Incoherency Manifest: The Male Fantasy of Drunk Driving

If you go on the Internet and travel to any place or any which corner of it, there are certainly groups of pages, multitudes of posts that long for a sort of golden age. This “golden age” can take many forms, you could find some odd nationalist who misses the times of the ancient Sumerians. Or you could find some happy go lucky Democrat who misses the days of someone like FDR running American, but there is a more general golden age that seems to form more and more that I at least use the internet. Finding it seeping into my own corners. A distinct longing one for thing in particular. Drunk driving.

First you might ask yourself such as “where on earth are you Em, that you find yourself on the Internet seeing this, that you are seeing this sort of content more frequently”. The factor is that I have at least occupied two different distinct spheres of content from personal experiences. On one hand I see myself and tend to find myself most often in the sphere of left Twitter, a space that still lives within the fragments of the once beautiful Internet site Twitter, now X, the everything app. There is on the other hand however the side of the Internet I used to occupy many years ago before I at least came out of the closet in some degree or another (be that gender or sexual), and that is the cis male heterosexual side of the internet. This part of the internet only tends to show this drunk driving nostalgia, at least for myself personally, when it seeps through individual normal posts on my Instagram feed. And for the most part, while the content that does show through the cracks due to the awful Facebook created algorithm is usually harmless memes that are slightly out of touch with our modern reality, originating from accounts that still for some reason have the same barely active admin they did 10 years ago or have been sold and rebought a dozen times over on some sort of account exchange site online. The issue is however that both accounts new and old seem to focus on a more culturally right-wing perspective. I say culturally in that there maybe not outwardly right wing politically, but they might be the type that would post a really cool photo of George Washington riding a velociraptor you know what I mean.

One of the types of memes that have been become popular as of late within these circles and pages has been a reminiscence of drunk driving of all things. There has never been a time in my life that drunk driving has been seen as acceptable, which is for good reason. There have always been MADD presentations, signs on the highway and most significantly legal consequences for this sort of activity, but that does not seem to stop a golden age style of reminiscence, leaving a question as to why? Perhaps the notion is maybe a tad funny. Who has not in their time played Grand Theft Auto and had a beer or two, losing it behind the wheel and somehow ending up taking down a good few stoplights in the process. The distinction was that the original meme had this connotation that it was so improbable and impossible that that is what made it funny. Nowadays if you were to work at a meal with them genre of drunk driving means it seems a bit more sincere and of course, as we all know the Internet is constantly evolving and changing every part content that exists on it why in this certain evolution. Likely due to the target audience itself.

This target audience is obviously impressionable. I don't think it's rocket science to say that the vast majority of the Internet users who are going to see things like this on Instagram or something like Reddit are going to be younger. I'm sure you remember as we all do that between ages of 13 to 15 you were probably stupid. Like really stupid. There is a reason that in our modern times there are a lot of rules protecting kids from outside influences like advertisers because they are so stupid and impressionable. Think about how your parent’s generation likely was fed cigarettes in cartoons or advertisements on a daily basis, versus nowadays it's hard to brand something like a Zyn in any fashion that isn’t in nondescript blank packaging, and for good reason. Back in the day it was cool to look like camel Joe or some sort of a Cowboy smoking Marlboros, and generally due to the nature of nostalgia that sort of thing seems appealing again, as it always is to a degree. As a result I don't think it is that far of a stretch to believe why these memes that become so popular is the fact that drunk driving very much falls along the same lines as the cool cowboy in the back of this pickup truck smoking late at night under the stars of the western states. It makes you look cool simple, as that even if cool will kill you like a cigarette or bottle of whiskey behind the wheel.

Now here is where my own personal thoughts come in and how I think this links into a larger picture as a whole of the male fantasy. The one of the most stereotypical ideas of the male fantasy is that of the words of Walter White, “A man provides”. Where this singular male figure is atop his world and provides both his family and his community as that is his duty. And that a fantasy such as this, a certain amount of help from outside (in the case of someone like Walter White just for the sake of example the help of payment) is frowned upon at the least and outright refused bluntly, if not violently. When we apply this same logic to the male fantasy of our pickup truck cowboy, I also do not think it is unreasonable to imagine that these creators and propagators, and as result the youth they are exposed to and influence, are the type to have, just a few, negative thoughts on the size of government and its helping hand. Maybe even so far in their eyes as the hand government extends into our more personal lives and ideas such as drinking and driving.

In conclusion, I feel that it is likely that the main propagators of the memes advocating, even satirically, for drunk driving, are those with unaware and impressionable audiences and that are attempting to push them to a side that make them more hostile to the idea of this “privilege” being revoked, akin to our cowboy being asked to hand in his gun at the local saloon.

Thank you for reading this newsletter, Incoherency Manifest. This was the seventh article I have written in five days, the only one that is even slightly publishable, but as equally incoherent as the rest. Till next time.