Deceptively Bad
I was walking back home from work the other day and I saw yet another car on the streets with a big Decepticon decal plastered on the hood (for the cartoonistically-challenged amongst you, the “Decepticons” are the bad guys from the Transformers series, out to conquer the universe and all that good stuff). That makes 3 sightings in a span of 2 weeks. And that got me thinking: why is it that i’ve never seen a car here with an Autobot (the good guys from the series) logo on it?On some level, it must reflect the mentality of the drivers, who invariably own colorfully pimped-up coupes with modified body trims and massive, ugly spoilers that serve no functional purpose. The Deception logo is yet another piece in their facade with the implicit message ”look at me, I’m such a badass”.
My personal opinion is that If someone needs an 80s cartoon emblem to prove his machoism, he’s got some pretty serious credibility problems. But the other issue, though, is why is it so fashionable to be perceived as “bad” or dangerous? Our obsession with it is evident. Gangstas rap about drive-by shootings and slapping hos in the ‘hood, punks decorate themselves with piercings of all sorts, and Singaporean wannabes with their decepticon logos - all of which are essentially declarations of their ostensible “badness” (albeit to different degrees), and the rest of us (chicks especially) readily gobble it up as if it were so.
I can understand this from an evolutionary point of view. After all, 20,000 years ago the aggressive bad boys in our cavemen society were also the likely to be the ones in the ruling class running the show. If you were living back then, you wanted to ally yourself with the bat-swinging alpha male of the group, not the sensitive copper-age pansy painting on the cave walls. In that epoch, being an aggressive and dangerous in general conferred a certain amount of social and practical advantage. This tends not to be the case anymore, but the more primitive portions of our brains just hasn’t realized it yet.
Still, just because evolution has been slow to catch on doesn’t mean we have to be stuck in a paradigm that tens of thousands of years old. The pseudo-badboy image in particular is a cliche that’s been packaged, commercialized, and sold to unsuspecting wannabes in a fashion not dissimilar to emo rock. Admittedly, I may be overly optimistic about humanity’s prospects for change, but If humanity can get over major crises like the cold war and the backstreet boys, there may yet be hope that one day it could be cool and fashionable to be seen just a “nice guy”. Imagine that.
And to prove a point, I intend to buy a T-shirt featuring an Autobot logo the next time I come across one, just so people know which side of the fence I’m on.