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Greenblade -> RE: Jeep v Hummer (7/11/2006 10:25:41 AM)
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no, but seriously, H24fun, the jeep thing doesn't just end at t-shirts. They have probably 1000 threads on 100 different forums (every other thread on basically every forum, eventually, winds up with jeepers obsessing about hummers), they have staged videos, magazine reviews that freak out for 3 pages about how much hummers cost, and on and on and on. They have threads celebrating keying hummers and condoning keying hummers. Moderators on jeep forums are sometimes among the worst of the lot.
Its nuts.
But... i think mostly its a certain segment of jeepers, and most jeepers are extremely nice guys. They have cool trucks, so i'd guess most of them are just happy to toodle around.
And i think the basic shrinkology behind it is just a good old-fashioned inferiority complex. The offroad world, before hummers, probably consisted of a few jeep and the occasional toyota or suzuki or whatever, all modified, all basically the same, all worth about $5k. H1s were so rare and eclectic that they were probably as much a novelty presence as a competitive one. Then all of a sudden the H2 hits the streets and you probably had, i don't know, some wall street guys drinkin & driving down a stream somewhere with their wall-street girlfriends. Sort of breaks up the routine for the offroad gang.
Perhaps what was once a modest-mans sport suddenlly had a well-heeled and glossy content that wasn't dedicated to it - they were just out to mess about for a day. (nobody can take offense to that, i grew up as poor as anybody who might read this thread, but via that childhood, i have seen many times the attitude of people towards the "rich". Not that you have to be rich to drive an H2, but richer than you do to drive a beat up old heep)
The other part of the psychology behind "the jeep thing" is that people are sheep. We, all of us, tend to jump on bandwagons once they get rolling. So maybe every jeeper that couldn't afford a hummer - as people, including me, often react to things out of their grasp - wanted tos ay something bad about hummers. And when one person did, and they didn't get slapped, another did. And then another, and then...
...like bellbottoms, the hula hoop, and disco, it just became the in thing. i hypothesized about the hummer hysteria on the H2 board once, and i still stand by my thoughts.
But don't worry, it won't last. Hummers, and H2s (now that the H1 is gone), are the best stock offroad vehicles on the planet. The Rubicon is a great truck, and its little, which would let it sneak some places a hummer wouldn't fit, and give it easier choices on others, and so it would at tiems perform better. And hummers are big and wide and can go up alot of hills that would flip lil jeeps, and hummers will at times perform better as well.
It won't last, because it isn't true (H2s are awesome offroad), and because eventually even the most irrational mouth is silenced by a steady dose of reality. And it won't last because eventually lynch-mobs and witch-burning drugged-up salemites ... well, eventually fires burn out.
But for now, the H2 fire is still pretty toasty.
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