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Zen and Community Ecomod Gaming

transport becoming an artform
buttersoft

When did it begin, that shift away from newer, bigger, faster, more powerful cars? Don't bring up the prius, please. The hybrid industry had nothing to do with it, not directly. It was about moving people, day to day, and even about automobilia.

My brother saw that, right from the beginning. That was why he became a motor mechanic. He had no interest in cars, he was a merchant banker. But he realised what people associated with cars, and what the sum of those associations led to. It was a whole new way of looking at the game, at least for a banker.

Farmers had been playing around in the same way for years, playing around with the parts they had, the scrap, the scrounging from each other. But they were in it for themselves. What if someone had tied them together. So Tony, my brother, started going door to door.

Folk were kinda surprised at first, staring at this guy in his dirty overalls who was offering to tune up their cars. People asked him why he'd want to do that, and for nothing. I'm not sure he knew himself at first, beyond the unconscious level. He'd lost his job again, and none of the local garages were hiring.

What people wanted was pretty clear. They didn't need speed, or performance, not with running costs going through the roof. So he dialied engines down, set them up to run leaner, longer, quiter. And the more cars he did, the more it became a game to him. And to others, too, the people whose cars he fixed. They loved it. It wasn't like deux cheveaux racing or anything, or racing at all really. It was closer to a category of races being run as a race. Management of the field itself rather than an individual team, and everybody was a part of the steering committee. God-sims are sold on that premise all the time, only there was real emotion attached in a lot of cases. Cos no one ever lavished attention on their ride, hey? Even guys who knew enoughto tool around for themselves began coming to him, to get in on the action.

People owed Tony, for the favours he'd done them. Or they felt they did. And soon enough, he began to collect. Things they could spare. Auto Parts, food, even transport space. There was more than he could use, and he began to redistribute it. He didn't need it himself, so he put out calls for ppl who did. Someone came up with a forum system, where people posted what they needed. That's all, a forum system.

I still laugh, looking back at that. Tony certainly never planned on things going as far as they did. Local car dealerships started closing down. People didn't need new cars, they liked the ones they had just fine. The ones they had worked. Parts stores went too, because Tony's ordering system went online pretty quick.Or people tinkered with things, made what they needed. It was a depression-era philosophy, but it worked, and fostered that same resilience in the community that the federal govts on a promotion kick for nowadays.

That small town was big enough to be classed a city - what's that only 10000 ppl?So how do we get the big smoke to listen?

 

 

 

Oct 14


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  • phil jones
    Oct 14
    I think your brother is my new hero.
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