1/12/2024 0 Comments Zombies chronicles 2"Many of the mods were 'radicalized' by NJB's Jason Slaughter," a Fuck Cars moderator told me. Orange-pilling (not to be confused with the Bitcoin version of the orange pill, which I can only assume has worse side effects) might share the aesthetics of a conspiracy theory, but – and yes, I know this is something a conspiracy theorist would also say – it's all true. "Like everyone else in suburbia, you were born into bondage," proclaims Jason Slaughter in the Not Just Bikes YouTube channel's foundational text on car dependency, "born into a prison you cannot escape without a motor vehicle." It is tongue-in-cheek, a self-proclaimed "shitpost" of a video that introduces the "orange pill," playing off that much-referenced Matrix monologue, but there's something to it. Did you know the average cost to operate a new car is almost $11,000 every year? Or that an urban resident who swaps the car for a bike for just one trip a day would save the equivalent emissions of a flight between London and New York every year? (And no, EVs won't save us.)Īnd did you know (I'm shaking you by the collar here) the concept of "jaywalking" was invented by the auto industry as one part of a coordinated effort to use the very fabric of our city design to maximize profits? European cities like Amsterdam represent both a bygone dream and an idyllic vision of the future after all, we didn't design US cities for the car – we bulldozed them to accommodate it. (Anonymity allows them to facilitate conversation, rather than making them spokespeople for the cause, they say.) "But r/fuckcars is full of mind-blowing realizations." "These days it sometimes feels difficult to have your mind blown by a small observation," the anonymous moderators of the Fuck Cars Twitter account told me. So what's going on here? Help, I'm orange-pilled You watch one video on zoning laws in Japan and then suddenly it was 2am and I’m all like “it’s so true bestie, the suburban experiment *is* an anti-human ponzi scheme”- steveklabnik March 25, 2022 And I started to wonder… had I been radicalized? In the span of only a few weeks, I went from proverbial Prius Lover to Car Destroyer on the pro/anti-car political compass I found on the Fuck Cars feed. I dropped the word " stroad" into casual conversation. I developed strong opinions about bike rack design. I started explaining to anyone who would listen why parking requirements are to blame for most societal ills. Soon, I found myself consuming memes on r/fuckcars, bingeing the Not Just Bikes YouTube channel, following Strong Towns on Instagram, signing up for the Our Built Environment Substack, subscribing to The War on Cars podcast and more. I was witnessing the almighty algo at work in real time, and for the first time it felt more invigorating than bleak. Then these two IRL acquaintances started tweeting at each other. Over time, I began seeing their posts more frequently, alongside similar tweets from accounts like American Fietser and Cars Destroyed Our Cities and even the World Bollard Association. OK, first I'm getting a cargo bike, and then I'm getting a dog, too. The story of my radicalization really begins, as these stories often do, on Twitter. The two of us stumbled upon a vintage car show one morning and he turned to me and said, in his earnest toddler lilt, " We don't like cars, right, Mama? We like bikes and walking." And I was just like, yes, child, yeeeeessss.īut it wasn't just my new two-wheeled lifestyle that stoked my dormant disgust for car dependence. Speaking of my son, my little sponge-brained 3-year-old now regularly asks why people are driving when they ought to be biking, and I couldn't be more proud. I've even realized a latent yet lifelong dream of biking my son to school every day. My local farmer's market has a free bike valet. "We are within biking distance of three grocery stores," I tell everyone back home, " and Target." I notice things now like well-placed bollards and accessible bike parking, and I often indulge in delicious indignation when someone blocks a bike lane with their trash can. Karisa Langlo/CNET Two wheels good, four wheels badĪbout a year ago, I moved to a very bike-friendly neighborhood in bike-friendly(ish) Sacramento – decent infrastructure, flat roads, temperate climate, good building density – and almost overnight became a smug cycling evangelist.
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