So, full disclosure, when David Tracy and Beau Boeckmann and I all started this site not quite a year ago, one of the things we wanted to do was be as welcoming as possible to all aspects of the automotive culture. That means every weird little corner and sub-sub-fetish. And I think generally, we do just that! That also means that I needed to keep some of my own personal affectations in check, like my often limited tolerance for ultra-hardcore Tesla fans. The truth is there are plenty of valid and great reasons to be a fan of Tesla cars – they made EVs cool, they developed truly pioneering tech, they’re fast and fun – and of course those fans are welcome here, among all us fools who admire Yugos and archaic AMCs and other unmitigated, yet beloved, crap. So I try my best, and I keep my baser urges in check, only to have it all go to hell when I read one tweet. One absolutely astonishing, inane, hyperbolic tweet. And then I have no choice but to rant like a fool. My hands are tied.
[Editor’s Note: Jason is right that Tesla fans can be deeply hyperbolic — more so than any other group of fans devoted to a single car brand, possibly ever — so sometimes we’ll poke fun at that unbridled enthusiasm, even though we appreciate all car-love. -DT]
Before we go on, you need to see the tweet I’m referring to:
It’s funny when people say the Cybertruck will be the iPhone moment of Tesla.
No it’s won’t bc, it will be much bigger and more profound than that.
It will be best product that the world has ever seen and will have the biggest impact on our daily lives. @elonmusk $TSLA pic.twitter.com/EGKHof0lF2
— Teslaconomics (@Teslaconomics) February 10, 2023
Just in case there actually is a merciful god and they want to prove their love for humankind by wiping this insipid tweet off the face of the Earth, I better screenshot it, and while I’m at it, I’ll call out the part that really got me:
Yes, your eyes haven’t been secretly passing notes at night and decided to play some cruel joke on you; an actual, living human being actually typed those words about the Tesla Cybertruck, a strange-looking electric pickup truck that was first announced in 2019 and might and I do mean might go into production at some later point this year. I’m going to type this statement about the Cybertruck again here, just in case you’re having this read to you by your valet, so you have a justification to slap the crap out of them:
“It will be the best product that the world has ever seen and will have the biggest impact on our daily lives.”
Just take a moment and imagine someone saying this to you in person. Is there any way you can picture the person saying this about a fucking pickup truck that isn’t even on the market yet without imaging them staring blankly yet fervently into the distance, a lone icicle of drool escaping a corner of their mouth, your forearm painfully in their grip, and perhaps the faintest glimmer of rotating spirals in their eyes? Maybe you can, in which case, you’re more generous than I am.
I mean, look, I get that car brands have their fans, often fierce ones, determined, wildly loyal people who would much rather push a Chevy than drive a Ford, or vice-versa. I get it. But even with that in mind, even with the most hardcore, unbearable fans, I have never ever encountered any, say, Ford person claiming the the F-150 Lightning would be the best product the world has ever seen. Ever.
You know why that is? Is it because the F-150 Lightning isn’t as capable an electric truck as the Cybertruck? Maybe, but it also could be that that whole sentence is an absolutely fucking ridiculous statement to make, by any standards at all.
The best product the world has ever seen! Better than, say, corn dogs or maxi pads or insulin or the telephone or the toilet or the computer or fucking fresh clean water pumped right into your home! Do you like being warm in the winter and cool in the summer thanks to heat and air-conditioning systems? Do you like your food not spoiling thanks to your refrigerator? Do you like to be able to read thanks to glasses or contact lenses? Big fan of woven fabrics, a human product that is also widely enjoyed by the considerable dog and cat population of the world? Well, I hope you aren’t a fool who thinks any of those bullshit products are somehow “better” than this big stainless steel pickup truck shaped like an origami yak, because @Teslaconomics make it pretty fucking clear none of that shit matters compared to this Tesla, the product that will have the biggest impact on our daily lives.
Exactly how a few thousand people owning a particular kind of pickup truck will have “the biggest impact on our daily lives” isn’t really explained here, but I’m sure it’s been well-thought through and extremely likely to happen. Most likely when the first Cybertrucks get delivered you’ll wake up that morning just a bit happier, a bit more alert and perceptive and kind, and, yes, probably at least a little aroused. As soon as enough people start commuting to their jobs in these things, you’ll likely find your capacity to love and be loved will have increased by, oh, 74%, and I suspect that the first time someone heaves a sofa into the back of a Cybertruck as they help a friend move, there will be a collective, knee-buckling orgasm that will reverberate all across post-pubescent humanity, bringing the world to a well-deserved moment of bliss, because that’s what The Best Product That The World Has Ever Seen can do.
Is this guy joking, somehow? Is he kidding? If so, this is a really, really committed bit, because nothing in this whole Twitter feed feels that much different. Sure, maybe the hyperbole knob was nudged a bit for this one, but not that much.
I mean, maybe we can’t really blame this fan alone, though. It’s not like Tesla themselves haven’t dipped their toes into the warm custard of hilarious hyperbole before, after all. Remember this?
Near-infinite mass, best product ever, same thing, really, right?
What this tweet really reveals is the fundamental problem many in the automotive enthusiast/fetish community has with a certain subset of Tesla fans: they desperately need to take it down a nice, big notch. It’s fine to be smitten with a car! I think being a devotee of a whole company isn’t always a great plan, but, whatever, I love enthusiasm, and I love seeing people be really into the cars they love. It’s beautiful, and I want to support it as much as possible.
But, as we can see here, it can take a nasty turn. A turn where it blinds you to other cars, other ideas, other ways of thought, other people. A turn where it can, in its most virulent stages, make one say such astoundingly culty and idiotic statements like proclaiming a truck is the best product the world has ever seen.
As I write this, I’m reminded of an incredibly long series of DMs I received from a hardcore Tesla fan years ago, after I had written something critical of the company. The tone of it reminded me of the sort of reality-removed feeling I’m seeing here. As I was being scolded for criticizing Tesla, this was the analogy the person made:
Yes, that person is equating a for-profit carmaker with racial groups and people with disabilities. This isn’t healthy. It’s just another symptom of the same thing seen in that tweet.
This kind of absurdity does no one any good: not the company whose metaphorical genitals are being lovingly caressed, not the other people who are fans of the company, not the public at large, nobody. If you read any statement like that, where an upcoming car from any company is hailed as the Best Product Ever, only one thought should spring to mind:
Get a fucking grip.
I Saw The Prototype Tesla Cybertruck Up-Close. Here’s What I Thought
The Cheapest Tesla Cybertruck Camper Concept Yet Is A $24,000 Truck Cap That Might Cook You Like Bacon – The Autopian
Elon Musk Tweets That Cybertruck Will Have A Feature That VW Beetles Had Over 80 Years Ago
The thing is, these kinds of absurd, unrealistic, hyperbolic statements about vehicles are nothing new. People have talked before about common phases budding car enthusiasts go through, and most people at some point go through a phase of putting whatever car they’ve picked as their favorite on a pedestal, hyping it up as the greatest thing to ever exist and arguing furiously with anyone who says otherwise.
It used to be practically every day that you’d encounter some 12 year-old on the internet ranting about how great Lamborghini Gallardos or Nissan GTRs are, and many of us were one of those kids at one point. Most people grow out of this phase as they learn more about cars and are gradually exposed to more valid opinions, get to ride in other fun cars and realize how fun they are, or realize they will never be able to afford that Lamborghini they’ve placed on a pedestal.
With Tesla, a LOT of people who were previously uninterested in cars are becoming car enthusiasts for the first time, and since Teslas introduced them to car enthusiasm, those are the cars they’re placing on a pedestal. Elon’s charisma and the idea that these cars are revolutionary and saving the planet are all the excuse people need to keep them on that pedestal, which is why these new Tesla enthusiasts aren’t growing out of the rabid fan phase as quickly.
As Tesla’s quality problems and Musky Shenanigans continue and more competitive EVs hit the market, some of the Tesla fans might chill out, but for many this is the first car they’ve ever been interested in and they simply aren’t aware that there may be other cars they could find interesting.
As goofy as what that person said is, they are winning in this battle of attention seeking. 100 comments is pretty high on an article here, indicating some serious wadding of undergarments was achieved. So congrats to all, I guess?
Nobody stans harder than Tesla Stans! It’s almost like it’s…supercharged.
Wasnt the segaway supposed to change our lifes? Anyways, im gonna go back to eating these nachos that are so revolutionary, they’ll change lives
I read the headline and skipped the article to post. Is the great product hidden behind the Cybertruck?
Your article is wrong and you’re a complete dipshit!
*checks notes*
Oops – wrong article. Never mind – carry on.
There is no use for this. Unless, of course, giants were real, in which case they could use this as a doorstop. But not to pull their “infinite mass”.
All Tesla fans are insufferable a**holes (and this tweet was proof). Never forget that.
And yet, they all drive faster and simpler to maintain cars than you do. Imagine that.
Are you implying that all Tesla stans own Teslas?
I’m not sure I’d go that far, so that’s fair. I’m quite sure the haters have never driven one in anger, though.
I’m actually a Tesla owner and fan. 🙂 So, they don’t necessarily drive faster etc. cars than I do.
Interested in your opinion about the truck
I’m not big into trucks (aside from once every few years when I need to move some big furniture), and don’t like the polygonal styling — so I have little excitement about the truck. That said, its announcement likely lit a fire under legacy auto (who were starting to have noticeable sales taken from them by Tesla in other segments), resulting in their EV trucks being designed and released years before they otherwise would be. Also, the hard-exterior unibody construction of Cybertruck may end up being a a good idea from a strength, simplicity, and cost perspective — in which case it might get cars evolving away from the traditional body-on-frame approach with better results (although, hopefully not polygonal!).
You know all the strength discourse of the outside body is fake news, right ?
I was just trolling a bit with that comment. I’m a fan of Tesla, and was curious to see how many likes it would get. So far it has nine. I’m grateful that The Autopian is trying to be less overtly Tesla-hating than Jalopnik and some other automotive news/fan sites are, and think that Torch should therefore try to resist writing articles like this, much as the ridiculous tweets may infuriate him. The vast majority of Tesla fans aren’t ridiculous like this tweeter is, believe it or not. Even though the piece specifies that the tweet was from an extreme stan, many readers read it and just think it represents all Tesla fandom (since they’ve been inculcated from years of hateful articles and comments from Jalopnik and other places). I think I’m right and those tweets are written by a vocal extreme minority — so what’s the point of elevating them with articles like this? Methinks it’s not productive and is damaging instead.
Bad form, JT – you are yucking on somebody else’s yum. You wouldn’t do it if it were any other product but a Tesla, either.
I know, I know, you said it was an exception, except…it’s really not. Kind of like saying “no offense intended” before you intentionally get offensive.
You guys HAVE to get over your political hate for Musk, or at least suppress it when you are covering Tesla. Otherwise, you aren’t practicing journalism.
He’s not saying not to like Teslas. He’s calling out the hyperbole of pretending that the Cybertruck is/will be a world-changing product. It’s an objectively ridiculous stance to take.
Well as we say in the South “Bless Your Heart”.
“Right back at ya” is also said in the South.
Agreed.
You know this rant doesn’t really say anything about Musk, right?
“It will be the best product the world has ever seen…”
Well then, it’s a good thing the Cybertruck has four doors, because penicillin is going to take a back seat.
“best product ever” sounds like old Segway hype. Tesla Stans are truly the worst Fandom surpassing even Superwholock
I can almost guarantee, given the absurdity of that tweet, that it was done solely to get people worked up and you bit. They were fishing for eyes and probably a retweet from Elon. I guess they are just waiting for the retweet now.
You haven’t interacted with Tesla fans much, have you? This is 99% genuine. You know they believe their cars are appreciating assets if they bought FSD as an “investment”? Why? How could that be? Well, they can join a robo-taxi fleet and make you money instead of sitting unused in their driveway. Of course, this was at least 5 years ago, and FSD is still no better than a nervous 13 year old, and it is looking like current hardware will never support SAE level 4. They were right about one thing, though, it is an investment. Meaning it can lose money.
Sorry, my brother is an insufferable Tesla-stan and I’ve heard them all.
Well sorry about but you didnt buy the commercial version FSD.
Try reading a comment before you reply to it.
Better yet, don’t reply. Or comment.
Judging from other tacotruckdave comments, that was pure snark.
He’s a fucking idiot, which he’s demonstrated repeatedly here & at the old place.
Tesla fans are the new fox body mustang guys.
But where do they fall on the Porsche 911 fanboy scale?
I live in a country where there are a lot of roads this horrible looking thing won’t fit down. And I know there are other countries where that applies. That automatically makes it not the best product.
I live in USA and drive a full sized truck, I dont think I could park this truck anywhere but on the side of the road, it looks wider than a Ford Raptor.
“an actual, living human being actually typed those words about the Tesla Cybertruck”
Counterpoint: It could have been written by Elon Musk…
Elon likely would have written a one-word reply: “Profound.”
Tesla/Elon stans are the weirdest fucking nerds on the planet.
I wonder if any of the stans have started to double down on their enthusiasm the more it becomes clear that the public face of the company is, in scientific terms, an utter chode. If you’ve invested that much of yourself in unbridled enthusiasm for that guy (and spend just a whole lot of time trying to get his attention, and maybe doodling your conjoined names in a notebook), it must be because the products are just so overwhelmingly good that they could cause peace between dogs and cats, and get us another season of Arrested Development. No, not those two, a new good season of Arrested Development. Right?
I think Dean Kamen said something similar about the Segway changing the world and that was a much better idea than this.
Well, it was… Until the Kamen sold the company, and the new owner took himself out of the gene pool in a darkly ironic and Darwinistic fashion by driving one off a river embankment…
Yeah, that’s right! I forgot all about that.
Yes, the echos are strong.
But Hypnotoad sez Cybertruck is best! (sure wish I could embed a GIF)
https://media.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExMjIxZGM1MGE4YWM4OGNlMjYwY2I1NmMzODA4YjA5NjE3ZjMwYmI3YyZjdD1n/rou0CTAp6Z8VW/giphy.gif
Funniest comment was the first reply on Twitter “Zune. I’m pretty sure you meant it will be the Zune moment for Tesla.”
My parents bought me one for Christmas when I was in HS. Holy sh** was that thing hard to load files on and work. I hated it.
JT, if you think that was a rant, just wait ’til rootwyrm sees this!
Oh boy, rootwyrm.
We really should interview him!
YES!
I’m a lot less interesting than I seem, I assure you. Well, unless you’re deep into systems infrastructure or DNS. Or how to stand on the shoulders of automotive design teams. Then I’m super interesting.
But honestly on this one? My take is simply this: the absolute last thing anyone should be doing is validating their attention-seeking behaviors or delusional beliefs. In any venue. These people should be referred to real mental health professionals.
I seem to recall similar breathless enthusiasm over Segway.
That was the future in 2001, that is history.
It caused Chinese hoverboards.
This future is going to be better than that!
I wonder what the Chinese will make this time.
Changli pickup. Cheaper version, less capable, death trap in a collision.
One man’s “best product ever” is another man’s “Holy Grail”.
Some young aspiring DT out there is getting his formative automotive experience reading Cybertruck tweets and preparing to acquire a yard full of broken down “holy grails” one day….he’s just going to have to wait a bit longer for them to rust is all.
So the Jeep Holy Grail(tm) was due to the relatively rare manual transmission. What would make the Cybertruck a Holy Grail? It comes with the matching Cyberquad? It has a different windshield wiper before an early design change? Like the Delorean, it comes with gold plating?
For me, it would be the initial prototype with the damaged windows and the ball bearing that created the damage ensconced in a display case.
I think it will be any version actually produced in the 3mm stainless, before they finally admit how stupid an idea that is.
I want to see this guy when Musk cancels the Cybertruck program. He is going to batcrapcrazy (ier)
“This is just part of the development cycle. It’s better to cancel a product than release a bad one.”
I think it’s more likely that we’ll get something about how canceling the Cybertruck program was a brave and absolutely visionary thing to do. @elonmusk
Im picturing that episode of American Dad where Stan and Francine go off the deep end and steal the Mr Pibb Mobile.
Agile development!
A Venn Diagram of car enthusiasts and Tesla stans is basically two separate circles
Car enthusiasts and Tesla owners don’t overlap at all based on the ones I know, and I wonder what that means for Tesla’s future. It seems like most Tesla buyers I know fall into one of two categories:
1. A buyer who wants a nice and reasonably practical electric vehicle, and Tesla still has a near-monopoly on the segment.
2. People interested in tech products that has no interest in cars or driving at all.
If the Tesla owners I know are representative of their buyers in general, it is hard to imagine Tesla will be successful over the long term once practical EVs from other manufacturers are readily available. It is hard to imagine BMW can’t build a better driver’s car EV than Tesla, that Mercedes-Benz can’t build a more luxurious EV than Tesla, or that Toyota can’t build a better budget EV than Tesla. Tesla doesn’t appear to be innovating at all these days. They haven’t released a truly innovative product since the Model S or the super charger network. The 3, Y, and X are all derived from the Model S and aren’t innovative, and the Cybertruck is a joke without a punchline. It seems like all of their efforts are devoted to self-driving vehicles, and we don’t appear to be any closer to a self-driving vehicles than we were 5 years ago.
I don’t think the issue is that car enthusiasts are hostile to EVs since I know several car enthusiasts who own non-Tesla EVs. I think Tesla genuinely has problems. Am I the only one who is questioning whether Tesla will still be around in 20 years?
One reason I like Tesla fanboys is as a longtime BMW owner they have taken the stereotypically title from Bimmerheads as top automotive d-bag owners.
Don’t go getting too cocky, y’all aren’t far behind….and I say this as a Biermann fan haha
I like the idea of Tesla, that there’s a California-based car manufacturer doing things uniquely, and I think Holzhausen has done a good job with their styling despite all the crap cars that Musk forces him to design. The cars review well as drivers’ vehicles if you believe C&D or M/T and have been said to handle better than the competing i4 or Polestar 2, so they’re not without enthusiast merit. All that said, they’re hilariously overpriced for the interior and production quality that they present and yeah, I’m not holding my breath for their long term viability. However, if I happened upon a decent condition used Model S for not too much money I’d be tempted to give it a try if I had the disposable income to keep it going.
The Polestar 2 is getting some updates that should make it more enjoyable to drive, FWIW.
On the plus side, if Tesla is around in 20 years, the cars will probably all still look exactly the same. Clearly mid-cycle refresh is not in the Tesla vocabulary.
That is why many solid companies go bankrupt. They invent a relatively good performing product. It sells great. They refuse to adapt, alter, or otherwise progress. I am looking at you KODAK.
An extremely wealthy family friend who fits perfectly into category two has always driven Toyotas, preferably Highlanders. They buy one, and when the repair costs get too high after ten-fifteen years, they buy another and relegate the first to secondary uses.
Being in love with tech (always everything new from Apple, bought an induction stove in like 2005, etc etc) they recently got a Tesla Model 3 – loved it briefly, but after twenty-plus flat tires, they are done with it and they are afraid to drive after dark since potholes destroy it. They just took delivery of a Rivian instead, and are not looking to buy Tesla again. This will be the first car they have ever traded in or sold instead of just running until it becomes scrap. So, yes, I think Tesla are in for some hard times.
My theory is that instead of paid advertising in the typical places, Musk is funding a social media army. I’ve run across Tesla stans in a lot of unexpected places on the internet.