8 ms·

Offtopic, but I find the sassy and judgy tone of this article incredibly irritating. I don't love matte car paints either, but I don't shit all over them or the

Offtopic, but I find the sassy and judgy tone of this article incredibly irritating. I don't love matte car paints either, but I don't shit all over them or the people who like them. Is this style supposed to be funny? maybe I'm just jaded and cranky.

Negitivefrags 4y ago
Isn’t the tone of your comment the same as the article?
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  >maybe I'm just jaded and cranky. >What's with all these pussy-ass lookin whips No, I don't think those two are the same. Agree with OP, it's cringe.
  - tadfisher 4y ago
    You misread "putty".
    - z3c0 4y ago
      "putty-ass" isn't any less cringe-worthy. Depending on your chosen vernacular, it may even be more-so.
      - SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
        I was going to rewrite that this changes nothing for me. I went to the article looking for an answer and found someone with a dollar store blog post.
- cirrus3 4y ago
  I don't think they are the same at all. Agree with OP.
- themitigating 4y ago
  Does it matter? One's an opinion piece and the other is a short comment on a forum.
  - chc 4y ago
    So one is a person expressing their opinion in an informal manner, and the other is a person expressing their opinion in an informal manner? That doesn't seem like much of a contrast.
photoGrant 4y ago
Yeah it's an editorial style that I don't like either, but I'm sure garners plenty of readers and happy head nodders. I wouldn't put too much into it!
giraffe_lady 4y ago
I love it. The author has earned confidence in their subjective aesthetic judgements, and the tone relays that confidence without being condescending or dismissive. It's miles better than the "hyperrational dispassionate contrarian" stance that is standard here imo.
- snoopy_telex 4y ago
  They earned confidence? What did they do to earn the right to say "I don't like this color"? Personally, I find the whole thing condescending and dismissive, taking swipes at "Gen-X-ers and Millennials"
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    lol they aren't randos. One is a long-time culture writer and interviewer with a solid reputation and bylines everywhere. The other is an industrial designer for apple and used to be literally a color forecaster for a major fashion brand.
    - mcguire 4y ago
      Neither of those earns any particular confidence from me.
  - trap_goes_hot 4y ago
    So what else is new? There's people on here second-guessing expert authors about every damn topic from science to the economy.
  - trgn 4y ago
    I love when people are confident in their judgements. Especially when it comes to style and taste, it's great to see people drive a stake in the sand, and do so with emphasis. It feels almost, I don't know, liberating perhaps. > What did they do to earn the right to say "I don't like this color"? Everyone has this right. The author just claimed it.
cirrus3 4y ago
I felt the exact same way. I get that it's a writing style and I won't complain about that, but when applied to an argument as subjective "I don't like that color, I like this color", it doesn't work so great.
bityard 4y ago
I'm usually quite critical of campy or exaggerated writing styles, but I thought this wasn't too bad. I like sarcastic and blunt writing for entertainment, but only when there's a legitimate point to be made. The only things that bugged me were the "subscribe to my newslettar!" pop-up and the fact that the author uses swear words but then... censors their spelling? Like, why? Also, I've been meaning to write an article wondering why the front-ends (particularly headlights) of all cars look like an angry face.
- buran77 4y ago
  The author discovered non-metallic paint in pastel colors, doesn't like it, and has some really strong opinions about it and the people who do. The irony of presenting all this drivel on a page with a dull, pastel greenish-yellow [0] background, almost identical to the (quote) "putty-lookin' a** whips" on the pictured Volvo was surely lost on the author. The article's language serves to replace the missing intellectual value. [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rgb(242%2C+242%2C+227) https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rgb(242%2C+242%2C+227)
- em-bee 4y ago
  they look like an angry face to make others turn away. i'd love it if cars had friendly faces as if they are from the "cars" movie, but i'd be afraid of others trying to approach them for a hug or a kiss
  - themitigating 4y ago
    Aggressive headlights and frontends are part of a trend in car design to cater to those awash with masculine insecurities or being told by the media they need to be more "manly" Take a look at the previous generations of Mazda Miata's compared with the current.
    - em-bee 4y ago
      cars in china have huge grills. i heard that is becauee drivers there want their cars to look intimidating.
BoorishBears 4y ago
What really irritated me is that the person has no idea about what they're talking about. - The color most closely tied to this trend is Nardo Grey, to that point that cars that don't come from the brand that brought it out (Audi) still get referred to by that name: https://touchupdirect.com/blog/what-is-nardo-grey/ https://touchupdirect.com/blog/what-is-nardo-grey/ - It already has a more suitable disparaging name than "wet putty look", it's the "primer look": Because the cars look like someone covered them in primer, then clear coat, and skipped the paint to save a few bucks. Of course that's not actually how or why it's done, but if you're going to write an article with half empty angst about it, at least use the one insult that actually kind of checks out. - Murdered-out doesn't mean "matte black" at all, it just means most of the car's parts were made black (by tinting/plastidip/wrap/paint, etc), regardless of if it's a metallic black, flat black, or matte black. They kept on using such a simple to look-up term wrong and it just really grated my nerves each time. There's a bunch of smaller things that just scream "I googled a bunch of random words, didn't quite get the meaning, but I'm still going to act like I know a lot about this".
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  idk where you run but in my city murdered out absolutely means all matte black finish and has for years. I don't care what urban dictionary says or whatever that's how it's used in person out there, so this read correct to me.
  - BoorishBears 4y ago
    People who murder out cars with matte black wrap all the time, but people also murder out cars that already black by adding black wheels, wrapping the trim and slapping on 5% tint all the time. Call it being cheap? I've never been in a city where isn't a "murdered out M5" (except maybe if someone wants to gatekeep because they didn't black out the actual M5 badge): https://i.ytimg.com/vi/15PsYVXhMgE/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/15PsYVXhMgE/maxresdefault.jpg
  - seacarrot 4y ago
    Like many things in life the difference between a murdered out car and just a black car is in the details. a matte black car without tinted windows is just a black car.
Swenrekcah 4y ago
I don’t know if I agree with you or not since I never saw the article underneath all the ads and popups.
- bhaney 4y ago
  Install an ad blocker?
  - z3c0 4y ago
    As a user of multiple layers of ad-blocking, I still don't understand why we can't hold people to the standard of not make shitty websites anymore.
- chc 4y ago
  If you're seeing ads and/or multiple popups on this page, I think your computer has some malware. There should be the standard Substack "Subscribe to this newsletter?" box that comes up and that's it.
  - Swenrekcah 4y ago
    Well I’m on mobile and at the point where less than 10% of my screen was showing the article itself I bailed out.
subsubzero 4y ago
I agree, it really made me stop reading it. Excessive profanity and dumb slurs make the author seem really uniformed. Surprised the author talks like that and then uses a really interesting title for his blog like its engineering focused.
trap_goes_hot 4y ago
I'm jaded and cranky too, but thats why things don't bother me from a stylistic perspective. Relatively, fake politeness is more irritating to me.
- themitigating 4y ago
  Professional and mature writing isn't the same as being polite. Also, if you see "polite" writing how would you know it's fake?
  - trap_goes_hot 4y ago
    Its not that hard to write the same article in 5 different ways. The author wrote it this way simply because they wanted to. People respond to tone, words, style, slang, crudeness, emphasis in different ways, and writing is an art form. I believe that diversity in writing styles is good. >Also, if you see "polite" writing how would you know it's fake? You develop your own detector after being "trained" on the dataset of prior comments.
    - themitigating 4y ago
      The only way you can confirm someone is writing in a "fake polite" way is the author telling you so.
      - trap_goes_hot 4y ago
        Okay, that is your view, it isn't mine. There isn't any reason to believe someone is going to be truthful or untruthful. For me, the best way is to develop your own detector. I don't have all the answers, so YMMV. To the larger point, this isn't about absolute certainty - which is a red-herring and an unattainable ideal.
snowwrestler 4y ago
I thought it was hilarious and greatly enjoyed it. When the subject matter is style, an opinionated tone of voice seems appropriate to me.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
d23 4y ago
I found the misspellings and shortenings ("yr" instead of "your"?) to be distracting. It also made me immediately question whether the author would have any knowledge-based insight beyond what just reading the question in the title would give me.
- triyambakam 4y ago
  Yeah exactly. The use of "yr" and "ppl" in the article seemed otherwise so out of place. Am I reading a lazily typed text message or what?
stronglikedan 4y ago
Nit, but these aren't matte. They do have a clear coat, but the color underneath is subdued. You don't see very many reflections in those fancy matte paint jobs, like the bimmer pic. But yeah, this article reads like a stop-liking-what-I-don't-like! rant.
- TheCapn 4y ago
  I'm almost willing to go out on a limb and say that bimmer is a wrap job. I actually like the look of it, but that style is very typical for wrapped cars. EDIT: And if i'm not mistaken, I've found the source for the image and it is indeed a wrap job https://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=705282 https://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=705282 https://www.e90post.com/forums/album.php?albumid=6823 https://www.e90post.com/forums/album.php?albumid=6823
acarabott 4y ago
For context, this is a fashion newsletter so the writing style reflects that world > […] the newsletter’s intense voice, which may read like a parody of a neurotically online men’s style writer https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/style/inventing-a-new-language-for-talking-about-style.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/style/inventing-a-new-lan...
groggo 4y ago
I was surprised to see this newsletter on HN, and even more surprised that no one else was commenting on it's bizarre style. I heard about it a few weeks ago on Twitter. Then there was a NYT article about it (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/style/inventing-a-new-language-for-talking-about-style.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/style/inventing-a-new-lan...). I also didn't really get it at first. And I think it's mainly about fashion, which I'm not really interested in. But I subscribed just to get follow along and get some diversity of ideas. The writing reminded me of A Clockwork Orange.
cinntaile 4y ago
That's how you get engagement and as we can see, it worked like a charm.
coliveira 4y ago
I thought the rule of HN was to avoid comments like the above, that are baseless and devoid of content, derived purely from subjetive feelings about other people's opinions.

Negitivefrags 4y ago

Isn’t the tone of your comment the same as the article?

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
>maybe I'm just jaded and cranky. >What's with all these pussy-ass lookin whips No, I don't think those two are the same. Agree with OP, it's cringe.
- tadfisher 4y ago
  You misread "putty".
  - z3c0 4y ago
    "putty-ass" isn't any less cringe-worthy. Depending on your chosen vernacular, it may even be more-so.
    - SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
      I was going to rewrite that this changes nothing for me. I went to the article looking for an answer and found someone with a dollar store blog post.
cirrus3 4y ago
I don't think they are the same at all. Agree with OP.
themitigating 4y ago
Does it matter? One's an opinion piece and the other is a short comment on a forum.
- chc 4y ago
  So one is a person expressing their opinion in an informal manner, and the other is a person expressing their opinion in an informal manner? That doesn't seem like much of a contrast.

photoGrant 4y ago

Yeah it's an editorial style that I don't like either, but I'm sure garners plenty of readers and happy head nodders. I wouldn't put too much into it!

giraffe_lady 4y ago

I love it. The author has earned confidence in their subjective aesthetic judgements, and the tone relays that confidence without being condescending or dismissive. It's miles better than the "hyperrational dispassionate contrarian" stance that is standard here imo.

snoopy_telex 4y ago
They earned confidence? What did they do to earn the right to say "I don't like this color"? Personally, I find the whole thing condescending and dismissive, taking swipes at "Gen-X-ers and Millennials"
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  lol they aren't randos. One is a long-time culture writer and interviewer with a solid reputation and bylines everywhere. The other is an industrial designer for apple and used to be literally a color forecaster for a major fashion brand.
  - mcguire 4y ago
    Neither of those earns any particular confidence from me.
- trap_goes_hot 4y ago
  So what else is new? There's people on here second-guessing expert authors about every damn topic from science to the economy.
- trgn 4y ago
  I love when people are confident in their judgements. Especially when it comes to style and taste, it's great to see people drive a stake in the sand, and do so with emphasis. It feels almost, I don't know, liberating perhaps. > What did they do to earn the right to say "I don't like this color"? Everyone has this right. The author just claimed it.

cirrus3 4y ago

I felt the exact same way. I get that it's a writing style and I won't complain about that, but when applied to an argument as subjective "I don't like that color, I like this color", it doesn't work so great.

bityard 4y ago

I'm usually quite critical of campy or exaggerated writing styles, but I thought this wasn't too bad. I like sarcastic and blunt writing for entertainment, but only when there's a legitimate point to be made. The only things that bugged me were the "subscribe to my newslettar!" pop-up and the fact that the author uses swear words but then... censors their spelling? Like, why? Also, I've been meaning to write an article wondering why the front-ends (particularly headlights) of all cars look like an angry face.

buran77 4y ago
The author discovered non-metallic paint in pastel colors, doesn't like it, and has some really strong opinions about it and the people who do. The irony of presenting all this drivel on a page with a dull, pastel greenish-yellow [0] background, almost identical to the (quote) "putty-lookin' a** whips" on the pictured Volvo was surely lost on the author. The article's language serves to replace the missing intellectual value. [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rgb(242%2C+242%2C+227) https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rgb(242%2C+242%2C+227)
em-bee 4y ago
they look like an angry face to make others turn away. i'd love it if cars had friendly faces as if they are from the "cars" movie, but i'd be afraid of others trying to approach them for a hug or a kiss
- themitigating 4y ago
  Aggressive headlights and frontends are part of a trend in car design to cater to those awash with masculine insecurities or being told by the media they need to be more "manly" Take a look at the previous generations of Mazda Miata's compared with the current.
  - em-bee 4y ago
    cars in china have huge grills. i heard that is becauee drivers there want their cars to look intimidating.

BoorishBears 4y ago

What really irritated me is that the person has no idea about what they're talking about. - The color most closely tied to this trend is Nardo Grey, to that point that cars that don't come from the brand that brought it out (Audi) still get referred to by that name: https://touchupdirect.com/blog/what-is-nardo-grey/ https://touchupdirect.com/blog/what-is-nardo-grey/ - It already has a more suitable disparaging name than "wet putty look", it's the "primer look": Because the cars look like someone covered them in primer, then clear coat, and skipped the paint to save a few bucks. Of course that's not actually how or why it's done, but if you're going to write an article with half empty angst about it, at least use the one insult that actually kind of checks out. - Murdered-out doesn't mean "matte black" at all, it just means most of the car's parts were made black (by tinting/plastidip/wrap/paint, etc), regardless of if it's a metallic black, flat black, or matte black. They kept on using such a simple to look-up term wrong and it just really grated my nerves each time. There's a bunch of smaller things that just scream "I googled a bunch of random words, didn't quite get the meaning, but I'm still going to act like I know a lot about this".

giraffe_lady 4y ago
idk where you run but in my city murdered out absolutely means all matte black finish and has for years. I don't care what urban dictionary says or whatever that's how it's used in person out there, so this read correct to me.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  People who murder out cars with matte black wrap all the time, but people also murder out cars that already black by adding black wheels, wrapping the trim and slapping on 5% tint all the time. Call it being cheap? I've never been in a city where isn't a "murdered out M5" (except maybe if someone wants to gatekeep because they didn't black out the actual M5 badge): https://i.ytimg.com/vi/15PsYVXhMgE/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/15PsYVXhMgE/maxresdefault.jpg
- seacarrot 4y ago
  Like many things in life the difference between a murdered out car and just a black car is in the details. a matte black car without tinted windows is just a black car.

Swenrekcah 4y ago

I don’t know if I agree with you or not since I never saw the article underneath all the ads and popups.

bhaney 4y ago
Install an ad blocker?
- z3c0 4y ago
  As a user of multiple layers of ad-blocking, I still don't understand why we can't hold people to the standard of not make shitty websites anymore.
chc 4y ago
If you're seeing ads and/or multiple popups on this page, I think your computer has some malware. There should be the standard Substack "Subscribe to this newsletter?" box that comes up and that's it.
- Swenrekcah 4y ago
  Well I’m on mobile and at the point where less than 10% of my screen was showing the article itself I bailed out.

subsubzero 4y ago

I agree, it really made me stop reading it. Excessive profanity and dumb slurs make the author seem really uniformed. Surprised the author talks like that and then uses a really interesting title for his blog like its engineering focused.

trap_goes_hot 4y ago

I'm jaded and cranky too, but thats why things don't bother me from a stylistic perspective. Relatively, fake politeness is more irritating to me.

themitigating 4y ago
Professional and mature writing isn't the same as being polite. Also, if you see "polite" writing how would you know it's fake?
- trap_goes_hot 4y ago
  Its not that hard to write the same article in 5 different ways. The author wrote it this way simply because they wanted to. People respond to tone, words, style, slang, crudeness, emphasis in different ways, and writing is an art form. I believe that diversity in writing styles is good. >Also, if you see "polite" writing how would you know it's fake? You develop your own detector after being "trained" on the dataset of prior comments.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    The only way you can confirm someone is writing in a "fake polite" way is the author telling you so.
    - trap_goes_hot 4y ago
      Okay, that is your view, it isn't mine. There isn't any reason to believe someone is going to be truthful or untruthful. For me, the best way is to develop your own detector. I don't have all the answers, so YMMV. To the larger point, this isn't about absolute certainty - which is a red-herring and an unattainable ideal.

snowwrestler 4y ago

I thought it was hilarious and greatly enjoyed it. When the subject matter is style, an opinionated tone of voice seems appropriate to me.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

d23 4y ago

I found the misspellings and shortenings ("yr" instead of "your"?) to be distracting. It also made me immediately question whether the author would have any knowledge-based insight beyond what just reading the question in the title would give me.

triyambakam 4y ago
Yeah exactly. The use of "yr" and "ppl" in the article seemed otherwise so out of place. Am I reading a lazily typed text message or what?

stronglikedan 4y ago

Nit, but these aren't matte. They do have a clear coat, but the color underneath is subdued. You don't see very many reflections in those fancy matte paint jobs, like the bimmer pic. But yeah, this article reads like a stop-liking-what-I-don't-like! rant.

TheCapn 4y ago
I'm almost willing to go out on a limb and say that bimmer is a wrap job. I actually like the look of it, but that style is very typical for wrapped cars. EDIT: And if i'm not mistaken, I've found the source for the image and it is indeed a wrap job https://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=705282 https://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=705282 https://www.e90post.com/forums/album.php?albumid=6823 https://www.e90post.com/forums/album.php?albumid=6823

acarabott 4y ago

For context, this is a fashion newsletter so the writing style reflects that world > […] the newsletter’s intense voice, which may read like a parody of a neurotically online men’s style writer https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/style/inventing-a-new-language-for-talking-about-style.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/style/inventing-a-new-lan...

groggo 4y ago

I was surprised to see this newsletter on HN, and even more surprised that no one else was commenting on it's bizarre style. I heard about it a few weeks ago on Twitter. Then there was a NYT article about it (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/style/inventing-a-new-language-for-talking-about-style.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/style/inventing-a-new-lan...). I also didn't really get it at first. And I think it's mainly about fashion, which I'm not really interested in. But I subscribed just to get follow along and get some diversity of ideas. The writing reminded me of A Clockwork Orange.

cinntaile 4y ago

That's how you get engagement and as we can see, it worked like a charm.

coliveira 4y ago

I thought the rule of HN was to avoid comments like the above, that are baseless and devoid of content, derived purely from subjetive feelings about other people's opinions.