Tesla's Marketing Problem
The naiveté of the EV-philo.
How come he is the only one smiling? He ain’t smiling, he’s California Dreamin!
Some people think there's an Electric Vehicle debate going on?
No, no! No debate at all. Simply put, you must Obey!
There is especially no debating things on social media. No one is there to debate anything. The Silicon Valley social system is designed to reinforce whatever existing biases you already have. We've all made up our minds and only want our collective cognitive dissonance to be reinforced. More dopamine hits please. The only debate that's going on is that mandates and subsidies are being forced on everyone while at the same time the fans of such coercion think it’s time to just get on the bandwagon already. Some debate. Just Obey!
Again, there is no debate at all worth having. Gas & Diesel engines are through! Stick a fork in them. Phased out gradually. Don't you know? Even lawnmowers will get the axe. It's the cool and safest thing to do. Not by force, just a little thing called mandates and exclusivity. A little sensitive coercion of a dream for you. Dare that we call it force that would sound much too harsh! That would really make some piss poor marketing material. Admonish anyone who makes such a claim. Deny it as some conspiracy cooked up in Dale Gribble’s basement!
After all very little debate is needed in a Democracy. Especially those despised viewpoints of pure negativity, lacking any progressivity whatsoever. Ignore those pessimists! Those rubes in their shanty towns! To the Victor goes the spoils! Do you ever get tired of all the spoilings?
Yeah I get it brother, you win. Two plus two does not equal four. Government coercion does not equal force. Economic warfare under the threat of jail time or at least financial levies & fines is not "exactly" forcing someone at the butt of a gun to do something. What exclusivity? Just buy an old clunker you impecunious needy bastard! What? No good parts or mechanics left? Pity that. Who cares?
It is all euphemisms you speak. Utter Hyperbole! The way you speak is just a crass monstrosity. Gross and unfair characterizations. Too extreme for our collective modern ears. Besides, as some might say they are not "exactly" putting a gun to truckers heads when the air board retires fleets of old engines. Billions of dollars worth of equipment that needs to be scrapped and replaced by fiat. To the mexican landfills! For the environments sake of course. No, let’s ship them as scrap metal on ocean-liners using bunker fuel to Asia! They can still use these noxious beasts to supply our orders. Can you handle our needs China? No? What if we send you more scrap from our last dream pet project?
No, this is not "force" exactly. The pencil-pushers are typically much nicer than all of that. They wear suits and carry clipboards after all. They have fancy degrees. They attend conferences with name tags but they already know each other by name. The name tags all say "Karen". They know outright force is a fool's game and that soft force is the way to coerce the folks. Soft Power! You'll even find some ardent defenders of such “kid-gloves” approaches amongst your supporters. Foaming at the mouth to prove to their fellow man how much superior their own views are. Make them stand and gape in awe at their own second-handed ways. Poor people, lacking any money be damned! Cannot afford our mandates? You must be the “enemy of progress”. Supporters of the mission must Obey! Less 1984, more Brave New World! Less Boot-stamping on your face, More Soma for everyone. Just relax! Can't we all just get along and Obey. What we really need is a kumbaya moment and everyone to Just Obey! It was only a dream after all.
Let me just say up front, I have no issue with EVs in general. If electric vehicles make sense and are the panacea they claim to be, surely every suitable need will be met by them. The problem lies not in the EV itself but in the proponents of the EV.
These new movements have taken on religious connotations. That “my beliefs” are better than yours and so you must bend the knee and genuflect to thine own ways. We must “turn customers into fanatics, products into obsessions, employees into ambassadors and brands into religions.” It is Silicon Valley Time!
Product placement? No, Religious artifact! Newly formed relics worthy of fanatical obsession. For the good of everyone! The Collective must Conform! Everyone Must Have One! Just Obey! Just be quiet, consume and do not ask any questions. Pretty please? Before I get nasty!
Whenever some angry plebeian yells something akin to "the government is forcing this on us! At the barrel of a gun!" it always gets a knee jerk, triggered response from some "security-over-freedom" types. Is "phasing-out" of certain things "force" exactly? They claim not — which seems to be a dubious claim on its face. Is government coercion the same as threatening someone with a gun? This one borders on hyperbole — But of course, unless your name is Randy Weaver, Henry Ford or Toyota-san. Atomic bomb’s away! No defenses for you. Mind you, the Big-Time Money lobbyists claim to love the regulations, and possibly so. What better way to ensure that no "little-guy" competitor ever crops up once the industry is established. The American Government and the boot-lickers alike really do love the "Big-Guy" over all else. The strong-man always impresses those who admire him from far down below. Very very far far down below. Can you see his boots? Gucci? Oh its a female this time? Louboutin. Carhartt logo too? I must vote for it!
The problem with EVs is that the people who want to force them on us have the least to lose from it. The middle-class and wealthy suburbanite and urbanite love these things and could probably in many cases ride a bike to work today and charge the EV all day and night long — feeding back into the holy grid of energy! Oh how it would make these smuggies oh so proud to be part of a collective power grid! Each individual contributing and taking from his or her own slice of the pie of "consumption!" Rampant rampage consumption above all else. That is the real American spirit!
The poor and the small non-industrial agrarians and petty artisans will be buried by these dreamers. Those poor toiling rubes who work odd jobs at odd times by necessity of their chosen or unchosen situation. What dunderheads are the poor. What brutes! Sometimes they need to haul heavy objects, because that is what brutes often do. They will need the latest and greatest engines or the DMV will not register their old jalopies. Pity to them, but we will let them eat EV cake. Mon amis! C'est la vie, Bonne chance?
Here is a primadonna example which will warm the cockles of any techno-philes own heart. All newly built homes in California need to have an electric charging port. Housing crisis prices be damned! Who needs cheap housing? Pile on some more regulations while you’re at it Mister Code Compliance Officer. Will you just approve my plans?
This here agrarian fire-fighting goat farm we run is off-grid. Our animals like some solitude. We use gas generators when we need to. The sale of which will be banned in 2028, even despite the frequent electric grid issues. We run off batteries the rest of the time. We move big bales of hay and goats to fight fires and such. AKA we drive diesel trucks. Adding an EV charging port to my new house would be inane. It simply would not meet my needs, I am off-grid after all. Banning my gas generator would be insane. Forcing me to either keep driving a 30 year old vehicle or upgrade to an EV is inept. All of these are forms of coercion, AKA "force", yet this is the phrase which seems to make the EV-philos cringe as if they had been verbally battered. What force? Just obey. How smug.
How is this not a marketing nightmare for EV enthusiasts? Even Elon must be aware of this "optics" nightmare looming for the lithium obsessed.
The Nightmare Has Jumped the Shark! Or maybe he just wants fuel to launch rockets with. Where are his electric rockets to Mars?
We see corn, ethanol, even oil subsidies as inherently evil, as they are, so will EVs fall prey to these same "marketing" head-aches? Sure seems so, especially when talking to EV-philos themselves who absolutely LOVE coercing people into EVs, grinning grimace faces and all!
So much for being a panacea? You did not need gaping smiles to convince the horse, whip and buggy owners to upgrade. They did it all on their very own. Maybe not all at first, but give it time. . . We aren't all Amish. We're just secretly jelly of those fantastic bastards!
I wanted to till my fields, but I got Brrrrrr instead ……
As for cheap and readily available solar, nuclear and fusion power – the other dream of the EV techno-obsessed to solve all its woes – Does the world really need more consumption? More energy usage? More porn, more endless scroll, more consume, consume and please just do not ask any questions? Keep pulling that slot machine lever! No, we are literally drowning in an orgy of reckless consumption today. Wallowing in a deeply self inflicted pool of the unfulfilled, undreamt, unreal world of consume consume consume.
China will keep trading us real tangible goods for mere paper, ink & scrap metal. Where are the petty artisans? Regulated & printed out of existence.
Where are the bankers and publicly traded powerhouses? They rule the “regulated to hell and back” roost with foxes as security to boot!
Let the printing presses go brrr.......
Let the good times continue to roll!
Although the EV-philos may not even know it, this is truly what their own desires will lead to. Unchecked and unfettered consumption. Basically more and more of what we have today. As if we only needed more of that vapid tripe of mere materialist stuff. Stuff that never really fulfills anyones dreams and desires anyhow. All that hullabaloo for nuthin which enriches the very few.
They are simply naive about technology.
Then tell them how much they hate the poor for making life so much more expensive. They will look at you crosseyed in confused disgust and pretend not to care nor hear you. How could you be so crass to tell them like it is? After all, they got theirs already. Who cares about anyone else with less means? Doesn't everyone ride a bicycle to the daily cubicle grind and drink soy lattes in the city anyways? What's that? Income inequality. Come again? Never heard of it.
They got what they want and somehow they think it will make all those empty holes inside themselves feel full again. Fill those voids with new shiny baubles and trinkets! Full for everyone to see and gape at. See with subsidies we can all do it together. Let’s all join hands. We are all the exact same, aren’t we? We all have the exact same needs! Our monoculture has infected more than just our orchards and fields. We must become a human commodity! Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Be a part of it all. It feels so good we can all do it in the road. "I can feedback to the grid! I am doing my collective part!"
Sadly, once their wad has been emptied, they will all simply seek more cheap thrills... Sorry but us rubes are simply along this ship of fools for the ride.
Like I've said all along it's not the EVs that are troublesome, it's the EV philos themselves. They are worse than vegans. South Park made a whole episode about all you smuggies and that was like 20 years ago. This is hardly something new of which we’re now suddenly becoming aware of. You cannot deny it and make believe your smugness has gone away in these last two decades. You cannot pretend to be so obtuse when an Emmy award winning cartoon dedicated a whole episode to this smug topic. The pompous ego-driven vainglory of technology seekers in their quest to prove exactly that they know better than everyone else. What smugness indeed! This is what gives them the right to force and coerce their beliefs on others. The pretentiousness dial turned to 11!
This debate of "i-know-better-than-you" is as old as mankind itself. It becomes a religious battle. Because of this electric vehicles have had the same marketing problem since day one. The very same type of marketing issue that the corn, ethanol and oil lobbies and their subsidies create ire with. Do I even need to get into what high fructose corn syrup has done to what was once a healthy nation?
When the proponents of these consumer products focus on their consumer benefits they do well. Really well! They soak up the riches. Your consumer driven types gobble that sort of 5th Avenue inspired marketing hype right up! They keep going back for more at the trough of promises. The golden goose has laid its egg.
It is when the techno-philes focus on their own evil under-handed methods of coercion and subterfuge that they leave a nasty taste in most freedom loving folks mouths. They may have picked a winning strategy when it comes to dealing with the government — those tax & money-gods of Moloch — but Karma is a bitch. Don't be surprised if you walk out to your brand new Tesla-rati, after parking a few blocks from Chinatown to grab a bite at your favorite sushi house, only to find some wino punctured your tires and scrolled "2035" "2035" "2035" all over your exquisite Musk inspired paint job.
— if you like what you’ve read be sure to check out Jesse Dustin's latest book, “The History of Nicolas & the Oracle of Knowledge” it is an anti Big-Tech, anti-smartphone banger of a book!
. . . originally published on TheUnists.com