The Post That David Did Not Want Us To Run This Week

Booty Patrol Slack
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Everything that is published on The Autopian has to fulfill at least two objectives. We call it the “double-E” rule and it means that a post has to be educational, entertaining, or ideally both. The post that David objected to was, I think, both of these things.

In terms of roles around here, David is the EIC, Jason is the Creative Director, and I’m the Publisher. In theory, David or Jason could veto a post. I’m not sure I could, though the way we work I can’t imagine any of us running a post that anyone strenuously objected to seeing on the site.

The caveat there, however, is that there are plenty of posts/headlines/images one of us vaguely objects to and that’s where the 2/3rd rule comes into play. If one of us is pro-something and the other one is anti-something, then it’s the job of those two people to try to persuade the third person to make a judgment.

This greatly speeds up production and limits arguments because it allows everyone to move on. To the surprise of few, I’m guessing, David was not necessarily on board with a story about the Booty Patrol Car. On Halloween!

That Patrol 1b

The universe does not hand you stories as good as the Booty Patrol every day and I try not to object when the universe hands me something great.

That Patrol 2b

That Patrol 3b

That Patrol 4b

This was a revelation to me and I highly recommend you read the article, which is as exhaustive an approach to the story as you can imagine ever existing.

Here comes David with the 2/3rd rule.
That Patrol 5b

An important philosophical question from Jason indicates that he is, I think, pro-booty. Peter’s topshot for the story, though, was so good it almost sunk the post:
That Patrol 6b

As always, I’m pro.

That Patrol 7b

That Patrol 8b

We just needed to slide the top in and add the tip and we were done! Did our reputation get hurt? Probably not. I don’t see us doing posts like these often, but you gotta live a little.

It’s important to see, though, that we do think about these things. We care about our reputation. We don’t want to publish trash. There’s always a fine line between having fun and being immature. A line as narrow as the thin blue (brown?) line the proud members of the Booty Patrol walk every day.

Ok, I’ll stop.

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44 thoughts on “The Post That David Did Not Want Us To Run This Week”

  1. There isn’t necessarily a shortage of irreverent content here, but when I got to the page today, 4 of the top 6 articles were news and/or review related. 1 poll and cold start. I think the percentage is good.

  2. If anyone’s counting, add one more enthusiastic vote for the scatalogical, immature, and lowbrow. If Shakespeare never outgrew that stuff, why should we?

  4. I don’t know why this is still a bone of contention after you just published the finger flick article. I’ve never heard Dan Neil’s name invoked on this site, but I will point out he has a Pulitzer. You’ve never been in serious danger of being in that league, but I will say Adrian comes the closest.

  7. Skipped right over the article because I see enough masochistic ‘Florida man’ type headlines as it is, which I also skip over. I’ve enjoyed the irreverent take on many articles here, sometimes it’s the best part, but I’m more here for the takes on vehicles, good or bad, not this. It reminds me of the lighting site. Not going anywhere, appreciate the writing and the writers, but I’ll skip this every time.

  8. I’m glad you ran it, I would not say it was educational, but it was entertaining and made me smile which is good enough for me. I agree it isn’t something I want to see all the time, but even if it was something like that every week that’s a nonsense post that’s about something dumb I’d read it. More than that I’d probably start skipping it.

  9. I guess I’m with Jason that I’m fascinated that such a thing exists, but I’m also rather disappointed in humanity by it. I know it is too much to ask that everyone have good taste and show some class in public, but not being so tastelessly crass to drive around in something like a fake booty cop motif seems like a reasonable expectation.

  10. This is low brow misogynistic. It’s the truck version of the Female Body Inspector t-shirt. People who find this stuff funny are generally the kind of people I look to avoid spending time around as they find degrading women amusing.

    1. Bold of you to assume (ASSume?) they only patrol the female booty.
      We all know Chris Evans has America’s ass. Who better to protect and monitor such national treasures than the Booty Patrol?

      That said, this is a low-brow dude joke, likely owned by someone with misogynistic beliefs. But its almost 2024, let us not rule out that they may indeed be on the watch for Dude Booty.

  13. Near the beginning of this site, I think that the tone and content seemed a lot looser, more irreverant, and dare I say, more amusing than it is today. I suppose that the current style is a natural event, given your stated principles.

    Of course it’s all still there, just a click away! Be what you gotta be, we’ll be with you!

  15. Not only did I enjoy this article but I shared it with my wife who doesn’t really care about cars and usually couldn’t be bothered by anything posted here. So there, you got an extra set of eyeballs for about 3.5 seconds on that day.

    Some of us are here for the immaturity, make sure to inform the advertisers of this fact. =]

    1. I’m here for the full combo. Not just the fruit cup or Diet Coke. I want the footlong wiener, milk shake, tossed side salad, and extra napkins.

    1. I still don’t care much for the name the Morning Dump. Thought of the Morning Sump the other day…

      but it’s not like I’m not going to renew my membership

      1. From what I remember reading, there’s some internal dissatisfaction with the “Morning Dump” name, but nobody has been able to come up with a better idea. Any takers on the challenge?

        1. Well, just the Sump above. To torture a metaphor, a sump is the repository of a vital fluid (information), having trickled down to it along various torturous paths. Once collected, it is filtered, then sent where needed. So, basically a roundup or dump—but more car-related.

          Though the aggregate of news can be considered a cess-pool, which feels to me less personally biological than ‘dump’ Eh, we all diff’rent

          1. Hmm… Dry sump or wet sump? If we’re keeping it automotive -related. Also, if it’s dry sump, does that make the writer the scavenger pump? (Torturing metaphors is fun when waiting for the coffee to kick in.)

            1. Well, most of us are more familiar with the wet sump, but we could consider other news sites as the scavenging pumps pushing the Black Gold of news to this site acting as our pressure pump.

              -poor little metaphor; I feel a little guilty for these tortures…Nah 🙂

  17. There’s always a fine line between having fun and being immature.

    True. The trucks are not overtly offensive, which IMO helps this fall into the “having fun” category. “Being immature” would include putting obscene stickers all over one of the staff’s Motocompactos: mean and dickish with no redeeming characteristics.

    I see David’s point as well. Building a reputation does tend to happen incrementally, but herein lies the rub: the negative increments are enormous compared to the positive. If the Autopian did an in-depth article on Buck and his yellow pickup from Kill Bill, the people who didn’t like it would likely be much more vocal about it than the ones who did.

    tl;dr – I think you (collectively) handled it appropriately

  19. Frankly it doesn’t hurt the site to run this story. I believe a little bit of humor is the purpose of this site. However it just isn’t funny. I doubt even Adam Sandler would do a movie on this, maybe Larry the Cable Guy. So don’t fret it is just a stupid article. Maybe the car horn makes fart noises?

  22. My metric is often that if it could reasonably be a bit on the Simpsons (this one would somehow involve Moe, possibly Duffman), it’s certainly fine for the internet.

      1. I imagine them in the background of a scene, fussing over a car that then bursts into flames maybe, as Homer and Marge have a bizarre argument about auto show swag or something.

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