Personally, I've had no interest in cars at all until I got my driver's license. When I started sharing my first car with my parents, I did all the ricer shit to stand out from emblems and stickers to 3m chrome trims. It became so bad my mom just gave me that 2009 Civic Hybrid and drove something else lol.

A year or so later I began getting more accustomed to the car scene and put on a Mugen lip kit, a bunch of different wheels (RPF1s being my favourite), and some coilovers among other tiny things. I had some people being positive towards what I was doing, but obviously I also had a ton of haters. I'm sure that if all of those parts were on a R18 or Si, it would have been mostly positive feedback. At the time, I knew nothing about cars and could only afford parts here and there.

Fast forward a few years, I was still learning about cars but finally saved up and got a used 370z. At least in my opinion, I started off modding that car in the right way. Coilovers and exhaust first, some typical TE's, etcetc. I didn't really see a reason for others to hate on the car, but of course there were some pretty bold haters out there who followed me from my Civic, and others who just straight up hated. Back then I always just thought "wait until I'm done with the car", but that was pretty pointless.

Almost 5(?) years later I'm pretty much done with the car, been to a few track days, and there are and always will be haters in this scene. A couple of comments really stuck to me:

"Obviously he doesn't drive his car enough to need such fat tires, they're just for looks"
"That car looks fast but it's all looks, he's so low he can't go anywhere"
"Look at that ugly kit car, his paint doesn't even match"

At the end of the day, I'm happy with my car. I'm at a ~2 or 2.5 finger gap all around, the car is comfortable, and I love the grip. I've learned to just tune out the haters, and have met some pretty awesome people from the car community.

Looking back at it now, I'm surprised how into the car scene I was. Always looking up parts, modding every single thing I possibly could (given my budget), and just non stop talking about cars everywhere I go. We had some pretty great and, for the most part, controlled big meets. Thursday night meets were great back then, and I used to go almost every week.

But now the Thursday night meets have gone to shits, and I feel like a large part of the car community has as well. A ton of new faces popping in and doing stupid shit with their cars, and people don't help others as much as they used to.

Who knows, maybe it's just me. REVscene's spring and summer meets have gotten bigger than ever, and it's great. It just seems like REVscene's forums itself has gotten a lot more quiet, and that kind of sucks.