Comment by ryandrake
3 years ago
> This is a weird indirection to introduce: of course it’s fashionable. The observation is that it’s fashionable because aggression is itself fashionable, at least to the target market.
People in this thread keep dancing around it but I think nobody has outright said it yet. Maybe it's as simple as: aggressive, belligerent truck styling is uniquely fashionable in America because American culture is getting more and more aggressive and belligerent. Maybe I'm browsing too much r/PublicFreakout, but in the last few years, there's been a visible rise in road rage, people berating service workers, belligerent angry protesting, people trashing businesses over minor transgressions, people losing their shit on airliners, and so on. The public is turning into "that guy in the bar constantly looking for a fight." It shouldn't be surprising that trucks styled such that they look like they're about to bludgeon you are more and more fashionable. Admittedly, this is more of a political statement based on anecdotes than one that comes out of research and data, but hey, this is HN, not Nature.
It definitely feels like society as a whole has gotten more impatient, entitled and angry since the pandemic. Maybe it was all the time spent at home rather than interacting with strangers and taking part in society. I mean we're still not to pre-pandemic levels of socialization I'd say.
EDIT: Whether this has anything to do with current car design trends is a different question though :P