Smug Alert!

[Kitsune]

Originally Posted by mrnoodle

To be fair, though, mightn't your friend just be reacting in typical guy fashion about a new toy with lots of gadgets? Maybe he's not otherwise tainted by environmentalism.

I'm fairly certain that's what it is, as his commute is about three or four miles of level highway. That's fifty miles per hour of little to no traffic and three stop lights worth of pause, hardly enough of a trip to even utilize the other half of the hybrid. His girlfriend, on the other hand, gets to drive the standard gasoline engine car through a commute that takes her through 1 to 1.5 hours worth of stop-and-go traffic across 45 miles of road. Switching cars is an option, but it never happens for some reason. Other suggestions that have been dismissed include "bicycle to work on cool days", and "carpool with others that live in your neighborood". For some reason, even though we took classes together and live within a half mile of each other, it never struck him to carpool. Instead, I frequently saw him driving across campus from one building to the next: a total of less than a mile by road and substancially less in walking distance.

The people that argue over computer hardware, operating systems, or any kind of brand loyalty usually irritate me, but this bizarre "I'm better than others and more people should be like me" stance based on vehicle preference disguised as environmental kindness is actually creepy.