth, and maybe it was all they had to their name. And maybe they needed just any car that can get them to their job or transport their kids. Get off your high horse there.
Yes I am aware some people don't have a choice but to buy cheap cars, I have been there as well. After high school I paid $800 for a 96 Suburban that was horrible on gas but it was my only viable option. I mainly judge people who spend obscene money on an overpriced vehicle or a big stupid truck that you can tell they only drive on pavement.
Excuse me? It's called an emotional support truck.
The BMW Supra is so strange to me, causes mixed feelings bigly. It's cool that the Supra is back, but it doesn't really seem like a Supra without the straight-6 cylinder and its massive torque. Anyway, I would never spend that much on a car so it's not my problem.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I had a friend who grew up in a factory town who could not only recognize most car makes and models, but in some cases could name people who probably worked on that car. I still think our culture is too car-centered, but that have me a new perspective on it.
I will remember the year, make, model and possibly trim level of a person's car before I remember their name.
Generally you can pretty accurately estimate the years (and make) of cars, due to the design preferences of the time
A 2003 Toyota Tacoma is very recognizable because of the simple and bubbly design a lot of late 90's and early 2000's cars had (coincidentally my least favorite time period of car design)
Of course there's also just a lot of stuff you pick up by seeing a car you don't recognize, researching it, and mentally noting the differences for the next time you see one!
Sometimes you just need to be able to read the badge
Like, it's just Design. Different car makes and years have different design languages. Also, they usually have a big shiny logo that tells you the make, so you can go "huge Audi saloon" -> "A8".
It's like reading. I don't look at letters and think "that's an A and that's a B".
It's just "Miata, Civic, Explorer, etc"
Or recognizing people. I just know all these strangers names and faces.
Hey, the whole thing about shrimp is a misunderstanding. They have more receptors for different colors, yes. But it's because their brain is so rudimentary that they can't combine the input from 3 color receptors to perceive more colors; they need a separate color receptor for every single color.
I remember as a kid, I was mystified by this other girl on the block who could do this. I didn't understand why anyone would care. A car is a car?
Eventually I realized it's because she was super into external social status signs. She wasn't a gearhead, so she hadn't picked it up the way guys do bonding over technical stats of whatever, but she was hyper-sensitive to social status, so she picked it up along with anything else related to fashion. And cars can be considered fashion, right up there with makeup and having the right purse.
Oh, with me it's shapes, I rely on general shapes slightly nontypically - humans included, I have fairy bad face memory & face recognition, but shapes are easy (and it's more nuanced that just a general shape of the humanoid, gaining or losing weight doesn't change it beyond recognition - like cars/boats/equipment/tools/etc, it's "important" info to understand the underlying build).
Some cars are more iconic than others, and some cars are pretty common.
What's a sedan?
4 door car
It tends to be a good writing tip when storytelling to use specific details to build a detailed picture.
So, “I drove my car to the place where my friends and I drink beers” becomes “I drove the old Focus out to the abandoned track, where my friends and I would always set out lawn chairs to drink a few Coors.”
People have a natural taxonomic instinct, to identify animals, plants and other humans. Manufacturers of consumer goods manipulate that instinct through branding and design language, to cause you to remember and distinguish their otherwise functionally identical products. It's a form of spamming.
As a shrimp-type person, I hadn't realized that some people dummy recognize make/model
view more: next ›