When many of us were kids, trucks were for work. Barren of luxury features, trucks were meant for things like hauling hay, doing landscaping work, running cattle or fixing up fences on farms and ranches. They were all about capability and getting the job done. Like our great grandparents’ horses, you had to take excellent care of them if you wanted the truck to take care of you. Cosmetic things, like “desert pinstriping,” rust and dents in the bed would happen, but not on purpose.
But, today the world is a little upside down. Not only are people buying an expensive pickup truck, but they’re intentionally shooting it, burning it and otherwise abusing it. Even stranger, they’re doing it because it might be profitable!
Apparently shooting the @Tesla @cybertruck is the cool thing to do these days.
The owner is literally in the parking lot right now, whacking it with a baseball bat just to get people to go to his Instagram. pic.twitter.com/ZLhAuNwl7X
— Kyle Field (@mrkylefield) March 8, 2024
In today’s information economy, not all information is useful. Entertainment is a great way to get attention, and if you want eyeballs on your Instagram, YouTube or other monetized platform, you’ve gotta do things few other people are willing to do. So, people are buying a perfectly good truck (at least as “perfectly good” as a strangely shaped Tesla can be) and doing crazy things to it for attention.
This is what happens when you shoot an AK-47 at a Cybertruck… 🤯🤯🤯 pic.twitter.com/at76Zd3TW3
— TESLA MOST DEVELOPED CARS (@Teslaglobalar) March 9, 2024
On the surface, this seems super strange, but it all goes back to the original Cybertruck announcement and unveiling in 2019. Elon Musk told people that the stainless steel skin was bullet resistant, and even provided some high-speed camera footage of 9mm FMJ rounds slamming into samples of the steel. But, anything much faster than a subsonic pistol round tends to rip through at least part of the time. So, some of these guys have had to make repairs when a round found itself going into the cab or bed.
But, some people drive them around with the dents and holes from now on to show how cool they are.
But, if you need some clicks and don’t want to put dents or holes in the truck, there are other options:
$TSLA
Shoot the Boring Company Flamethrower on the Cybertruck! pic.twitter.com/3D5grRZOYK— Tsla Chan (@Tslachan) March 9, 2024
Personally, I’d rather do the old school thing and take a Cybertruck to Moab and do something more fun with it, like take on Hell’s Gate. You know, normal 4WD Moab stuff:
But, that takes at least some skill and there’s some personal risk involved if anything doesn’t go right on that climb. So, we can expect many YouTubers and other influencers to be taking the easy way out and sending lead downrange to meet with their truck’s body panels.
Big YouTubers when they get a Cybertruck. pic.twitter.com/I4Vnvoj3MH
— Matt Wallace (@MattWallace1701) March 9, 2024
But, there is one big danger that people who just got one of these trucks needs to keep in mind: the incompatibility of battery cells with bullets. It’s fairly well established at this point that lithium battery cells like to stay in their original shapes. Even a small pinhole in one, or worse, a bullet smashing through most of the cell, can bring the negatives and the positives inside in contact with each other and cause the whole thing to go up in flames.
So, I would highly recommend NOT shooting rounds into an electric pickup truck to see what happens just to impress people on the ‘Gram. The results could literally be pyrotechnic if something goes wrong.