That’s like saying “I’m pro-life and anti-gun control”.

Oh. Wait.

Edit: Guy confirmed that he is, indeed, pro-life and anti-gun control.

  • infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net
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    1 month ago

    Vehicular cyclists are the fucking worst. I find that they fall into two groups:

    • The John Forrester types, generally oldhat nerds festooned with side mirrors and blinking lights and fluoro vests who are basically at the point of cosplaying as a car.
    • The dentist, young and middle-aged guys with money for whom cycling is purely a sport and nothing else, who annually dump $20K into prebuilt bikes and clothing like it’s nothing.

    Either way they’re almost 100% athletic white men who for some reason never picked up on the fact that cycling in a car culture is a near-perfect analogy / example of what it’s like to be a marginalized minority and a first-hand demonstration of privilege. Instead they’re defenders of the status quo - By way of their own athletic, gender, or monetary privilege - All the way to their bloody meat crayon deaths. They’re that one asshole who shows up to the community board meeting about a new bike lane that will make cycling accessible for children, the elderly, and any person in between who is more risk-averse or less athletic than they are in order to speak against it “As a cyclist”. Because to them battling for your life in traffic, being on the bleeding edge of death, breathing in truck exhaust from the shoulder of a stroad is a gatekeeping measure. They’re masochistic elites, they rake pride in the danger that they put themselves in so much that they’d deny accessibility to anyone else unwilling to accept that danger.

    Gordon Ramsey is an example of someone in the dentist group. A few years ago he very nearly got meat crayoned by a car while cycling in the US. He didn’t provide the details of the crash but it was obvious from his injuries that he’d been hit from the side by a car or truck and likely went over the hood. His public plea in revealing this wasn’t that the US needs to make roads safer for cyclists, or more accessible to people who don’t have a group of equally wealthy friends to peloton around a foreign country with, maybe separating cars from cyclists so that the two may never conflict. His one and only adamant request was that we all wear a helmet. Cycling is wasted on these myopic asshats.

    • Johnmannesca@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I’m living proof that a helmet will do nothing to protect your pancreas; sure it coulda been worse, but as an 8yo kid I had a tough recovery because they wouldn’t give pain medications until the last minute, but I guess that’s just another rant for another place and time.

    • 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      Hey, i fall into the dentist group! But i totally advocate for bike lanes, and i’m not white…

      There are dozens of us at the local critical mass ride!!! I make it a point to show up in my ridiculous spandex gear to show people the dentists aren’t all assholes. Also, good spandex is really comfy.

      Why the hate?? Yeah i sunk a lot of money into my hobby, but thats what people do. People spend tens of thousands on camera gear, gaming rigs, etc. Why hate on others’ expensive hobbies?

      I’m actually not that rich, but living car free and biking every day has allowed me to allocate a lot of money towards my hobbies. Cars are a total money sink… 10yrs ago it was around $6k/year TCO. I’m sure it’s more now…

      You should put an additional qualifier on your dentist description… Carries their $20k bike on top of their $80k SUV. Drives 2 hours out of the city just to ride around for an hour…

    • Steve Dice@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      Have you been outside of the first world recently? Here in Mexico, cyclists are mostly old people with backpacks filled with tools on their way to fix a sink.

      • socsa@piefed.social
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        1 month ago

        Hell even where I am about 60% of cyclists are kids. This is some basic internet strawman if I’ve ever seen one.

      • infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net
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        1 month ago

        No, but I’m speaking specifically about US culture. Sorry, I know this community is international and so I should have stated that.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Cause and effect. When you make cycling a challenge, the only cyclists will be the most radical/motivated. If we had the infrastructure to make cycling safe and easy, many more casual cyclists would exist. Europe proves that

      “If you build it they will come”

      As it is, building it doesn’t even work so well because we are so starved for opportunity that so many “bike paths” are overwhelmed by pedestrians that also never had options

      • infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net
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        1 month ago

        Yup, it definitely has snowball potential in either direction. Build more infrastructure, incentivize more advocates. Build less infrastructure, incentivize more privileged subcultures.