Enthusiastism vs Elitism
Quickly, yeah it’s been awhile since a post, we apologize.
This post comes as a result of a conversion that took place last night among people who refer to themselves as, “car enthusiast”. The subject, wheels, but specifically brand named wheels. The topic slowly, but surely, turned into a debate on brand names vs knock offs. If you are any core car enthusiast, you have seen, heard, and possibly taken part in this conversation or in my case debate.
To sum up the conversation, what transpired was brand named wheels are/were better and if you were a real enthusiast you would only ever ride brand name. For me, I started to see a divide in ego, which seems to be made up of two different mindsets, Enthusiastism and Elitism.
en•thu•si•ast/enˈTHo͞ozēˌast/Noun
1. A person who is highly interested in a particular activity or subject.
e•lit•ism [ih-lee-tiz-uhm, ey-lee-]
1. Practice of or belief in rule by an elite.
2. Consciousness of or pride in belonging to a select or favored group.
There are a lot of commonalities between the two types. But where they started to differ was when brand name enthusiast, started to mention things like ” I will never put knockoffs on my car, I feel like that is like treating your car like crap and a slap in the face to all the other brand named parts”. Now yeah, that’s personal preference, but where it seems to be a bit more than that.
Now I am not here to say or research who’s wheels are better quality or why you should or should not put X wheels on, I am just saying that those with this mentality seemed to be a little narrow mined.
On the other hand the person, who has knockoff wheels, has wheels that look just as good if not better. They also have more money in their pocket left over.
My point isn’t that brand named fanboys are elitist assholes, because if the money permits I would fall in favor of brand named wheels, personally I like them and carrying a brand name, it does carry meaning with it and history. If the desired look and stance of my car is out of my financial grasp I am happy to carry the brand name of another wheel that cost less but will still achieve the same look.
…but as they say, Haters gonna’ hate.
