Hi, I'm Sarah Goodyear, and this is the War on Cars.
What you're about to hear is an excerpt from a Patreon bonus episode in which I talk with
journalist and author Matthew Rodriguez about cars as social media content studios and all
the weirdness that entails.
If you'd like to hear the whole thing, along with a lot of other great bonuses and other
benefits, you can sign up at Patreon.com slash The War on Cars pod.
Enjoy.
To me, what's interesting is her choosing the car as the place to tape this in a way
plays into what you're saying because here she had had this life and house and all intertwined
with this person, where was she able to be herself?
Where was she able to have her own space and her own identity, her own integrity inside
of this vehicle and it's like this little world that she sets up as the venue where she's
telling you this story from and it's something that she has complete control over.
So I'd like to talk a little bit about the way that we see cars and how this is reflected
in these videos as a replacement really for the third place that you hear sociologists
talk about at a coffee shop or your workplace or places where people go are now vanishingly
rare in much of America and especially since the pandemic and people are using cars for
that purpose but they're alone when they're doing that.
And I just want to go back and say not all 50 something episodes are in her car but
it is very significant that in the very first episode that's where it is because it
almost gives the viewer the sense that she had to tell you something right now, she couldn't
wait till she got home and this is the only place where she has extra time or time away
from other demands to tell you the story.
So there is a sense of immediacy I think that comes from the confession being in
a car or starting in a car.
So I would say immediacy is part of it and then I think traditionally when you're
in a car or when you're thinking about a car you're like you do something passive
like oh I'll put on the radio and then what comes on the radio will be my entertainment.
So this kind of flips the idea on the head that I'm going to create entertainment while
I'm in the car.
I'm going to tell this riveting 50 part story while I'm driving from point A to point
B.
I believe she's around the Atlanta metro area and we know the Atlanta metro area
is very famous for traffic.
So this idea that you could turn the hour commute into like two episodes of your
own podcast or your own TikTok series is really I think flipping the model of oh let
me just see whatever the DJ has on at the moment.
Right and it's like we ourselves are broadcasting our private time right that this is a time
that I think a lot of people as you said used to use to listen to their favorite
music or to listen to a podcast or the radio or whatever and it was like a private reflective
time and now it's turning into this broadcast time and I mean it just seems to reflect the
way that our patterns of being in the world and communicating with other human beings are
really affected by car infrastructure and car dependence right because for a lot of people
I mean they do have to spend like two or three hours a day in a car and that time I guess
you know people have gotten kind of sick of just saying like that time is just going
to be passive consumption I could I could be acting I could be doing something of
course part of the problem is that's not very safe to be thinking about all that
stuff while you're driving right it's not very safe it's interesting I think the road is a
moment a moment where individual meets collective because you're all collectively on the road
but you're in this thing that you own and you get to choose the radio station or you get
to choose what's happening inside of it so it feels like an individual bubble that is hurling
through time and space alongside individual bubbles so and to go back to something you
said you had you know talked about or I had talked about the flipping of the model and then
you brought up turning it into a content moment it's also in a way instead of putting on the
radio and being at the whim of whatever the DJ has on it's even this more hyper individualist
thing of like well I'm gonna talk about what I want to talk about now I don't have to
listen to whatever is happening on C100 or Sirius XM like it's even a further rejection of
like I'm not going to have someone talk at me I'm going to create my own thing that I get to say
right and then that content goes from the car bubble into the algorithm bubble right and so
the people who are consuming it probably many of them in cars are also receiving that in another
bubble that is a bubble of contained it looks like a community in some ways but it's actually just a
bunch of individual atoms and these bubbles that we create for ourselves are our own realities
online as well as in a car. On a personal note or a biographical note I feel like so much of my
feelings on cars were influenced by the fact that I'm a lifelong New Yorker who was born
here Lenox Hill Hospital same place where Beyonce's babies were born but I did live in LA for two
misbegotten years and what was interesting to me psychologically was and I did not buy a car
while I was there I took the bus to work in LA I took the 10 bus across Melrose respect but I
would walk on the sidewalk and as opposed to being in New York no one is on the sidewalk in LA
and you kind of even lose that community aspect or there are far fewer people on buses or
metros than there are here and I actually feel like it changes how people think about their town
because they're not commuting with people on the subway there's not that communal moment so when
they go to and from work they're in their own domains and doing what they want to do so I have
to say like that's kind of how a lot of my own I even think thinking about this came about was
being a lifelong New Yorker kind of transplanted to LA for two years. Yeah it is a real shock
to the system and we love you LA this is not this is not a diss on LA it's just if you are used to
being with other human beings and enjoying them a lot of the time and even when they're
irritating you're you have so much to look at there's so much to think about and it's not
all just you you you it's other people and and that is something that we lose in cars and I think
it really has affected the way that we see our society at large.
About this episode
Sarah Goodyear and Matthew Rodriguez explore how cars have become personal content studios, especially on platforms like TikTok. They discuss the car as a private space for storytelling and self-expression amid the decline of traditional social 'third places.' The conversation highlights how long commutes, particularly in traffic-heavy areas like Atlanta, turn passive listening time into active content creation. They also touch on the social isolation of car culture compared to communal public transit, reflecting on how this shapes individual identity and online interactions.
If you spend any time at all on social media, you've seen countless videos of all kinds of different people talking about all kinds of different things with one setting in common: the car. We got together in the studio with journalist and author Mathew Rodriguez to discuss the way cars have become our nation's premier social media content studios—and all the weirdness that entails.
We talked drive-thrus, "Who the F*** Did I Marry," monetizing the school pickup line, and the way that cars have become the backdrop for the great unscrolling American self-documentation effort.
