If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say About Cyclists Then You're Probably An Idiot

Cycling: it's the closest you can get to the sensation of flight without leaving the ground.  (Not counting the inhalation of spray-on deodorant through a bath towel, of course.)  Whether you're riding to work, riding to the store, or just riding for no reason at all, you feel like you're miles above the ground, and once you're seduced by the kinetics of riding a bike you need it to feed your soul.

Unfortunately, there's always someone in a car out there ready to send you crashing to the ground, either literally or metaphorically.  It could be a hurled invective, it could be a violation of your right of way, or it could be them actually hitting you, either on purpose or by "accident."  But of course you've got "the same rights and responsibilities" as drivers [insert wanking emoji here], so as far as most people are concerned that's just the way it is.

As infuriating as this is, it used to stop there.  What I mean is that once you finished your ride and came home (assuming you made it home) you'd shut your door, crack open a recovery beverage, and eventually whatever frustrations you'd encountered out there on the road would melt away.  Not anymore.  Now the battle rages on across social media and in the comments section of any article on the subject of cycling, no matter whether the article's positive, negative or indifferent.

The upshot of all this is that unless you've one of the very few people who have managed to remain totally disconnected into 2017 then the "Runnem inna dyyyitch!" never, ever stops.

Take this recent piece by Peter Flax, former editor-in-chief of Bicycling magazine:

Which itself is born of a Twitter exchange:

Surely my life would be more tranquil if I muted this acrimony, but when people threaten my way of life I find that watching funny cat videos or simply celebrating the awesomeness of cycling isn’t enough. I need to know what we’re up against.

Anyway, I had a Twitter exchange one early morning this week that really hit me hard. I had screenshot and then tweeted comments from four people, all expressing emphatically that they disliked bikes and wanted them off the road. (My favorite: “I hate when ppl ride bikes in the street like they cars…plz get hit.”)

Whenever I post this sort of stuff or share links about cyclists getting hit by cars, I typically get some pushback, sometimes genial and sometimes irritated, from people who feel like I’m being too dark. I’m used to it. In this case, a friend in the bike industry responded that my effort “seemed like a big waste of time” and that I should “go get a cup of coffee” because “we’re making progress.”

I think this idea of progress is at once empirically true and obvious bullshit.

It's a very good piece.  (Though I'd argue that when you're about to make a comparison to the Black Lives Matter in your cycling article it's time to take a deep breath and step away from the keyboard for a bit.)  But of course it wasn't long before the article elicited a new wave of toxic commentary:

Now that some angry non-cyclists have found @cyclingtips commentary, the comments are getting hot. As I said, this is what we're up against pic.twitter.com/U9g56Kw8k7

— Peter Flax (@Pflax1) September 18, 2017

I scanned some of this commentary, and it's the usual stuff about how cyclists feel entitled because their bicycles don't pollute, and how they're unfairly subjecting poor innocent drivers to their vulnerable presence, and that cyclists are somehow on the wrong end of Darwinism when anyone with half a brain can see it's the driver that's the plodding dinosaur and it's the cyclist who's the nimble and adaptable little warm-blooded mammal.

You know, bullshit.

Meanwhile, this past weekend Drunk Cyclist tagged me on another hateful exchange begun by someone apparently involved in something called "Barstool Sports:"

Check out this #highschoolfootballjock nonsense @theamandabatty @bikesnobnyc @TheRadavist @peopleforbikes https://t.co/EYs9xWwrQQ

— drunkcyclist (@drunkcyclist) September 17, 2017

I was unfamiliar with Barstool Sports, but I looked it up and it turned out to be pretty much exactly what I suspected it was:

The site has received repeated criticism over content posted on Barstool Sports that critics of the site allege normalizes rape culture. Comments that have sparked debate include a post on a 2010 blog where Portnoy said "[E]ven though I never condone rape if you’re a size 6 and you’re wearing skinny jeans you kind of deserve to be raped right?"  Other elements that have received criticism include comments such as “we don't condone rape of any kind at our Blackout Parties ... however if a chick passes out that's a gray area”.

In light of this it was difficult to get too worked up, inasmuch as I've been defining myself in opposition to the American Sports Bro for pretty much as long as I remember.  I don't think there's every been a period of my life in which I haven't encountered people like this being hateful douchebags.  Given this, why wouldn't the people who hated me then not still hate me now?  It's hard to muster up the mental energy to waste on Kurt and Ram from "Heathers" when you resolved to stop doing so in elementary school:

Indeed, it's getting harder and harder for me to muster up the mental energy for any form of idiotic cycling commentary, inasmuch as it's so manifestly stupid that it sort of undermines itself.  At a certain point you might as well debate a flat-earther or a creationist.  At the same time, it's hard not to take inventory of all the hateful commentary with which we are now inundated, both cycling and non-cycling related, and wonder what it says about us and our future.  I mean surely the fact we have an internet troll for a president means we've hit some sort of intellectual low water mark, right?

Maybe.  Or maybe it's as simple as humanity's idiot quotient being sort of a universal constant, and all we're seeing is the digitization of that idiocy and the inevitable fallout.  Either way, from a strictly cycling perspective, here's the bottom line:

Cyclists only seem arrogant and entitled because they are usually intelligent and correct.

— Bike Snob NYC (@bikesnobnyc) September 18, 2017

They can try to choke us out with our coal, but our victory is inevitable.