I know I'm 5 months late to the party, but one of notjustbike's more viral videos was recommended to me recently and it gave me the idea that this whole bug man lifestyle is ultimately caused by bad parenting. The most common reason (apart from FOMO from all the literal children in that community too young to drive and a few adults with the same mental capacity) given by the reddit losers and other urbanists who outright say they hate all cars isn't environmentalism or something like that as I would have assumed, but literally that they're scared of cars. I think 99% of people would agree that being afraid of cars is a completely irrational fear, you never hear stories of medieval peasants afraid to leave the house because there are horses outside or people from the Victorian era being terrified of trains.
That this has become even semi-common means there has to be some shared cause, probably the two different extremes of poor upbringing. Either they were brought up so sheltered that the thought of something like another person in a car being out of their control and a potential if unlikely danger is unacceptable (which probably explains why so many bugmen are communists who claim to be acting for the benefit of the common man, even though the common man just wants lower fuel taxes for his car), or they were raised in dysfunctional households by abusive or apathetic parents. This second one is best exemplified by that NJB video I was talking about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo&t=558s
I actually agree with a few points in theory, mainly that a lot of American-style SUVs and pickup trucks are unnecessarily oversized, which causes several issues, but that's probably because I'm not American so they don't fill a particular niche here and seem worse than they are when I actually see one in person on infrastructure that isn't designed for it. I don't see how completely eliminating them would fix anything (even if a stock 79 series Land Cruiser can basically do anything a full-sized pickup truck can, manufacturer's specifications be damned). All the examples NJB gives of children being killed by tall vehicles are not some problem unique to pick-up trucks, the exact same thing would happen if we forced everyone needing to tow or carry large loads to use Kenworths. The problem is clearly parental neglect. I never encountered anything like an F-150 in regular traffic until I was in my 20s and my parents still taught me to look both ways before crossing the street. If some retard in a big fuck off cadillac suv plows through a pedestrian crossing and runs over a kid, its because he wasn't looking far enough ahead and he probably would have done the same in a camry. If some kid is playing in the street like a retard and gets hit by a car, or if they're playing in the driveway and their clueless parent runs them over, those are all problems caused by the parents being retarded. That's why I think these bugmen were all either raised in a bubble, or had some traumatic car-related experience caused by their parents being retards, otherwise they'd have no reason to be so terrified of cars. If I do have to walk or ride a bike somewhere I'm not constantly looking over my shoulder in fear.
I think all of them suffer from this to some degree, even the ones like NJB who try to present themselves as more nuanced and only wanting to improve public infrastructure or some shit. If they weren't terrified of cars, why would they feel the need to invent newspeak like stroad and carbrain, or literally claim to be car-refugees and flee to the Netherlands on a taxless immigration scheme. The walkable cities arguments are all smoke and mirrors for this carphobia, which explains why their logic is so stupid. They hate suburbs for being "inefficient" because public transport doesn't work as well, "forcing" everyone to get a car. If they want to deprive you of the ability to own your own single-family home, but you don't think they'll come for your car next, you're an idiot. They hate pedestrian bridges despite being a perfect solution to road crossings because they're "a band-aid solution to car-centric infrastructure" but by that logic surely they would be fine with building a large tunnel complex and underground parking beneath one of their precious walkable cities where it wouldn't affect them whatsoever. But they wouldn't be. And if they are, their argument collapses since that is functionally identical to a pedestrian bridge but would cost even more taxpayer money. They hate "stroads" even though many of roads they call stroads are more friendly to their precious bikes than a regular street due to the wider shoulders and lack street-parked cars (assuming neither the stroad nor regular street has a footpath, the stroad would also be more pedestrian friendly), probably because they are all insect-brained and can't think of riding a bike unless its within a special lane all for them.
Walkability is all a big meme. Theoretically you can walk basically anywhere except directly across a busy highway, "pedestrian friendliness" be damned. No footpath? Just walk on the side of the road. Need to cross a road but there's no pedestrian crossing? Just fucking wait, or take a short detour and find one. I can and will walk 10 kilometres home after a night out along "stroads" and through areas not designed with pedestrians in mind if the alternatives are getting a DUI, spending a ridiculous taxi fare, or sitting in public transport with niggers and crackheads only to get home 15 minutes quicker than just walking.
The problem is that I suspect most bugmen don’t even go outside, their walkability and cyclist-friendly arguments are all pure larp. I once had a conversation with one where I said that while I’m happy to walk or even risk public transport in certain situations, the car is still practical since I don’t want to walk or cycle for hours every day in potentially bad weather without much carrying capacity for tools to get to work and for shopping. Going to the shops with a car lets you buy as much shit as you need in one trip, so you only need to go weekly at most, but bugmen think everybody (regardless of work hours) should “just walk to the shops every day and buy only what you need bro” Or on the opposite end of the scale, if I say “why would I walk 2km to the shops for one item if I can get there and back in less than five minutes by car”, they change the subject to “but what about if a 70 year old or 10 year old (see that theme of children supposedly being endangered again?) wants to walk there? 2km is too far!” Disregarding all the obvious issues with children and the elderly making these daily shopping trips, this highlights their thinking. They don’t want cities that are both walkable but still navigable by car. They want you to live in your pod and never travel more than a mile to get go shopping (I never even specified that the grocery store was 2km away. If cars are totally unnecessary then do they want a TV store and an accountant every mile as well?) Having an actual grocery store every block would never work, most food would be wasted due to low traffic unless they were built at the base of some dystopian megahive.
That kind of density only works with shit like 7-11s and New York bodegas in urban shitholes, which only stock processed garbage with no expiration date, hence why I think these people don’t actually walk anywhere. They just want to be able to walk to 100m to McDonalds on the hour every hour, so they can say If they claim to live an active lifestyle while still being fat fucks.
I'm curious how long it's going to take for some retard like notjustbikes to start unironically praising the Kowloon Walled City as the pinnacle of walkability.
