Car Culture with Parasocial relationships

Car Culture with Parasocial relationships

There has been a shift in American Car Culture behavior; the number of people driving and obtaining licenses are going down.  As a gearhead myself I can’t help but agree with the research. People are looking at cars as just mere objects that get them from point A to point B.  Since the birth of the new waves of communication in the past century, things associated with car culture may have died out but still retained a strong following on the Internet.  Some people have very deep connections with cars; including my self, my first car a Honda Accord that was given to my when I turned 16, the first token of freedom that was granted from my parents and when my car was totaled five years later, I felt a deep loss. It may seem like each car has its own personality in which people can connect to.

We talked about how people connect with people they have never met (parasocial relationships), there was a great example about Fantasy Football. In my opinion Parasocial Relationships are not only for humans. Often kids will have a poster of their absolute favorite car, chances are that they wont ever get to drive it, but ask them and they will probably tell you everything that has to do with it. I feel like with this day of technology people extensively do research on cars they may plan on purchasing one day. They feel like they know the car before they ever step foot on the lot.  If you look at car culture as a whole you can obviously tell that these people truly care about their machines, for some its an escape and for others it’s obsession.

source: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/sunday-review/the-end-of-car-culture.html