Too Much Money, Too Little Sense

Y'know, the very furthest thing from my mind when I was finally able to buy my first brand new car some years ago, was to try and see whether it was bulletproof - least of all by actually taking a gun, and shooting it. Like, with a gun. Deliberately. For reals.

 

And people have been doing it - Americans, naturally, because this vehicle, the Tesla Cybertruck, won't be available anywhere else. The main reason for this is that no other country, apparently, has as low an appreciation for the safety of its citizens as America.

 

Every edge and every corner of this dubious monstrosity is a deadly weapon. If a toddler were to slam their fingers in one of the doors, they could be called "Stumpy" for the rest of their lives because the edges are sharp enough to cut paper and grate carrots. The front trunk lid is automated and was shown to crush a full aluminum drinking vessel before the "safety mechanism" even detected its presence.

 

But all that's beside the point.

 

Considering what I've been seeing lately on the Tube, this new trend has to be up there with the genii who fell for the "Tide Pod challenge" and similar gene-pool cleaning devices from a few years ago.

 

There's something really deeply troubling to me about the sort of people who can afford to waste a whole $100k on a grotesque monstrosity like the Tesla Cybertruck - arguably the ugliest travesty on four wheels ever manufactured - all its "innovations" notwithstanding - and then seriously test whether Elon Musks hollow marketing claims that it is supposedly "bulletproof" have any merit... by actually shooting it!

 

Why? Is it supposed to really be bulletproof? Is it going into battle? Is it being aimed at law enforcement? Is it supposed to be aimed at paranoiacs and political figures with targets on their heads? Well... while I think the crack about the paranoiacs probably hit close to home, I doubt it's meant to be a serious "hardened" vehicle - firstly, it's not actually bulletproof - and neither are its windows. The side panels are just somewhat more resistant to small caliber projectiles than your mom's flying biscuit-tin parked in the driveway. Since the Cybertruck's windows are clearly breakable as demonstrated at Elon's own unveiling of the vehicle, where - much to his own surprise, a metal ball chucked at it smashed two of the vehicle's windows - I wouldn't actually think so. After that, the "demonstration" switched to a sponge imitation baseball which probably only fooled the people whose heads were too far up Elon's rear end to notice.

 

"Bulletproof" clearly doesn't mean what they thought it meant, but yes, well, some people will obviously believe any old thing, right? There's one born every minute, according to P.T. Barnum.

 

Nothing may "suck like an Electrolux" as the advertising says, but no amount of persuasion would make me apply a vacuum cleaner nozzle to any part of my anatomy "just to see what would happen" - but then again, I probably have more common sense than these people. At least, I like to think so.

 

Now I don't know what kind of lunatic can spend more than double the cost of a regular new car - one they've supposedly been waiting years for - and can't wait to get it home so they can start shooting lead at it, while filming their gratuitous destructive behavior for all to see. It makes no sense to me.

 

Why do they do it?

 

Are they too dense to work out that they can buy a plate of stainless steel the same grade as the Cybertruck's for much less than the cost of a new vehicle to shoot at instead? I wonder if they even stopped to think about that before blasting away at their brand new $100k vehicle? 

 

Or, do they actually plan to drive it around with rows of small dents - and the cracks and holes that result from repeated strikes in the same area - covering the doors of the car they clearly overpaid for? Do they think it will make them look "cool"?

 

Is that the sort of "coolness" that brags "I'm so rich I can afford to spend $100,000 on an impractical vehicle, shoot holes in it for shits and giggles, and literally not care"?

 

 

Believe me, at the rate Tesla appears to be struggling to meet the backlog-demand for new vehicles, it will still be a long time before they can supply the parts to replace all these wrecked panels - and unlike regular mild steel, stainless steel cannot be repaired, it has to be replaced. Unless of course, they have someone apply filler putty to the dents and weld up the holes, and wrap the whole vehicle to try cover it all up. 'Grats, guys - you're the proud owners of your own $100k bondo-bucket. Gee, aren't you lucky?

 

Not that wrapping a stainless steel vehicle is a bad idea, because of the rust, finger-marks and stains that cover these vehicles. Making a car out of unpainted stainless steel is a monumentally stupid idea - but as far as the Cybertruck goes, there's so many more of those to go around - and the sharp, unfinished edges and corners of the vehicle are only the tip of the iceberg. It also has poor front and side visibility, a useless rear-view mirror, and one other thing every test drive video I've watched, criticized, was the lack of instrumentation - which has been relocated to a giant screen in the center of the dash. Didn't anyone tell Elon that the driver's eyes need to be on the road instead of trying to faff about with settings or remarking on how fast and responsive the menus are while driving?

But I digress.

 

Enjoy the show peeps - it's truly warped; There's a dude who put a .50 cal round clean through his own door after working his way up through small caliber weapons - but at least he had the "good sense" to prop the door open first so he wouldn't eviscerate the interior of the vehicle. In fairness, at least he had the sense to park his new truck on a shooting range first. Unlike him, there's the famous rich kid who invited his teenage friends around to shoot up his brand new truck Daddy bought him, with his AR-15 while bragging about it to Elon Musk on Twitter. Elon said "Cool", because of course he did - after all, why should he object to nutters peppering their own trucks with lead? Of course, in the same video, after the owner of the truck surveyed all the damage he and his buddies had inflicted on it - which included a number of holes in the door, a broken window and broken door lock, the kid began to cry to Elon to send him a new truck. Elon, this time, said nothing.

 

Oh dear. Who's sorry now?

 

It's truly bizarre that the people who can get up to this sort of thing are regarded (or expect to be regarded) as adults - and/or as eligible to vote, operate heavy machinery - and to own assault rifles. (The dude who used the .50 cal sniper rifle is also especially disturbing - if 'Muricans can actually own weapons like that, I'd think that politicians traveling in lightly armored limos are probably in a lot more danger than they realize, given the incredible frequency of nutjobs going on shooting sprees across the States with relatively smaller guns.) That said, much to my surprise, none of these people (so far) have tried to use a bazooka or an attack helicopter just to see what would happen - so I suppose there is at least *some* smidgen of common sense at play here, but probably only in minute amounts.

 

 

Or, perhaps, the more likely scenario is that this was only because 'Muricans aren't allowed to play with things like bazookas, mortar bombs and "nukular" weapons? (Asking for a friend.)

 

Lastly, half the videos I've watched on this subject so far don't even seem to have been shot - literally - at a proper shooting range, or with any serious safety considerations. Several appear to have been shot in what looks like domestic back yards. In one, the shooter came close to hitting one of his friends who was moving around the vehicle at the time to get a better look - you can even hear another of his friends warning him off in the video. That's pretty much what the rest of us watching this weirdness from outside have come to expect, isn't it? That's real responsible 'Murican gun-ownership right there.

 

In fact, I've hardly seen such a bloodless example of a case in point in favor of gun control in the USA than this. Of course, they've done a good job of ignoring all the actual blood-soaked examples, so the weirdness of this shituation probably wouldn't even register on their radar screens of whacked-out shit that shouldn't be regarded as normal.

 

It's probably just as well that bazookas and mortars are off the menu too, or the news headlines from there would be a lot more interesting than they already are. Of course, it would be more entertaining, not so?

 

I've long been conflicted by Elon Musk. They guy comes across as a bit of a kook, an inarticulate speaker, but a sly businessman, would-be despot and someone with a lot more going on behind his eyes than he lets on - but occasionally I wonder if he's not playing some sort of long-con here? Back in 2019 when the "Storm Area 51" event was all the rage, Musk offered to supply flame throwers - actual flame throwers - to those planning to attend! Of course, that never happened... but I imagine he was more talked out of it than changed his mind of his own accord - and that's more or less what I mean. It's probably fortunate for everyone concerned that he didn't follow through on that idea. 

 

But, what I'm finally getting at is this: these days I can't even look at a photo of a Cybertruck without the thought popping into my head that - aside from being a prototype for an all-purpose Mars rover for his on-again, off-again Mars Colony project, it's really some sort of undercover delousing tool secretly and cunningly designed and marketed to act like a dose of sulfuric acid being dropped in the gene pool to strip the stupid right out of it. Just like those Tide Pods, nutmeg and blackout "challenges" on Tiktok. Like I said, bizarre! 

 

This whole scenario of people spending outrageous amounts of money on a vehicle and taking delight in actually shooting it up - and posting videos of themselves doing it - is just so incredibly surreal - so brain-meltingly weird that I think someone, perhaps a psychiatrist, should do some sort of study on it. It would probably be a career-maker.

 

In closing, I'm genuinely surprised that Tesla's Cybertruck has enough oomph to move that many people with that many rocks in their head without its wheels falling off.

 

In fact, it's a truly impressive feat.