Oh, Christ.
It’s all the talk in the club racer/autocrosser cliques: Continental, the American distributor of the much-loved, dirt-cheap Super Blue brake fluid, has decided to immediately pull it from the shelves, citing an old section of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards that mandates an “amber” color for brake fluid in roadgoing vehicles. The fact that you can’t buy SuperBlue in AutoZone and that it is almost exclusively used alternately with its amber twin, ATE 200, to help tired/lonely/lazy club racers know if they’ve successfully flushed their brake system all the way through is irrelevant. It’s blue, which is illegal, it apparently has to go.
I wrote a quick article about this. I treated it with some humor; besides the title of the piece, I referred to the United States Government as “those sons-of-bitches” and implied that, with the removal of Super Blue from the market, I’d be heading for a cabin in the woods in tribute to the Unabomber. I also included the “official” version of Pastor Martin Niemoller’s First They Came speech. The idea being that if we don’t stand up for Super Blue, that they’ll take our R-compounds next. Or something like that.
Some of the readers went fucking nuts about this. I mean, they were really upset. They were upset that I hadn’t investigated the story thoroughly before putting it up; these same people would have bitched had I waited until next week to hear a reply from Continental before running a story on it. It’s also worth noting that, unfortunately, speed matters on the Internet. This was the biggest story of the day and brought us thousands of new readers. Had we waited until next week, it would have disappeared beneath the waves. I don’t like it, but I didn’t invent “Internet time”. Al Gore did.
Other readers were upset that I equated Super Blue’s removal to the Holocaust. Except I didn’t. No mention of “Jews” or “Holocaust” appeared in the text. Niemoller’s original quote wasn’t meant to refer to the Holocaust. There’s no Holocaust content in this story. Period, point blank. If you thought otherwise, you didn’t pay much attention in history class.
Not to mention that this particular reader is apparently a brony. Listen, I support the right of people to generally do whatever they want but this whole brony thing really grates on me, particularly when ostensibly “straight” men are involved. God help us if China ever gets around to invading the United States. There will be about five men standing out there with rifles and the rest of the country will be in their basements cuddling a stuffed animal with a split seam in the crotch area.
If you want an example of an autowriter actually joking about the Holocaust, you don’t have to look any further than Travis Okulski, who made a Holocaust joke and was promptly praised thoroughly for doing so. You have to love our modern American identity politics; as long as you’re perceived to be sufficiently liberal you can say what you like. Not that I wanted to see Travis crucified over that, really. Where are we as a nation if a guy whose life consists of borrowing Lamborghinis and Jaguars for weekend jaunts can’t crack a couple of Dachau jokes now and again?
My initial reaction to this whole thing was anger. Anger at the readers, for being so literal-minded and thick-headed, for having the typical lazy Internet citizen’s misunderstanding of history, for demanding that we not release stories until said stories have met their personal criteria for background investigation. The more I think about it, however, the more I see it as a call to address the readers in a more direct manner. Most of them want seriousness from TTAC and they don’t like it when we are anything but straightforward. It’s not what I’d prefer to write, but we’re in the customer service business here, and as long as we intend to keep serving a few million articles a month we’d better be aware of what the customer wants, right?
Not to be overly flippant, but purely from a service standpoint, you have done exactly what you are supposed to. TTAC is paid for by advertisers. Those advertisements need exposure and you are delivering it in droves.
You know this better than I do, so I’m not telling anything new.
Besides it was funny. But when I read this I had to urban dictionary “brony.” God I am out of touch.
“I mean, sure, I’m running Super Blue in Boxxy, my 986S Anniversary Edition, right now, and driving it around on the street, but that isn’t hurting anyone” - you’re aiding the terrorists…the terrorists!
FWIW, the particular person whose comment you posted is very much a troll. I have yet to see a single post by him/her that is relevant or informed and generally causes ALOT of responses.
I left a comment on the TTAC article, to the effect that some people were too dumb to keep from pouring Fluid A into a place designated for Fluid B only, and that they should be riding the bus instead of screwing up perfectly good cars.
That said, I must assure you that some of us brony types are solid citizens who have carried weapons for the defense of the Republic — I got dispatched to the Middle East, fortunately during a relatively placid period — and we don’t wuss out.
I consider myself corrected!
What’s to keep someone from buying SuperBlue in bulk and packaging it not as brake fluid, but as simple hydraulic fluid? As long as you don’t label it for use as brake fluid, it should be legal. You could even sell it through the same auto supply stores because you need hydraulic fluid for jacks that they also sell. Call it “racing hydraulic fluid”, put it on the shelf right next to the brake fluids, but have it labeled prominently with “NOT DOT APPROVED BRAKE FLUID - NOT FOR ROAD VEHICLE USE”.
Hell, pay his family a royalty and call it “Smokey Yunick’s Mysterious Marvelous Stuff”. It would be a fitting tribute to a man who knew how to read a rulebook.
“Not to mention that this particular reader is apparently a brony.”
JB, I don’t think this particular reader has a Y chromosome. The comments seem to come from a female perspective.
I always assume that everybody on the Internet is a man, unless they send me a picture of their breasts with “Jack B” and today’s date written on them, in which case I think it’s a man who’s brilliant with Photoshop.
Would “Jack B” have to be on one, and today’s date on the other?
You said on the previous “The critics Respond” that Bertel Schmitt woke up one morning and decided that you were his mortal enemy.
Why? First I and I assume others have heard of this, nothing came out in the writing nor was it the reason for his fall.
I am glad you are in charge and I enjoy your writing.
As our schools become test-accredited/rewarded and the curriculum becomes more and more task-based rather than learning-based, we are creating a new generation of corporate slaves. Cubical dwelling robots, writing/working to the test, staying on task. Pushing that paper.
Lost in all this is art. Interpretation. Critical thinking. Hell, humor.
An entire society has largely become a bunch of literalists, literary, biblical and otherwise. Just tell me what to do, what to think, and will there be multiple questions on the test?
Metaphor, sarcasm, irony, allegory, parable — all of this is lost on today’s growing legion of literalists. No appreciation for, or even recognition of literature’s greatest gifts.
So yeah, be pissed off. Gifted writers now must spoon feed little dollops of factoids in serious tone, while what the world needs is a lot more Tom Robbins outlaw prose trying to wake everyone the fuck up.
Perhaps there needs to be a special section/page on TTAC. By clicking here to read this area’s content, you agree that you may be offended, entertained, and possibly, aroused. And you also agree not to bitch about any of this, either.
Please, Jack, don’t change anything in your writing style because of some thin skinned people or trolls. It’s just amazing how easily some take offence, in many cases in completely innocent words. Really depressing. Keep up the good work!
“It’s not what I’d prefer to write, but we’re in the customer service business here, and as long as we intend to keep serving a few million articles a month we’d better be aware of what the customer wants, right?”
That’s one extreme. The other is to give the advertisers their money’s worth by ensuring that lots of eyes see thier ads, something that eventually leads to click bait and takes us back to that place from where we have only so recently emerged.
This is a no-win situation and certain readers aren’t going to be happy with you no matter how much ground you give. Worse, once you start pandering to the PC crowd you will lose the rest of the audience because, first, you’ve stopped being entertaining and second, you aren’t being genuine anymore.
Each of us has different life experiences and different viewpoints and so naturally we will each present material in different ways. As ling as we each stay true to ourselves, TTAC will have a broad readership because the site offers a little something for everyone. That serves both our readership AND our advertisers.
I got the joke. Some people took it a wee bit too seriously. You have my sympathies.
But using Nazi shtick for laughs is difficult. It’s easily misinterpreted, prone to cliche, and has the potential for Godwin violations written all over it. But worst of all, it can easily distract from the point that you’re trying to make.
I can appreciate using hyperbole as a device for humor, but there might have been other metaphors that would have been more useful to you. That’s not for the benefit of the fussy, humorless readers, but for you.
(Incidentally, is this spam problem of mine going to be fixed? It’s getting to be a bit much; at this rate, I’m going to get Patton to assist me…)
You’re STILL getting spam-queued? Derek was fixing it. I’ll look into it, too.
Yep, I’m still a victim of the spam filter. It’s like an internet version of Dachau!