Social Media and the Car community: Why do we build? #justcarguythings

A few years ago, I read an article in an automotive Magazine called “PASMAG” if you’ve heard of the magazine, you probably live in around Canada, in that case, Hello my fellow Canadian brethren! (and even if you aren’t Canadian..) Hello my fellow earthlings!

In the article, the author talks about whether people are motivated by intrinsic or extrinsic values. Are we motivated by external benefits such as fame and money (extrinsic) or are we motivated by internal beliefs such as passion, vision and our personal expression (intrinsic) The end conclusion was that people who are motivated by their own internal beliefs (intrinsic) would produce better results, in everything they do. The same goes for modifying vehicles, when we build a car, are we modifying it to our own personal taste, or are we building it to appeal to others?

This article was written a few years ago, but I like the topic and I’m here to expand on the idea, add a refresher to bring it up to date to 2016 standards and share my own experiences.

Building for likes

Ah social media, how I adore you. Not only can you bring people closer together, you can also ruin the ego of every teenage girl when their bathroom mirror selfie doesn’t get enough “likes”.

Unfortunately, I have to owe it to social media for ruining a great deal of car culture. Because of this large need for one’s vehicle to appeal to others in order to receive “likes”, we tend to see a large amount of “copy paste” builds in the car community. People watch what others have built to see what the crowd likes the most, and then design their own builds based around the opinions of others. This results in a large amount of extrinsic minded builds, which makes a large portion of modified cars very similar to each other and makes the level of “uniqueness” in the community less diverse. Sadly, there are a decent amount of enthusiasts out there that build for the social appeal. They want to be accepted, want to fit in, and design their cars accordingly. And there’s plenty of evidence to suggest this as well. The recent trends of modifying vehicles with a flashy wrap jobs and ridiculous amounts of stance shows how far some people go to get the camera’s attention, and then become butthurt when their build doesn’t get the attention they think it deserves.

One can argue that the social media attention may encourage and motivate some to make their builds better in order to stand out from the crowd, and receive attention that way.

This is true and I 100% agree with you. However, only a very small fraction of the car community is willing to build something unique at the risk of it not appealing to others. ( and has the finance to do so) Sadly, the result of this produces very few amazing builds.

I’m going to be honest with you guys. I have fallen in the trap of “copy paste” builds. My beloved Mazdaspeed3 is, indeed, a “copy paste” build. I know this totally ruins my credibility, and in sorts, makes me sound like a total hypocrite, but let me explain. Since I lack a large amount of creativity, I felt the need to base my build off of what had already be done before.

When I first decided to modify my car, I had no idea what to do, so like any social media inclined teen, I turned to Instagram and the Internet. After browsing through multiple Mazda pages and collecting ideas, I had found a multitude of modified Speed 3’s that I wanted to nab little bits and pieces off of and combine them to make my build. With a little bit of work on 3DTuning.com, I had the final picture of what my build would look like. I’ll be honest, I really liked it. A LOT. Even though I was loving my future build, I couldn’t help but feel that the exposure to these other modified cars had “set the bar” for my build and in turn, suppressed the creativity that I could’ve used instead, to make my car something unique.

Take a lesson from Japan!

“Japan is a country full of rich heritage, and stunning natural beauty.” “It is also a technologically advanced country, which is home to some of the hottest cars ever made.” – Blair Joscelyne (Moog)

Not only am I crazy about Sushi, Pokémon, and a certain anime involving a tofu delivering AE86. I am very crazy about Japanese cars. That being said, one the goals on my bucket list is to take a trip to Japan. Japan is also internationally famous for it’s car culture. Japanese car culture is so influential; it’s one of the main trend setters for most of the car culture trends that we find across the world.

Have you ever wondered how Japan is so influential in the car culture world? How do they end up setting the majority of the trends that we follow in North America and other parts of the world?

It’s that unsuppressed creativity, and the uniqueness of the builds. It allows them the social freedom to experiment and explore which creates these new trends. Have you ever seen a Japanese build that just absolutely blew your mind? It’s because the Japanese build their cars to appeal to themselves. Their vehicles become more of a personal expression of passion, vision and creativity more than trying to impress others. The build’s appeal comes organically, instead of being saturated by the opinions of people. The Japanese enthusiasts do what THEY want to a car, and forget what the others think.

There are large amounts of bonkers Japanese builds out there. In Western car culture, builds like these would easily be given the “rice” label and immediately be banished to the depths of car community hell, where the burning carcasses of Prius owners are being tortured by the hate comments of internet trolls.

Not gonna lie here, I think these builds are amazing! Hell, it may just be my “Need for Speed: Underground” side coming out of me but there really is something to these rides that just appeal to me. Just because of how “unique” the style is, one can tell that some of these builds are based clearly off of personal expression and not the comments and advice of others. This is what happens when we exclude those extrinsic values from building cars. We get more unique cars which have a very organic appeal, and these, in my opinion are some of the best cars out there.

There’s a life lesson in here too. There’s a lot of hate out there in the world, and there’s no shortage of it in the car community either. Just for being different, negativity will come at you from all directions and attempt to tear you apart limb from limb. Seriously, don’t let it get to you. Smile, nod, and do whatever you were going to do anyways.

Because life gets better when you stop caring about opinions, and so does your build.

That’s my time guys, I’ll talk to you later.

Bennett Cook (performanceandluxury)

Automotive Student. Automotive Enthusiast.