I just wrote what I intended to be a measured review on the Tesla Cybertruck. I simply drove the machine and wrote down my thoughts. My review pointed out the truck’s flaws and ultimately concluded that I think it’s “cool” despite its controversial founder. That may sound like the most lukewarm take in automotive media history, but even it was enough to cause people to go absolutely crazy. 442 comments (and counting)!
I initially wondered “How are you supposed to write about the Cybertruck these days without people getting upset?” I’ve concluded that the answer is: You can’t. The Tesla Cybertruck should be renamed the Tesla Powderkeg, and reviewing it is totally pointless.
I’m exhausted by the comments sections of my Tesla Cybertruck review. Readers are pissed. YouTube viewers are pissed. Twitter/x users are pissed. Your neighbor’s dog that just laid a mound on your lawn probably did so because it was pissed. Everyone is pissed! And I don’t like it; I want people (and dogs) to be happy. I want them to enjoy their Sunday, not spend it banging away at a keyboard arguing with people.
But like I said, folks were LIVID the other day. “spooky cartoon spider-man,” in particular, let me HAVE IT on Twitter:
Do I think ripping on such a handsome devil’s looks because said HD called a truck cool is a great way to spend a Sunday? Not at all! Go outside! Throw that dog a frisbee so it doesn’t shit on your lawn again!
To be sure, I get why everyone is pissed. The Cybertruck’s primary proponent, Elon Musk, is a ridiculous person who has offended numerous groups, including ones that have already been marginalized. That’s a big deal, and it’s good that people take that seriously. But if you’re going to promote social unity/fairness, you gotta practice what you preach! That’s the thing about the Cybertruck and my review; it turned people who are normally nice and rational, and who regularly speak up to preserve civil discourse and dignity, into that which they denounce.
There are plenty of parallels to the current political situation. You have one group that believes that you must actively and endlessly hate someone or you yourself are condoning all of the bad things they’ve ever done (one commenter even wrote “There are some people (myself included) that consider Musk a large enough problem that they will judge a persons character when that persons uses or praises his work.” For reference, Tesla sells half a million cars annually in the U.S.). And then you have the other group that worships that person and thinks that anyone who slightly criticizes him is an ignorant hater.
While I think both groups — those who love Tesla and those who loathe it — have good intentions, oftentimes neither can think clearly. One is blinded by hatred, one is blinded by admiration; it really is a tale as old as time.
As such, writing my review was pointless. Solely because I called the Cybertruck “cool,” people are throwing tomatoes and soiled underpants at me and my beautiful, carefully crafted words, saying the writing is somehow “flawed” and that I wrote it solely for “clicks.” Clicks?! THE AUDACITY.
To be a bit more serious: I’m sympathetic to these folks. They are commenters on this site, and I’m grateful they’re here — even the ones who make fun of my looks. At the very least, they are purporting to be standing up against bad things Musk has said. To them, they are championing for a better, more civil, more accepting world, and that’s what we should all want. Does being mean online help their cause? Probably not, but the anonymity provided by the web often ends this way.
But it’s not just the haters, it’s also the lovers.
They believe Musk is saving the world, and in some ways, he’s definitely helped! He’s pushed the world towards electrification, which will end up having huge positive climate change implications (a macho Cybertruck to lure folks away from fuel-sucking SuperDuties could help, too). He’s changed the way the world does space exploration with SpaceX. And he’s done a bunch of other great things, but as was the case before when talking about his flaws, no matter what I say here, I’ll get criticized for not mentioning all of what he’s done. Suffice it to say: He’s done some amazing things in addition to the dumb things he’s said and done.
So when Musk fans see all the compromises I mention in my review and say things like “It’s a dumb, poorly disguised ‘hit piece’ peppered with ads. Don’t waste your time. Zero real insight,” I’m sympathetic. They want Musk to succeed — to sell lots of trucks, so he can save the universe.
I don’t think either group has bad intentions (and we here at The Autopian are totally cool with both writing in the comments section (in a civilized way) their strong opinions about the truck or Musk). I think the problem is that there are only two vocal groups. This is the world we live in today; it’s black or white, and there is little nuance. As a result, people in both groups are allowing the topic to get the best of them, and neither group is going to actually read a Cybertruck review with an open mind, making my endeavor to write one — as previously stated — thoroughly pointless.
Maybe I Should Have Included In My Review Every Single Good And Bad Thing Elon Musk Has Ever Done
Lord knows I’m fallible. While I did point out that the truck cannot be disconnected from highly controversial CEO Elon Musk, some folks felt I should have criticized Musk more. They wanted me to make a special exception for this vehicle review and add a paragraph about the transgressions of the CEO of the company that built the truck.
I personally think that pointing out that people have big feelings about Musk is enough, especially given that The Autopian (and everyone) has written ad nauseam about Musk and his foolish words/actions. I’ve never seen a car review spend that much time focusing on the transgressions of a company exec; plus, I know Elon proponents would have demanded that I add another paragraph of all the good stuff Elon has done. Should I do this for all cars? When I write about Lucid, exactly how many paragraphs do I need to commit to the Saudi Royal Family and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi? If I write a VW review, do I need to talk about Dieselgate? Should reviewers of the Ford Model A and VW Beetle have included paragraph-long asides in their reviews about Henry Ford’s nasty prejudices and the Third Reich, respectively?
[Editor’ Note: I feel sort of compelled to step in at this point, because I’ve been separating the terrible people who ran the companies of the cars I’ve loved from the cars themselves for pretty much all my life. That’s what happens when you’re a Jew who loves VW Beetles, like me. At some point, you just have to let the car be the car. This I suppose can bleed into the idea of separating the art from the artist, which I think generally I tend to do as well, though there’s always some point of too far or too much. Or at least, there can be. It’s blurry, and I think at this moment we’re in an era where no one wants to see gradients or shades, everything is all or nothing, so you either hate the Cybertruck with the heat of a thousand suns or love it with the heat of an equal and opposite number of suns. But that’s not how reality works.
We’re going to be deeply fucked if we, collectively can’t get past this. Not everything is pure good or pure evil, but we can always try to keep our eyes on being as good as we can to as many people as we can, and if that means that sometimes we accept that people will find a truck cool even if the guy whose company sells it is a steaming pile, then maybe that’s not the worst thing. I’ve never seen car fandom/hatedom quite like this ever before, and I sincerely hope this is an inane phase we’ll get past, because at this moment, we all seem kind of nuts. – JT]
No one is objective, and not everyone writes from my perspective, but my perspective is that Elon Musk is a lot of things both good and bad, but he’s definitely a bit of an edgelord with some awful takes and even awful-er communication skills. And because of his megaphone, those are indeed a big deal. My perspective is also that people care about the Cybertruck, and I care about trucks, and I want to know how the truck drives. Doing so, and communicating it in a cogent, uncontaminated way, is my job.
And I have to believe that what some people want is a car review without politics. I’m not saying “stick to sports,” as we write often about politics, and the larger world has to be considered when talking about Tesla — but how much throat-clearing is enough throat-clearing? It is, in a way, absurd to assume that anyone reading a review in The Autopian doesn’t already know about Elon Musk and hasn’t already formed an opinion about him.
Think about how many Tesla Model Ys are sold each year (I’m using this example because loads of them are already out; you likely know somebody who owns one) — roughly a quarter million. The people buying that car just want a good, clean, fun-to-drive, cheap-to-operate car. LOADs of people who drive a Model Y are not Elon Musk supporters. And when they read a review, they want a review — they already know about Elon and his weirdness. They want to know what the reviewer thinks of the Model Y so that they can make an informed purchase. While I suspect Cybertruck shoppers are a bit more opinionated on Musk’s antics than Model Y owners given the polarizing nature of the truck, many — and I’d guess the majority — just think it looks cool, and want to know what it’s like to drive. “It’s only a ’cause’ to you. To me, it’s a truck that does what I need it to do,” writes Cybertruck owner Loudog in the comments of my article. “It’s my money. I had an F-150 I daily drove before this (A Powerboost. Excellent truck but too many recalls.) Now I drive a Cybertruck.”
So that’s how I approached the Cybertruck. I drove it, I thought it was cool, I noted that I thought it was cool even though it had some major flaws, and then I wrote just that, while noting, of course, that it’s a product of a controversial man named Elon Musk (whom you can read about on your own, separately). It was measured, thorough, neutral, and nuanced, and that was my mistake.
I should have acknowledged exactly how much of a jerk Elon Musk can be, while also acknowledging all the things he’s done, while also acknowledging that he didn’t do all those things himself, while also acknowledging the global importance of Tesla, while also acknowledging the local impacts of Tesla, while also, maybe, finding a few minutes to write about the actual vehicle. I’ll do better next time. For that dog, and for your lawn.
Finally, to avoid ending on the sad realization that a simple review of a controversial truck championed by an insanely controversial man caused the internet — a place that struggles with nuance and subtlety — to lose its mind, here’s a comment from “Lost on the Nürburgring” that is fair and manages to be critical of the review and the car, but in a way that’s not completely devoid of reason.
Fair enough. We all have differing appreciation of vehicles for a variety of reasons, in all directions. Even leaving Tesla’s majority shareholder out of the assessment, I just find the Cybertruck a deeply silly vehicle, it’s ugly, there are much better trucks out there, there are better EVs out there, it’s too big/heavy, it’s made out of a silly material for cars, the flat panels are an empirically poor choice for the construction of the vehicle, it’s poorly constructed, it’s charmless. I just fail to find what its value proposition is at any level, other than you’ll get plenty of attention driving it around.
Side note, my initial comment did seem tonally to be more negative towards you than was in any way my intent. I read your whole article on the Cybertruck and enjoyed it, even if I disagreed with most of it. But we can agree to disagree, all of us, I hope, in our passion for various cars.
Now go grab that frisbee. Maybe I should have done that myself instead of wasting time writing a review of a Cybertruck that people have already decided to love or hate! [Dog takes second shit on lawn].
Bless you David for not being afraid to speak your feelings on a vehicle without bias. Clearly life is so comfortable for us humans that some people have enough free time to derive life purpose from getting angry on the internet.
David,
This is why I love the Autopian. You clearly have a realistic and objective view of the world and it shows through even in an auto appreciation site. If more people could see things like you and be rational and mature, we might not have all of the absurdly ridiculous divisiveness that is running rampant in this country over the past decade at least. Thank you for reflecting the opinion of some of the non-stupid crazy mindless clones that are here in the US. The ability to think for yourself is becoming a lost art and attaching yourself blindly to one side or the other seems the easy way—low effort to not actually put time into a well-educated, informed belief. Keep doing what you do, it gives us hope.
I see the comment count on this article approaching a similar number as the initial review…haha. For whatever it’s worth, David, if you catch this, I very much appreciated your review on the Cybertruck for taking the difficult step of trying to reintroduce nuance to our increasingly polarized society. Hope you don’t let the noise get to you!
You know, I’ve owned an account here but haven’t commented in awhile because I thought based off the comment section, I though this was Jalopnik 2.0. But this article made me come out of the woodworks to comment that David I am sorry you had to deal with personal attacks for forming what might be the most lukewarm experience ever. It’s funny how anything not 100% bashing the Cybertruck is seen as Elon Musk worshipping and it sucks. Cant say anything positive or even appreciate the quirks of a very weird automobile because there’s a subset of the commentariat that feel like screaming about Elon Musk all day will change the fact that THE CYBERTRUCK IS COOL. If it was built by GM or Lambroghini or even Fisker I will still hold the same opinion, it’s a cool quirky TRUCK.
Really, honestly, what did you expect? Rational, well thought out rejoinders? Accurate spelling? Correct grammar? Complete sentences?
Given the subject matter, I’m a little surprised it only has 3.3k views. Still, unleashing a flood of vitriol probably counts for something in non-blinking eyes of “the algorithm”.
As always, this bit of internet advise never fails to hit home – https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DkEbtZHXgAESEI9.png
everyone in this thread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvN-YvWPDE4
I think the fact that you pissed off both sides shows you provided an unbiased review. I probably wouldn’t have read a review of the Cybertruck anywhere else, and I found it a lot more enjoyable than I was expecting (I’m not a “hater” nor a “Stan” but I’ve gotten a bit sick of the hype around it). All that is to say, I’m glad you wrote it.
Also, I always kind of hated the way the Cybertruck looks but your perspective on how cool it is that something looking like that made it into production made me actually appreciate the look a little bit.
I enjoyed your review. I’m not surprised to hear that it’s caused you a mess, but I should say that part of the reason I read it in the first place was that I figured that if *ever* there was going to be a roughly-neutral review of this vehicle, it would be on this site. So thank you for that!
Dave. You did well with your article. It was written in the way only you can write it. Just like if I had written it, I would have tied the persona of the Cyber Truck to Techno Music.
As for your looks… I liked the goatee. It gave you a debonair, alternate universe Spock look. Really cool.
DT, both of these articles have been very well written and I enjoyed reading them both. This site is an awesome place to be and is far and away the least toxic place to have and share automotive enthusiasm. I try to look at controversial topics with nuance and reason.
But the Cyber truck and Elon Musk aren’t just controversial. When seemingly any and all conversations and discourse on a subject goes into full meltdown/comment rage like it does with Tesla/Musk/Cybertruck, it’s no longer just controversial – they’ve become fully radioactive.
With the Cybertruck we have a full and miserable collision of the most inflammatory aspects of car culture, corporate culture, capitalism, political correctness, political policy, environmental policy, foreign policy, the ongoing class war, and culture wars. Any one of those topics would generate some hot takes and impassioned discourse. But all of them mashed together into a few tons of stainless steel? Forget it. There is just no reasonable or nuanced way to manage discourse on a radioactive topic like that.
I certainly have very strong opinions on the Cybertruck. Personally I entirely and wholly loathe the Cybertruck and everything it represents with every fiber of my being. But I am glad you wrote the article you wrote, the way you wrote it. Why? Because I now have some new perspective about the Cybertruck. Thanks for writing good stuff!
So sorry I missed this all…was at Barnums pick a part pissing off Yellowjackets while pulling a left strut for my ’73 Sport Bug.
Haven’t read much but will. There must be something there to simi-cleverly reference Emerson, Lake and Palmer…
I feel like, as the commentariat, we should spend the next week using any comment that mentions David as an excuse to talk about how handsome he is. Because fuck anybody who critiques someone’s views by insulting their looks.
Furthermore, what’s with the uncalled for attack on raw dogging?
“Maybe I should have done that myself instead of wasting time writing a review of a Cybertruck that people have already decided to love or hate! “
No… you were right to do that writeup. And it was a great writeup.
I agree with your assessment and the extremists on either side of the issue need to lighten up.
The guy who said “rawdogging life” doesn’t actually seem to know “rawdogging” actually refers to.
Bummer people had to resort to personal attacks and general awfulness, that really isn’t the vibe here.
Dude throwing potshots at your look by picking the most hipster picture in existence – the trees, the rusty truck, the American Gothic expression – the sound track to that picture is only available on vinyl, and we’ve definitely never heard of the band. Guarantee that dweeb’s never looked as cool as you do in that picture.
For real, though, I think your review was pretty much spot on: it’s a deeply flawed vehicle made by a crazy person, and it’s still a goddamn miracle that in this, the year of the soulless egg-shaped crossover, that they managed to put something out that looks wholly unlike anything else that’s ever hit the road. Less Elon, sure, but more creative, unique, or interesting cars, please!
I feel the same way about the Dodge muscle cars – absolutely not for me and I judge the fuck out of people who drive them (there’s an old joke about how you don’t need to put the Al Gore sticker on your Prius, we already know), but Christ I’m happy someone’s still making two seaters with only the correct wheels being powered.
Lol hipster and redneck are NOT the same thing. Or if they are, I am superlatively hipster.
Time to start playing vinyl and having opinions about espresso. They already copped the moonshine, country music is in, and rust is just authenticity!
people are complaining about your looks? I don’t know, it’s sort of the writer/artist/musician when they aren’t at a reading, gallery opening, or performance look to me. At least you’re not dressed like an engineer!
If you actually care about fashion, and there’s no reason that you ought to other than branding and being able to charge more money for what you think and all that, my advice is to get a pair of “architects glasses“ then whatever else you’re wearing looks like you picked it out on purpose. That way a T-shirt with automatic transmission fluid stains doesn’t look like you pulled it out of the shop rag bucket but instead looks like it’s a carefully chosen costume to make a statement about late stage capitalism. Anyway, that works for me.
Geez, I like Caravaggio paintings, and Woody Allen* movies, Ford and Porsche were both problematic, but I like a lot of their cars. Enzo sounds like a kind of unpleasant guy to be around. Coco Channel was a collaborator, but also one hell of a designer.
I don’t know, was Musk always deranged? It didn’t seem that way ten years ago. He did some great things before he went nuts. The cars seem perfectly fine, just different. The truck certainly isn’t any worse than it’s competition. If I was in the market for a pickup, I would not get anything bigger or fancier than a 1999 Toyota Tacoma regular cab and thats just because 1999 is the year of airbags in trucks.
Hugo Boss’ stuff still looks like Nazi uniforms IMHO, and I can’t really think of anything nice to say about Lindburg.
Reading (and comprehending) long articles is a dying art form. People are trained to get riled up before they finish reading the first paragraph – this is why both pro and anti Musk grabbed their pitchforks. And I saw the pop up notification go like crazy before I finished the second paragraph (like I’ve never seen it before), so I suspect many of them just skipped to the comments.
I myself read the whole thing, start to finish, and I liked it very much. I disagreed on some stuff, agreed on most of it (to my surprise even!). And I’m very sad that you have to deal with this bullshit because of a well thought, well articulated point, just because you refused to embrace the outrage machine of either “side”.
Don’t let this affect you. Even your follow up to that is compelling reading (and the ed note from Torch only adds to it). And, seriously, fuck those assholes on Twitter. The thing was a cesspool of turds before, and by now I would wear their disapproval as a badge of honour – you are on to something good if you are making them angry.
P.S. I feel like we should all refer to you as Handsome Devil from now on.
In my head, “Project Slow Devil” always mentally autocorrected to “Project Handsome Devil”.
I’ll continue to read pretty much everything you write David. I love your articles, your writing style, and your sense of humor…and if it makes you feel any better during the initial mass migration to this wonderful site a lot of folks’ case for it was DAVID TRACY IS OVER THERE NOW! WE GOTTA FOLLOW HIM!
I actually avoided the comments section of the Cybertruck article for this specific reason. While I’m a dyed in the wool Musk hater even I’m exhausted with all the arguing over this thing. You can’t discuss either its pros or cons without attracting mobs on both sides and people are HEATED about it. I remember Matt Farrah having a meltdown over Camissa’s admittedly glowing review and was just like…huh? Why are we so worked up over this?
I feel like this thing has been put on the front lines of the culture wars and it just kind of sucks. I don’t care for it personally, but I’m not who it’s intended for anyway. I hate to see people so divided when we have so much in common on this site. I’d even go so far as to say that some of the best internet conversations I have are on the Autopian.
Hopefully we can move past this and do our best (myself included!) at not getting dragged into culture war bullshit. At the end of a day it’s a giant distraction that both parties are using to distract us from what is really going on…which is a single class of people concentrating nearly the entirety of wealth and power. Everyone on this site has more in common with each other, the coal miner in WV, the surfer in CA, the homeless fellow down the street, etc. than we do with the people foisting all the culture war BS on us. It’s about time we figure out how to act like it.
SAYING THIS LOUDLY TO HELP DROWN OUT NEGATIVITY:
I ENJOYED THE REVIEW BUT DON’T FEEL THAT STRONGLY ABOUT IT (OR THE CYBERTRUCK) ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. IGNORE THE HATERS, FOR EVERY ONE OF THEM WHO COMMENTS THERE ARE LOTS OF US WHO LIKE IT BUT DON’T COMMENT BECAUSE I USUALLY DON’T HAVE ANYTHING INTERESTING TO SAY.
“What makes a man go neutral? …Kif, I’m asking you a question!”
Tell my wife “hello.”
Yᴏᴜ ᴛᴀʟᴋ ʟɪᴋᴇ sᴏᴍᴇᴏɴᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴀ sᴄʏᴛʜᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀ ᴡʜɪᴛᴇ ʜᴏʀsᴇ…
Hey DT, you are awesome. Just saying
Agreed. And it’s HD now!
I think it’s fine to hate the Cybertruck. That’s basically what is was designed for, to illicit strong negative reactions from the bulk of the population endowed with reason, compassion and good taste. Mission accomplished I guess. Not really the way I set about to have my work or projects perceived… But maybe that’s all that’s left to do when you have more money than god and want to ‘feel something.’ Hate is a hell of a drug.
I understand the whole ‘Separating the art from the artist’ perspective, but it’s a lot easier to apply retroactively. Volkswagen has a… checkered past, but it has been 80 years. Elon is now.
Regardless of the exact political climate it was born into, the Beetle was always a people’s car, and would have likely been produced in some form. I think a Tesla model 3 or Y fits into the same mold- You may not love the company, but the physical car is desirable to many, fit for purpose, and doesn’t make an overt statement on it’s own.
The Cybertruck on the other hand- the symbolism is inescapable. It’s the purest physical representation of it’s creator’s world view, and spoiler alert, that’s “I Hate Poor People: The Truck”.
I think it’s great that Jewish folks can let bygones be bygones, and appreciate vehicles commissioned by raging anti-semites, but everyone has a line. Where do you draw the line? A VW Thing? What if you painted it beige? What about an actual Kubelwagen? Something tells me that generosity might not extend to a black Mercedes 770. For many people, the CyberTruck is the latter.
Look, I love the original Mad Max films, and it’s no secret Mel Gibson is kind of a POS. I think they would be a lot harder to watch if halfway through, young Mel broke the fourth wall and shared his opinions. The Cybertruck breaks the fourth wall. Separating art from artist is a lot easier when said art is removed from the controversy at hand.
Anyways that’s just my opinion.
No excuse for the people on either side who jumped to personal attacks on David or his appearance- that’s fucked up. Sadly, that sort of extreme polarization and vitriol is not entirely surprising when we let hate and symbols of it (like the Cybertruck) become normalized in society.
Exactly this. How can you separate the car from its creator’s ideology when the car is designed to reflect its creator’s ideology? This is a car designed by a rich man for rich people to survive the apocalypse brought on by rich people like him.
You just summarized my feelings concisely, cheers!
Yeeeeeeah…as much as I love weird Volkswagens of the post-KdF era, there’s a reason why I don’t want to own a ’40s Schwimmwagen. That’s the line. Put the Actual Nazi-Era Nazi cars that existed primarily to project fascist state power or fight a war in a museum, keep them in that context of “these were the baddies,” and sell me a happy little postwar Amphicar instead. I don’t want to be mistaken as a supporter of that era in any way, shape or form.
The Cybertruck is another vehicle that’s just inseparable from its creator. Elon directly profits from its sale, and keeps using that profit to make humanity worse. Unlike prior Teslas, pretty much anyone buying the Cybertruck knows this, and they’d have the funds to buy a different vehicle at that price point, too. Maybe the Cybertruck would be easier to consider out of that context if Elon falls into a volcano or loses all his stock or whatever, but as it sits, the baggage is practically built into the skateboard of the EV. It’s also first and foremost Elon’s goofy, dystopian vision, executed poorly in a truck with less range than promised and edges that’ll cut you. I don’t know if it can overcome that association in the long run for me, and I say that as someone who enjoys weird automotive flops. It’ll make for plenty of interesting stories about its creation and production, sure, but deeming it cool is a bridge too far.
This is a funny thing for me, because I love the design of the VW protoypes – the W30 is a work of art, and I made a miniature out of epoxi! https://flic.kr/p/7eGASA. But once they got into production, they were the villains for the next six-ish years… no amount of headcanon would wash that off.
Eventually I decided to make a Kubelwagen, and I reached “the line” when it was time to paint it – this is a military vehicle, no two ways about it. So I decided to paint it like the ones captured by the Allies – I chose an almost totally period incorrect GB livery, but it felt wrong to do it any other way.
Before I left my brother’s house, this had 64 comments. Right now it’s at 240. What the hell, I’ll jump in.
One, first and foremost, above everything, nothing excuses personal attacks on DT, or anyone here, full stop. There’s no need for that in civil discourse, and if (royal) you aren’t interested in civil discourse, x[.]com is over there to the right.
Next is artist from the art. I despise Elon Musk, and I do think it supports him directly to buy a Tesla. With that out of the way, even that had no bearing in the criticism I had of the original post. I think I took a sideways potshot at Musk because I do believe he is a bad person, a net negative for society, and that you should buy or use things from his companies or otherwise associate with him.
Third, a controversial take is not intrinsically clickbait, jesus. Show up and discuss why you think it’s off or wrong, but having an unpopular opinion isn’t a thing that only happens when evil media gobshites are trying to grab your eyeballs. Get over it, haters.
Those things out of the way, I disliked your review and I don’t think it was fair to your readers or the public at large to bring up 10 key “compromises” that range from needless to dumb to dangerous, and *then* proceed to celebrate how it’s a miraculous execution of vision. You offered precious little to offset the various and myriad failures it has besides “it’s fast” and “it looks a like the concept.” You make no value judgement on the concept itself being worthy of execution, and lose yourself in praise to the fact that it is a concept that bumbled into existence largely unchanged. There’s optimism and then there’s naivete, and your review was much more the latter, and not even passingly justified. What makes a CT worth the sharp edges, the touchscreen shifter, the mismatched steel? There’s precious little information – not word count but **information** – about why the spectrum of issues ranging from annoying to dangerous is a miracle worth tolerating.
I love this place and I’m not cancelling my membership or attacking anyone or calling it clickbait. I do think it’s a poor conclusion from a poor review. Replace the word CyberTruck with any other model in that review, strike anything referring to the concept, and on what sane basis would you call it a miracle, or even cool? If a Corvette came out looking like a concept *but cut your goddamn hands when you opened the trunk* it would be rightly pilloried, if not recalled. Why does the CT get a pass? What was so compelling about the concept that making it to manufacture is a worthwhile expression of the form?
Anywhere else, any other industry, it’d be a little “let’s catch that next time,” but in media, where everyone can see and throw stones without retaliation, it’s brutal.
should *not buy
it looks a *lot like the concept
can’t edit comments made from mobile on desktop, harrumph
“I do think it’s a poor conclusion from a poor review.”
I’m of the opinion that you are completely wrong about that. I think the review was great and the conclusion was interesting.
I know I don’t like the CT, and I expect a positive review to give me reasons to the contrary I can at least respect, even if I don’t agree with them. I felt that was absent in DT’s review. To me, it celebrated a thing happening, being made, while staunchly refusing to question if that thing should have happened, should have been made. Unblind my eyes, what did you take away from it?
Even if you don’t answer, hell yeah, here’s to disagreeing without being jerks! Cheers!
… Since you’re not here I’m just gonna go ahead and drink yours, hope that’s cool.
Yep, some people LOVED it, some people HATED it. For a review of a vehicle as controversial as the Cybertruck, the center may actually be the best place to be.
What I want to know is – what the hell are you feeding that dog??