What Instagram Has Taught Me About Fake vs. Real Car People...

Recently, I have been trying to build up a new Instagram account and things have been going fine, but things have been bothering me about the platform. There are just a lot of fake car people on the platform. It’s not necessarily that the people are not into at all cars, but as people, they are very fake. Let’s dive blown head gaskets first into the most toxic and cringe-worthy aspects of the community.

Fake Subaru fans

If you only like the Subaru WRX STI then you are not a real Subaru fan. You are a fan of this particular type of Subaru (WRX STI), but you have to like more than one model the brand has made (unless they have only made less than 3 models) to consider yourself a fan of a certain brand and say your account is dedicated to it. You are not running a “Subie” account if you only post pictures of WRX STIs. That’s like calling yourself a Beatles fan if you only praise their best selling record. Posting some BRZ pictures and maybe 1 Forester pic. also, does not excuse you. It’s ok to run an account focused on WRX STIs, but don’t insinuate the WRX STI is the only good car Subaru has ever made. There are tons of accounts that get this and post a variety of Subaru pictures or define their account as being dedicated to one type of Subaru (I’m totally fine with either choice).

People Who Steal Content

A good car person does not steal all the pictures and content for their Instagram feed and give no credit. Recently, I saw an account stealing Geobaz’s work and going as far as to purposely crop out his watermark. Now that’s just a plain scumbag move!!! Making automotive content is hard and stealing is an insult to all those who work so hard to make this a more entertaining community to be a part of. It’s ok to use other pics for illustration, but when you claim pictures as your own, you make it harder for “real” creators to compete, as you can gain more followers than the sources by stealing from multiple people thus putting out more content. This can drive out the hardworking creators and then there will be nobody left to steal from.

Douchebag car guys

For every car guy who puts hard work into their car and has great taste, there is some rich douche who just wants to be flashy and go fast with the money to do so. These are the people who buy a Lamborghini and have it wrapped in gold. Even if they are not Lambo rich, some guys will spend 30k plus on a Subaru WRX STI or Mitsubishi EVO and spend another 20k+ in mods and lord it over all the “plebs”. Being a car guy is not about having a flashy expensive car, it’s about the appreciation of automobiles. It’s about the history, the sensation of driving, the engineering, the racing, and much more. Many of these people are often referred to as “Fast and Furious” types, even though nothing is inherently wrong with the movie franchise. You could also say they are the slightly less nieve version of ricers with larger pocketbooks. Many of these people have no respect for slow cars, which is extremely ignorant. There are lots of fun, interesting cars which don’t come close to 10 second quarter mile times or sub 9 minute Nurburgring times. There’s nothing wrong with fast cars, but there’s more to the car world. Same goes for the extreme lift kit guys and others who exhibit the same toxic qualities.

The Good

On Instagram however, I have seen the light in the car community. There are lots of talented creative automotive artists, car builders, and automotive photographers out there. There’s a good community on Instagram of accounts featuring unique Subaru builds, with accounts such as mtn_roo, Austin Holloway (featured on That Dude in Blue), oh_no_it’s_phil, blaze_alexander, subiewerks555, uglylegacy, projectwagon, LiftedSubieSociety, and more. There are also lots of you Ctzns that I follow on Insta posting good content such as Geo.baz, Szymek, digitalcararts (Joao), Blaze Schmidt, and many more. This post is not meant to be about Instagram as much as it’s supposed to be about the general automotive social media scene through what I have found on Instagram. Many of the pros and cons are shared with other platforms including this one. You will always have braggarts, the creative people, the people who repost content, but at the end of the day it’s just social media and it’s not really the worst thing in the world. Just remember that a good car person is an honest and unique car person. #blogpost