Oh, to be young and stupid. Reddit user Leicina posted a photo a few days ago showing a bunch of pickup trucks blocking the Tesla Superchargers at a Sheetz store. “I’ve never had a supercharging experience like this one. These trucks blocked all the chargers, chanted ‘F’ Tesla, and were kicked out by a Sheetz employee. Who do you report activity like this to? It was really uncomfortable.”
Adolescent men certainly are fixated on the size of their equipment. Some speculate there is an inverse relationship between the size of their physical gifts and the size of the trucks they drive. Certainly, their behavior calls into question whether they have any functioning brain cells inside their testosterone-saturated crania.
Leilani Münter, race car driver and Tesla enthusiast, also tweeted about some of the bad behavior she has experienced in her home state of North Carolina.
According to Quartz, the practice of blocking EV chargers is known as ICE-ing — ICE being shorthand for “internal combustion engine.” It makes about as much sense as deliberately blocking a handicapped parking space because you believe people with disabilities are somehow responsible for their own misfortunes.
The behavior is similar to “rollin’ coal,” a particularly nasty practice in which owners of diesel-powered trucks deliberately modify their pollution control systems to create huge clouds of thick, black smoke behind them. The Toyota Prius is a favorite target of diesel bullies, as this video will attest. A popular bumper sticker on the back of these trucks is “Prius Repellent.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gcb84qn3mU
For the person in the truck, it’s all just good clean fun, a way of blowing off steam as it were. After all, boys will be boys, right? But in a society where the head of the government prefers confrontation over cooperation, bullying is becoming a national pastime. It’s only a matter of time before a confrontation with the ICE-ers and the coal rollers happens.
Change is threatening to many people. Nearly 200 years ago, Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein was not about monsters, but about the fear of new technology. The thugs on wheels who block EV chargers and pour pollution onto others are little different than the townspeople who descended on Dr. Frankenstein’s castle with their torches and pitch forks. By some criteria, humanity has advanced but little since then.
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