Carmoji Has the Perfect Product for Passive-Aggressive Millennials
Horns, middle fingers and withering glares have worked well for generations of motorists, and we don’t see a reason to change.
Well, a startup company is now threatening this tradition, and they’re doing it with one of the world’s biggest scourges — emojis. MotorMood wants to insert smiley and winky face emojis into volatile vehicular traffic situations with their new product, the imaginatively named Carmoji.
Your neighbours, or maybe even a friend or relative, helped MotorMood crowdfund $117,000 for this product, which operates via a sun visor-mounted button.
Call us a bunch of grouchy Luddites, but emojis are on par with — and possibly worse — than man buns, beards down to a man’s nipples, and Tumblr. Why, you ask? Why don’t you like smiley faces that light up in a vehicle’s rear window with the push of a wireless button? What’s wrong with a provocative wink or thumbs up? When did your soul die?
For starters, we’re not GM (whose emoji addiction reached Betty Ford levels last year). There’s also a creepy, detached aspect to emojis — especially smiley faces. They can seem awkward and disturbing, like Furries or a team mascot. Granted, hand clapping emojis are useful when you can’t find that gif of Orson Welles applauding in Citizen Kane.
Another thing: when would you utilize a winky face emoji in traffic? What type of vehicular interaction warrants a wink? I saw what you did there, big boy. You sly devil, you.
If a motorist wants to assert their individual liberty and spend 20 bucks on a Carmoji, that’s their right, but driving calls for a certain level of suspicion towards other drivers. Adding a Carmoji to your rear window seems a lot like adding a target to your back, and inviting others to share less-than-friendly gestures.
That’s what vegan bumper stickers are for.
[Animated image: MotorMood]
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- W Conrad I'd gladly get an EV, but I can't even afford anything close to a new car right now. No doubt if EV's get more affordable more people will be buying them. It is a shame so many are stuck in their old ways with ICE vehicles. I realize EV's still have some use cases that don't work, but for many people they would work just fine with a slightly altered mindset.
- Master Baiter There are plenty of affordable EVs--in China where they make all the batteries. Tesla is the only auto maker with a reasonably coherent strategy involving manufacturing their own cells in the United States. Tesla's problem now is I think they've run out of customers willing to put up with their goofy ergonomics to have a nice drive train.
- Cprescott Doesn't any better in red than it did in white. Looks like an even uglier Honduh Civic 2 door with a hideous front end (and that is saying something about a Honduh).
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- EBFlex Considering Ford assured us the fake lightning was profitable at under $40k, I’d imagine these new EVs will start at $20k.
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I'm so behind the times, I still have my Jabba the Hutt Beanie-Baby from the 90's on my car's rear windscreen dash.
Is there an animated emoticon for GFY? Guess it would look like @ ,just in motion.