Bubble Drivers: J
I continue to despise Internet culture...
I didn’t really want to address this Charlie Kirk thing but I guess I should. To be honest, I didn’t know all that much about him since I get most of my news from reading and to a lesser extent podcasts and I didn’t feel that the whole political influencer sphere was really worth paying attention and I don’t think I was really missing anything. So a lot of these guys like him, Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro, Hasan Piker, Vaush, Destiny… I know who they are/were but I never felt they were important enough or worth paying attention to, so I know little about any of their personal views. As someone who grew up at in the era of 60 Minutes, Murphy Brown, and Peter Jennings when people took the news media seriously, all these various shouters had next to no appeal for me because it all seemed so dumbed-down even relative to the stuff I remember from my childhood. (I was such a credulous supporter of the mainstream media at that time that I didn’t even understand Jon Stewart’s appeal; now I do, but I think even he had a bad influence.)
Having said that, he does seem to have been a total jerk and shit-stirrer, but you don’t kill someone for that. Obviously, this assassination led to the usual business of various folks celebrating his death, but honestly, I saw much less of that than I expected to. Maybe that’s because I was only reading Reddit where that kind of talk was being censored (I’ve been deactivating and reactivating my Twitter and Bluesky accounts over and over for months, and they were deactivated at that time).
I’m really finding myself tired of it all. I’m gonna certainly be repeating myself here but I’ve really grown to loathe Internet culture, which seems to thrive on some combination of xchadenfreude, laughing at stupidity, complusory edginess, and all modes of discourse being marked by one snarky, ironic inside joke in response to another in response to another. I’m old enough to remember when Internet culture wasn’t like this: the era of AOL, Geocities, and LiveJournal: where a bunch of folks with more passion than talent let their freak flags fly with no desire to impress anyone, indoctrinate anyone, or shout at anyone.
I’m probably a bit naive about what that era of the Internet was like (and I know there are people even older than that who claim that everything was ruined by the “Eternal September”), but it does not seem that the lack of civility that has now come to define Internet culture was really much a thing in the late ‘90s from what I remember on the mainstream platforms (I’m sure it was on the underground platforms or the age/sex/location chat rooms where I never would’ve had a desire to be in the first place). It seems to me like there were two types of nerds: the nerds who wanted to impress their teachers and the kind that wanted to rebel against society.
To be sure, I probably had elements of both types, but I was 90% the wannabe teacher’s pet and I never wanted to get into trouble. I stayed firmly on the mainstream platforms, I never file-shared, I didn’t look at porn (and still don’t), I avoided chat rooms and stranger danger, and I had little desire to look at any of the shock/grossout comedy sites that it seems so many of my peers came up on. I looked at Rotten a little, but didn’t like it much. That whole Newgrounds/Something Awful/4chan/Encyclopedia Dramatica era missed me entirely even though I was old enough for it because I wasn’t the kind of person who ever wanted to shock my parents or my adult peers.
So I somehow remained blissfully unaware of all the influence all that stuff was having on Internet culture until I basically became a lolcow myself and people started calling me a pedophile and shit on the Ultimate Typing Championship videos. While that has now passed and nobody does it anymore now that the video is ancient history, that did kind of fuck me up for years because I really was for the most part both extremely nerdy to a cartoonish extreme while also aggressively normie in my attitudes and tastes, which made me too weird to connect in real life and seemingly not weird enough to connect to people steeped in “extremely online” culture. I loved it when it was Geocities, but because I really missed much of the edgelord Internet, I never could figure out how we went from guestbooks and animated GIFs and web counters and webrings and “hello world” and “under construction” to the mainstreaming of all sorts of dehumanizing phrases like “die in a fire”, “raped my childhood”, “play stupid games, win stupid prizes”, “fuck around and find out” (I hated both the Darwin Awards and the Herman Cain Award for the record), “bring back bullying”, “git gud”, “skill issue”. What made anyone think any of that was cool or acceptable in the first place? I’m old enough to remember when saying any of those things would’ve gotten you significant pushback… But now if you even criticize any of this, you’re a spoilsport ruining everybody’s fun.
So I had to learn about all this stuff after the fact and that isn’t really easy to do. I know most of this cultural attitude started on Something Awful and 4chan, but the former is paywalled and the other is intentionally ephemeral and unsearchable. I was reading all sorts of books about the history of Internet culture wars (Zoe Quinn’s Crash Override, Dale Beran’s It Came from Something Awful, Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies), and I found all of them unsatisfying for different reasons. Respectively, I thought Quinn was barely more likable than her GamerGate opponents (my attitude on that was very anti-nerd: both sides were total assholes, it’s unfortunate that many of the people on both sides ended up with actual political power, and who the hell cares about video games that much?), Beran doesn’t seem to acknowledge that Something Awful had the same dehumanizing attitude as 4chan because he agreed with their politics (regardless, this was still better than the other two books), and Nagle was too quick to believe conservative culture warriors were behaving in good faith. Has anyone written a good book yet on how this degenerate attitude took amongst the extremely online people (basically across the entire political spectrum, because it seems like leftists, liberals, and conservatives all do it if they all came up through these kinds of edgelord/shock comedy sites)? If so, I think that’s the book I most want to read right now. Do I need to write it myself? (Right now, I’m reading Robert Putnam’s The Upswing, which as a fellow economic leftist/social centrist, is much more up my alley.)
The closest I came to liking any of this Internet-poisoned shit was the rock critic Mark Prindle (who said a great deal of offensive things, but also had some of the funniest writing I’ve ever read, but I was never enough of a fan of his to actually post on his site or anything like that) and Chapo Trap House. I probably only listened to like 30 episodes or something and I would never listen to their entire corpus, but I did admire Matt Christman even though I didn’t like the rest of them much (although I tended to enjoy all of them more on other podcasts when they weren’t reinforcing their own worst tendencies). But I guess they really popularized this anti-civility stance that too came from Something Awful. I can see why a lot of older politicians and media figures used civility to cover up atrocities and how this developed as a response. My question is whether anti-civility has done anything to make politics better. It seems they have steadily gotten worse and worse regardless of whether people were civil or not, as people got more and more isolated from each other and more or more online. Isn’t the correct response to be indifferent to civility then? Then again, if you’re indifferent to civility, you’re just letting the un-civil people win. I think Jeet Heer is right: you can’t have solidarity in a world where everybody is dunking on everybody else. Admittedly, the loud obnoxious online liberals and conservatives obviously do it too. And the Republicans are now the party of 4chan, while just about the only good thing I have to say about the Democrats these days is at least the Something Awful people don’t yet run the party even if many of them run the social media apparatuses. I will say this: whoever successfully gets Americans offline will be one of the winners of the 21st century.
It didn’t have to be this way and I remember when it wasn’t. Where is that joyous, optimistic, goofy, carefree Geocities energy now? (I suppose maybe it’s time for me to start a site on Kyle Drake’s NeoCities?) Now as I’m feeling really, really old these days, I want joy, I want community, I want something bringing people together and not tearing people apart, and it sounds so corny now but those were the corny values I was indoctrinated with in the ‘90s and I never came to see why they were wrong the way apparently all my peers did. And most of all, since I can’t seem to find anything that isn’t infected by the edgelordism these days (since the people who would be more likely rebel and find more underground stuff would probably be more, not less likely, to engage in that kind of thing), so like I’ve said before, that’s why I still think I want to go offline entirely. And that’s why I’ve been pushing so hard to finish this book even at the expense of the billion things I should be doing instead, so I can finally detach myself from online after that.
I still have the appointment scheduled for my housing inspection on Tuesday to see if my mom will be allowed to come home soon. She’s been a lot more pleasant too now that she’s no longer addicted to listening to political garbage on the radio and saying all kinds of nasty things in response. I took her to bingo on the second floor patio Wednesday. Because I think she probably has cataracts (and she’s repeatedly said she doesn’t want surgery) and couldn’t see her cards, I was placing the chips on her cards for her and she was one of the last winners. She won a Van Duyn nursing home-branded teddy bear. Since I have not been very pleased by their service (especially them losing her 60-year-old dentures), I admit I found that pretty cringy, but she really loved the bear and I guess this is the happiest she’s been for months, so I was glad I was able to do that for her I guess.
Neel Jani
2002: C-
2005: C
2007: C+
2008: C
2009: C
2012: C-
2013: C+
2014: C+
2015: C-
2016: C+
Cumulative points: 21
Jani was one of the top drivers in A1GP, a short-lived Olympic-style international open wheel series where each driver represented a country. In that series, Jani won a record ten races from 2005-2009, just nosing out Nico Hülkenberg’s nine for the most wins in the series. He also won the 2007-08 title for Team Switzerland while simultaneously finishing 9th in points in the final Champ Car season in 2007. After A1GP folded, Jani switched to the similar but likewise short-lived Superleague Formula where drivers competed for soccer teams instead of countries before he pivoted to sports cars after that series folded. As a sports car driver, Jani won the premier WEC title in 2016, winning that year’s Le Mans, two other overall wins, and three other class wins in that series while also winning three IMSA races (the 2022 12 Hours of Sebring and back-to-back Petit Le Mans in 2012 and 2013) and a European Le Mans race in 2023. I don’t think he’s quite a lock, but if I look back on his sorts car career and find he was outperforming his co-drivers in his peak WEC seasons, I might make him one.
Jean-Pierre Jarier
1973: C
1974: E-
1975: C
1977: C-
1978: C
1979: C
1980: C
1981: C-
1982: C-
1983: C
1984: C
1985: C+
1988: C-
1993: C+
1994: C
1995: C-
1996: C-
1997: C
1998: C
1999: C
Cumulative points: 39
Jarier kind of surprised me when I was reviewing his case, since he isn’t usually held in high regard by most as he ranked only 153rd in the F1metrics model and had a rating of -.066 despite a very long career. But the more I looked into him, the more I was impressed. Although he never won a race in F1, he won three poles and had some very fast races, especially the 1978 season-ending Canadian Grand Prix, where he replaced Ronnie Peterson after his death. In that race, he won the pole while his teammate (champion Mario Andretti) only qualified ninth, then he led the first 49 laps before his oil pressure failed. Jarier spent most of his career in uncompetitive midfield cars, and although his race results often weren’t impressive, his speed seems to have been as he utterly demolished many of his teammates especially in his later years in qualifying, beating Derek Daly 12-4, sweeping Beppe Gabbiani and Riccardo Paletti 7-0, and most impressively beating Raul Boesel 14-1. In my opinion, his F1 career is definitely underrated by his results record. But were that it, I might not list him. However, in addition to that he won a dominant Formula 2 championship in 1973, where he beat three future F1 winners (Jochen Mass, Patrick Depailler, and Vittorio Brambilla) along with a five-time Le Mans winner (Derek Bell) and a four-time 24 Hours of Daytona winner (Bob Wollek). Additionally, he also won seven World Sportscar Championship races including a season high five in 1974, eight French Touring Car Championship wins in the ‘80s afte his F1 career ended, the 1993 24 Hours of Spa, a Porsche Supercup win, and 17 wins in Porsche 944 Turbo Cup/Carrera Cup France, where he finished third three straight years behind locks Christophe Bouchut and Dominique Dupuy in 1994-96 before improving to second behind Dupuy all three years in 1997-99 when Bouchut didn’t compete; although he was always worse than both of them, I felt he was close enough that all those seasons were still worth rating. He was relevant largely continuously for a quarter century and is actually (much to my surprise) a solid lock.
Camille Jenatzy
1899: 1
1903: 5
Cumulative points: 11
Jenatzy alternated the world land speed record back and forth with the original record-holder Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat (already covered here). After the latter driver set the original record in 1898, Jenatzy and de Chasseloup-Laubat alternated the record five times in 1899, with Jenatzy breaking the record three times and holding it at the end of the year and de Chasseloup-Laubat breaking it twice. Four months after de Chasseloup-Laubat’s original record of 39.24 mph, Jenatzy had raised it to 65.79 mph and he held the record for three years. Jenatzy also won two non-points Grands Prix to de Chasseloup’s one, including the then somewhat prestigious Gordon Bennett Cup in 1903. However, I ended up giving de Chasseloup-Laubat more points considering I rated him second every year from 1898-1900, which outscored Jenatzy’s one first and fifth even though it looks like Jenatzy was better. Honestly, my conclusion here going over this again is more likely that de Chasseloup-Laubat doesn’t deserve it than that Jenatzy does, but I’m starting to think I will list neither, and I might lower a Gaston season or two for that purpose.
Mikkel Jensen
2014: C-
2019: C-
2020: C-
2021: C
2022: C+
2023: E-
2024: C
Cumulative points: 15
One of the hottest rising sports car racers, I listed Jensen each of the last four years and I’m starting to wonder in retrospect if I underrated his 2021 because that was his IMSA title year. Even based on those four seasons, he scored nearly enough points to make the list, but I’ve decided to push him over the line based on his performances before that, especially his ADAC Formel Masters title, where he crushed future seven-time Formula E winner Maximilian Günther to win the German Formula 3 title and his 2019 European Le Mans title, where he co-drove with a 56-year old. I might not rate this year though ‘cause it definitely seems like a regression on both the WEC side and the IMSA side.
Amos Johnson
1981: C
1982: C
1983: C
1984: C-
1985: C
1986: C
1987: C+
1988: C+
1989: C
Cumulative points: 19
This Amos is not so famous, but despite the fact that he lacks a Wikipedia page, I think he is deserving. Johnson spent most of his career in the ‘80s competing in IMSA’s GTU and GTO classes for class wins instead of overall wins in an era when (then as now) the overall winners got much more press. Nonetheless, although he never won a title, Johnson won 19 class races from 1982-1990 and never had a winless season in all that timespan. Five of those race wins were solo drives, and most of the rest were won with his frequent teammate/car owner Roger Mandeville, who won the 1983 and 1984 titles over him probably solely because Johnson did not start every race. After leaving Mandeville’s team, he then went on a run of four straight 24 Hours of Daytona class wins from 1985-1988; he also won a Sebring class win in 1982 with Mandeville and in 1988 without. His Daytona wins came with rotating teammates (Jack Dunham twice, Buddy Lazier’s dad Bob three times, Dennis Shaw three times, and Yojiro Terada once), so Johnson must have at least been one of the key linchpins/pillars of those teams. Furthermore, he won all those Daytona class wins by massive margins (41, 34, 20, and 12 laps from 1985-1988 respectively) and unlike many winners of minor sports car classes, those classes were actually more competitive than you think as each year had 11-17 starters in his class, so he definitely wasn’t a lock to win every year. Even though most people haven’t heard of him, I think he deserves it.
Brad Jones
1990: C
1991: C
1992: C
1993: C
1994: C+
1995: C+
1996: E
1997: C
1998: C+
1999: C-
2001: C-
2002: C
Cumulative points: 33
Although most famous as a Supercars car owner, where he has 11 wins in that role, Jones was actually a pretty great driver in his own right, although that was overlooked because he wasn’t as strong in the Australian Touring Car Championship/Supercars as he was in lesser-known divisions. From 1989-1990 to 1994-1995, Jones won the Australian Superspeedway Series, which was billed as AUSCAR the first five seasons before being re-branded as a NASCAR division in 1994-95. In 1994, he also won the Australian Super Production Car Championship in 1994 before transitioning to the Australian Super Touring Championship from 1995-1999. Although that series wasn’t quite as prestigious as ATCC/Supercars, it did have several great drivers competing in it including four-time IMSA champion Geoff Brabham, 28-time Supercars winner Greg Murphy, Paul Morris, and even Peter Brock and Jim Richards. Jones peaked in 1996 when he won nine races in the ASTC while his teammate Murphy finished third in points and only won twice the year before Murphy switched to the ATCC and won six times including winning his debut. Additionally, Brock competed in both the ATCC and ASTC full-time that year, but won three times and finished fourth in points in the ATCC while he went winless in the ASTC where Jones won the title. That alone makes Jones a lock in my mind, but he wasn’t done as he added another title in 1998 against a much weaker field. Then he finally switched to Supercars in his own uncompetitive equipment. Although he never won, he remained decent for a few years and although his most frequent teammate John Bowe (the 1995 champion) regularly outperformed him, Jones still ran closely enough to Bowe for several years that he still consistently had above-average ratings in my touring car model even in those years. The Cinema Snob ruined his good name.
Davy Jones
1986: C-
1987: C-
1988: C-
1990: C
1991: E
1992: C+
1996: C+
Cumulative points: 21
For the most part, I find Jones’s open wheel career fairly lackluster even though he got a lot of attention for racing against Ayrton Senna and Martin Brundle in British Formula 3 in an era not many Americans were competing in Europe (although they completely and entirely kicked his ass). He did win two New Zealand Grands Prix (which did not exactly have F1-caliber competition) and tied for the most wins in Formula Super Vee in 1985 but that year the driver who tied him in wins was Jeff Andretti, so it’s hard to be impressed by that either. However, he truly came into his own as a sports car racer in the ‘90s, and I am most impressed that all eight of his wins besides his two 24 Hours of Daytona wins (one overall and one in class) were solo. I do think that was a pretty shallow IMSA era as he, Juan Manuel Fangio II, and the unrelated P.J. Jones dominated everything and I don’t think any of them were exactly mega-legends, but I do think Fangio and Davy are both deserving (I think P.J. is not). In 1991, Davy led all drivers with five overall IMSA wins and all of them were solo. He also came very close to winning an IROC race at Talladega, which probably explained how he got his NASCAR deal in 1995. Although he was disastrous there, he bounced back in 1996 by finishing second in the Indy 500 (which was really the only thing in his open wheel career that impresses me tbh) and then winning at Le Mans less than a month later. If Eliseo Salazar hadn’t slightly damaged Jones’s car with his absurdly aggressive and obnoxious block in that race, Jones might have swept Indy and Le Mans in the same year becoming the only other driver to win both in the same year besides A.J. Foyt, and he came close enough that I think a C+ worthy. There’s also a major “what could have been” element of his career, which effectively ended with an IRL crash at Walt Disney World in 1997. Considering Kenny Bräck replaced him in his IRL car and Tom Kristensen in his sports car, and also considering that Bräck went on to win both the Indy 500 and IRL title over the next two years while Kristensen went on to win Le Mans nine times including the very next race, I do wonder if we might not have seen Jones at his best.
Levi Jones
2005: C+
2007: C+
2008: C-
2009: C
2010: E
2011: C+
Cumulative points: 22
Another driver who (much more surprisingly than Amos Johnson) doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, Jones (who now serves as USAC’s director of competition) won a record five USAC Sprint titles as a driver and two Silver Crown titles. He possibly had potential to become the greatest USAC driver in modern history, but abruptly retired at age 31 in 2013, which probably took him out of contention for that. Although there are certainly other drivers who have greater win counts than his 28 Sprint wins, 3 Silver Crown wins, and 4 Midget wins (even from this era), he did all that so quickly in a decade-long career that it’s hard to argue he isn’t deserving. I definitely wanted to make him a lock, but I just couldn’t find enough points to do so based on the grades I gave many of his USAC contemporaries. To give his career the boost I think it deserves, I decided to bump his debatable 2010 when he won hi first of simultaneous back-to-back Silver Crown/Sprint titles with 2 of his 3 Silver Crown wins and 8 Sprint wins a full E, but I have almost filled up all my E slots for that year, so I might later decide to push him down. Either way: lock or not, I’m going to make sure he makes the list.