Are there really so few car enthusiasts on this site? This sub seems to have such little traffic. What gives?
Coming from Reddit, there were multiple car-related subs and they all saw some fairly heavy traffic with lots of posts and comments. Heck, even some of the model-specific ones seem to get more interaction than this sub does. What’s the deal?
I see the anti-car subscriptions getting much more traffic than pro-car subscriptions. It might just be the demographic here is less in to cars and more into city planning.
Same. I love racing, karts, formula1, I’m playing VR racing games and my first pc games were Need for Speed Carbon and Most Wanted. I like the engineering aspect behind them, the pistons, the clutches. I’m watching people fixing their cars on youtube etc.
I never owned a car, never will.
Way too expensive. I’ve taken my bike to work for the past four years. Over 20.000 thousand miles. I’ve only spent £1000. That’s £250 a year for work commute.
Well, just being the change you want to see. Being vocal about building less car-dependent cities leads to more people being aware a car isn’t necessarily critical to daily life which leads to people voting for people who share those same ideas. Sure it won’t be tomorrow but as someone who hates driving I’m definitely making an effort to drive as little as possible and voting for that lifestyle.
But to answer op’s question, Lemmy’s population as a whole is probably very techy/urbany and young. Very conducive to living in a major city where it’s possible to live without a car.
Personally I don’t want to ever live in a major city like that. Rural or small town life is where it’s at - I have multiple cars (paid off) and own my own house and land all for an affordable price on a middle class wage. Around these parts, you must have a car or be fit enough to walk long distances carrying stuff.
Back home, I could own more than an acre of land, not be told what I can and can’t build on it and pay less than what I bought my house for with .25 acre. I would have to drive an hour and 40 min to get to anything I’m personally interested in if I still lived there though which is why I moved to a city.
Growing up I was on a school bus for 45 min to 1hr each way and my parents drove 40+miles each way to work. Now my kid can walk to school or a park, we have non-white neighbors and it’s a short distance to so many experiences. The opportunities here heavily out weighed having more land but as I get more in to cars, I can’t help but wish we had a double lot for car storage
I think a lot of the “city people” are trapped in their City Life and they don’t realize it, and have probably never known anything else. When you get set up with your whole life in one area, and build your routines around that familiar infrastructure, you probably just think that’s how life is supposed to be.
I’ve spent enough time in several of America’s largest cities to know that it’s a massive pile of bullshit hassles. It’s nice to visit a big city for a few days or a week to see new things, and enjoy the expensive conveniences. But before long it’s enough of that, and I just want to be away from all the people and their bullshit systems and hierarchies and routines. Out here in Freedomland, I have room to breathe and I can do whatever I want.
I mean I think it’s just different strokes for different folks. There’s a reason 9 million people live in NYC and 4 million in LA. I was in the military for a while and being stationed in very rural places were you could buy a mansion for like 200k was just depressing for me. You had to drive 20 mins to get anywhere, nothing “big” was ever happening in town, food options were lacking. I don’t like guns or cars, which seemed like the biggest appeal for people to live out in the sticks. In the city I can walk 2 minutes to the grocery store, 5 mins to 10 different restaurants, 15 mins to downtown for big events. There’s always something happening and I like knowing if I ever feel like randomly going out there’s something random going on. And paradoxically I feel like living in the city you deal with people way less. No one talks to each other, everyone has something to do and we just ignore each other in pursuit of that. In small towns it was always a 10 minute exchange of pleasantries with the waiter before I could order a beer.
My experience in US cities is that they are so poorly planned that I understand why people would view them negatively and think they’re overrated.
Then when I graduated from college and moved overseas I got it because the design of cities was moreso for them to be livable spaces and communities than the mutated abomination that were the two US cities I spent most of my childhood in.
Porque no los dos? I have loved cars my whole life, have driven and worked on many different cars and am currently in the market for something 20 years old that’s a little too fast, but I still like my cities walkable and wish driving wasn’t the only option in most places here in the US.
For sure, though I'll note I know many people who dislike cars as the dominant form of transportation in a society but are also car enthusiasts from the hobbyist perspective (this would also include me).
Sounds like me. I love sport cars, but really think that we should use walking, bikes and public transports as as possible.
In my country, Switzerland, it’s clearly possible for people living in the city to have no car. I live on the countryside so it’s not my case, but people rely way too much on cars.
Yep, this is me too. I absolutely hate car centric city infrastructure… But am also restoring a classic mini. They’re a cool piece of engineering, just a shit way to transport lots of people
Well Lemmy is still mostly populated by left leaning tech enthusiasts and for people like this, cars are just a tool or even something that should be banned at all cost.
If I had more time and money I’d be into it more too. The real problem is reddit is more popular. I remember when something with hit 1k up votes and I was blown away. Now it’s significantly more. Lemmy is kinda like that right now.
Overlap between Republicans and c/fuckcars might be minimal, but overlap between car enthusiasts and c/fuckcars is surprisingly large. It turns out that a bunch of folks who love the machines and the driving and the car culture are, in fact, capable of understanding that those experiences can get diminished when you force a bunch of normies to do it and clog up the roads.
Besides, in my case at least, the fact that I can use my bicycle to get around town means that all my cars can be project cars, instead of having to own something boring and reliable.
I love my summer car, working on it, driving it down back roads, taking it to autocross and lapping days, but if I never have to drive in stop & go traffic when I’m running late ever again, I’d never complain.
Bit harsh your opinion touched a nerve apparently to get downvoted. I think you expressed yourself politely and sincerely and you may also be right. Reddit had years to cultivate subs by and for people who are not terminally online, and those are the people who will be slowest to adopt complicated fediverse tech.
i’ll be honest, you’re not wrong. cars are fucking lame. My dad was a mechanic, but over the years I discovered that I REALLY hate cars. Buying a car carries all the thrill and excitement of buying a used refrigerator. I do not understand the appeal or why people fetishize them like they do. they’re too expensive, they make our cities suck, and the people that want the “cool car” are always the worst kind of douchebag. I just don’t get it I guess.
Generally the excitement comes from the anticipation of having a thing that you really want. Since I only buy cars out of necessity, and I don’t enjoy driving or owning them, It get’s really hard to look forward to it with anything other than dread. If I didn’t have to drive places occasionally I’d roll that thing into a lake and let the fish make their homes inside.
Agreed. I’m a car guy, have been working on them for decades, owned a shop at one point and worked at a racing component manufacturer for a good bit.
Car enthusiasts come in a lot of stripes and a super broad community may not gain as much focus right away as communities around a single topic, such as weird cars, etc. I’m subscribed to a weird car community here and there’s a bunch of cool stuff being posted.
I’d say just keep the faith and keep posting great content and car subs on Lemmy will evolve to a point that attracts plenty of subscribers. I’m personally subscribing to every such community I come across…
You can’t just talk about this weird cars sub without mentioning the name of it for others to join.
Also if you know of a classic car one, post that as well. I searched the communities and I think I found one and it had so few posts on it. This is especially sad coming from Reddit where the classic car sub would get at least a couple of posts a day. Even if they were of some random dude posting a picture or two, that’s still nice to see.
Hopefully there’s a bot or helpful admin that can reply with the correct way to do this. The link should get you there though.
And don’t be shy! Start a community for classic cars yourself and add some build posts or show coverage! I’ve probably got some content I can toss in there…!
I love cars, especially the old restored ones, or reading about people tinkering and troubleshooting. But I subscribe to fuckcars because I fucken hate literal vans being used in my city and clogging up the streets designed for less and smaller traffic. Those Chelsea tractors, as they call them in the UK can fuck right off. Fine em, tax em, whatever you need to do, sabotage their tyres, whatever. Fuck em.
I see cars as tools. I’m a fuckcars person because I believe cities should not be built to appease roads and cars. Though I do find old cars cool and fascinating, I just want good people-friendly infrastructure in the world.
Believe it or not, some of us “fuck cars” people are also car enthusiasts.
It’s kind of like how there are a bunch of people who like riding horses, but probably wouldn’t want them to be everybody’s primary mode of transportation.
It’s worse if you wrench or make cars like me. Not a deep complaint, I know why younger people jack metal less often (money, PERSISTENT SPACE, access to skills, complexity of modern cars etc) but result is, little construction and fabrication.
Sadly most of what still goes on is in boomer bigot forums, one of which id been a contributor to for 20 years, have a fuckton of docs manuals how tos parts lists etc, basically froze me out when I put on all my websites “black lives matter as much as anyone’s” and “racism is white people’s responsibility”.
Lol, I’m an out gay man and that does not exactly make me popular but I survived based on being an old timer there but the BLM thing was the final straw.
Oh man sort I ranted at y’all, won’t do that again, but it’s nice to tell someone!
I respect your opinion but I disagree with your statement “racism is white peoples responsibility”.
I’m telling you this because I hope it’ll show others that we can have different opinions and still respect each other. That’s what reddit was missing.
Thank you. (and by that phrase I mean responsible for dealing with the mess we have now; and specifically not guilty for creating it im the first place. And because were talking about only slogans, handwaving how racism unfolds today.)
Personally I find automotive news to be more interesting than any one specific model. Upcoming releases, especially ones within the realm of possibility for mere mortals, or industry trends and sales figures are just the kind of stuff I get interested in.
Very good observation. I think it’s really true to some extent as early adopters of Lemmy are seemingly interested Linux, programming, memes and activities.
Automobile enthusiasts are just arriving from Reddit. I was into tanks, rare planes and things like that, for which there just isn’t any community right now.
I’ve always just used car specific forums for car stuff. Though I gotta say the newer my cars get the shittier the forums are. Like damn man you put a K&N filter in it? That’s some CrAzY mods bro
Can always start a flame war about oil that’ll get some clicks
I think Facebook killed forums. With rare exception, they’re all a ghost town. I’m excited about the idea of the fediverse, and the threadiverse specifically, bringing back forums. I think we should work toward that goal.
Though I gotta say the newer my cars get the shittier the forums are.
My theory is that the older a car gets, the percentage of owners who are enthusiasts increases. Some new cars get bought by enthusiasts, but a lot get bought by folks who want something new/fast/high-tech/whatever, but don’t actually care that much and are happy to use it until it’s no longer the new hotness and then get rid of it. In contrast, folks who own old cars (and join forums about them) are doing so because they really like that particular car for whatever reason.
I would quite like a project car sub, This one doesn’t feel very focused. That’s my thought anyway.
EDIT: I just added my 3 project cars, I have literally thousands of pictures of the work, I may try and compile a cross section post of the work I have done on each at some point if people might like that.
Same, it seems that A LOT of peeps are still on r/cars nowadays. I feel like most active posters haven’t made the switch to Lemmy yet for various reasons.
I made one post already, i just feel like I’d be spamming if I kept posting with so few other members. Maybe that’s just in my head, because I’m sure i could post some interesting content lol
I’ve posted a similar thought other places, but coming from reddit–where you are as good as anonymous on all but the most niche subs–it’s tough to get back into the mindset of posting to build community. It feels like coming full circle back to the topic-specific forums where you recognized a good 25%-50% of the people commonly posting and you didn’t have to worry about your voice getting drowned out by random chatter and bots.
All that to say, I personally think posting semi-relevant or memey material, just for the sake of spurring conversation and getting to know other members is fine and probably a good thing while things are getting rolling.
It could take a while to develop, on Mastodon it took about 2-3 years before folk started tooting about cars (now there is quite a lot of traffic). Also this sub seems quite US-centric, us Europeans see all your big trucks and muscle cars and think nobody will be interested in the superminis most folk drive round here, and a lot of people keep their cars stock as mods are expensive due to extra insurance costs!
I drive a modest VW Polo 6C myself (this is like 90% of a Golf, just slightly smaller) and am quite into detailing, I’d post up more pics but it keeps pissing down here in England at the moment (whilst rest of Europe is roasted by sun so there are often hosepipe bans!)
I tried figuring out what exactly Mastodon was once and quickly lost interest when I couldn’t find a simple answer. Regardless, you’d be surprised what we are into. Just because larger vehicles tend to be popular here, that doesn’t mean lots of folks don’t like smaller cars too. I like both. I got an old '64 Buick and considered many of times to buy a small Japanese Kei truck (can’t get much smaller than that), but when you lookat what they cost, and parts availability, you can honestly do a lot better with a larger domestic truck for hauling stuff.
Sometimes it’s simply because we don’t have them here that makes people into them. Parts and the knowledge-base to keep them running is sometimes tough.
Please post your superminis! I love seeing kei cars around town when I do. I saw a Toyota HiAce last week and started gushing over it to my wife.
It’s true many Americans prefer larger cars, but some of us out here have a genuine appreciation for smaller cars. My '97 Prelude makes my 9th gen FB Civic feel like a truck after I’ve been driving it for a minute.
This problem isn’t exclusive to just c/cars, r/cars (on Reddit) have always been very American-centric since forever. Looks like things won’t be changing here unfortunately.
Reddit didn’t start with a huge amount of car subreddits, it built over time.
Part of the problem I’m seeing is that people are expecting the new communities here to have an instant following but really things should be posted to a single larger community until it’s big enough to splinter off.
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