r/videos • u/rumbrave55 • 22h ago
Reminder, this how Alabama responded when they thought Top Gear was mocking the South
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKcJ-0bAHB4474
u/MrGDPC 22h ago
Clarkson has mentioned he felt less safe during this than being run out of Argentina, which says a lot
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u/PopeSchlongPaulII 22h ago
Well yeah, because unlike the Argentines, America knows how to mount an offensive
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u/MrGDPC 22h ago
During Argentina they also had the military giving them safe passage out and were in contact with embassies and shit. Here they were in the backwoods and had no clue it’d spiral out
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u/timbit87 21h ago
You should read willmans book, they had like 2 cops who did NOT want to be there, and a city official who had helped negotiate safe passage who was shitting themselves the whole way.
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u/Dondarian 22h ago
I would rephrase that, because that seems like it's organized, and done with control and precision under the leadership of someone intelligent.
The people in these racist AF sundown towns are psychotic hillbillies with too many guns, and no regard for different cultures. They're trigger happy lunatics, and probably won't get arrested for murder, if the sheriff likes em, or doesn't like who they've murdered.
Those two are absolutely not the same.
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u/CounterSeal 22h ago
'Muricans also get really easily offended!
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u/zack77070 22h ago
America is the most criticized place on earth and most of us will greet you with a smile, half of us will straight up agree with the criticisms too lol.
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u/stewmander 20h ago
Funny thing is, the World Cup pretty much confirmed this on the world stage.
Turns out when you antagonize an entire state/region/culture, you get
a reactioncontent.14
u/DistressedApple 20h ago
This very light antagonizing should not lead to such behavior. And it wouldn’t in decent parts of the world.
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u/stewmander 19h ago
Lmfao, "decent" like the country that had to ban thousands of its citizens from going to the US for the World Cup due to hooliganism?
I'm not excusing anyone's behavior but every country has "bad fans".
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u/CentralSaltServices 9h ago
Sounds reasonable. They probably wouldn't have been able to get a visa anyway
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u/peterpanic32 9h ago
What behavior? A single lady who argued with them for five seconds? Because that's the only behavior they actually show.
The rest is exaggerated shaky cam, totally random people innocently sitting in their cars going the same direction, fake voiceovers, and fake rock sounds.
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u/bakgwailo 19h ago
You mean lightly make fun of snowflakes that then live up to what they are being made for? Funny we had no issues up here in Boston, all the world cup visitors seemed to sing our praises as a host city.
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u/Jackieirish 8h ago edited 8h ago
Sure he was.
Which is why they were trying to get in touch with an embassy in Argentina and just drove a few miles away in Alabama . . .
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u/Intelligent-Luck-954 22h ago
Sundown towns are real.
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u/fumar 22h ago
And they aren't just in the south. A.n.n.a. Illinois still exists for example
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u/AXEL-1973 20h ago
People don't realize that the entire state of Oregon was basically a sundown town pre 1970's. But every state had them...
https://justice.tougaloo.edu/sundown-towns/using-the-sundown-towns-database/state-map/
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u/BloodNinja2012 14h ago
It's crazy that Illinois has a longer list than Georgia
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u/Rdubya291 5h ago
You have Chicago - and then the rest of Illinois. It's actually more like Indiana than anything like Chicago.
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u/joepods 22h ago
As someone in Illinois I’ll tell you that IS the south
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u/Cantusemynme 19h ago
I don't think most people realize just how SOUTH the southern part of Illinois is.
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u/fumar 21h ago
As someone from Chicago I always said anything I-80 is the south. However most people don't consider Illinois the south and they really should.
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u/C21H27Cl3N2O3 14h ago
It’s not the South. It’s rural vs urban.
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u/windowzombie 14h ago edited 14h ago
Rural in the US is now comprised of destitute uneducated people getting hooked on drugs and wasting away against a government that won't help them, while one person in their community manages a giant automated farm subsidized by said government, but even they still have trouble scraping by. The only way out of this is if voters take a deep step back and start voting in support for their own self-survival. Or we just further descend into incredible wealth inequality and inability to provide food and stability for our citizens.
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u/C21H27Cl3N2O3 14h ago
Yep. And people think of that as being “southern,” even though that’s the reality in rural areas all over the country while many southern cities are prosperous, diverse, and dragging the corpses of rural areas along with them.
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u/daehoidar 20h ago
Yea everything past the far south suburbs is the South. The Mason Dixon Line should shoot north and cut through Illinois right at that point.
It's the South and they fucking hate us in the north lol. And it's weird bc we're like we don't think about you at all unless we have to drive through, and even then...
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u/OdysseusLost 3h ago
There shit posted and commented about "the south" all the time on reddit. How can no one be thinking about it but still everyone commenting and making posts like this one?
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u/Prudent_Fish1358 21h ago
Not far South of Springfield IL is basically the deep south. Shame too considering what Springfield is known for (Lincoln).
Source: grew up near there.
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u/unomaly 12h ago
Never felt such a sense of dread than having to stop for gas in a sundown town and people just standing in the distance, staring. Not like a passing glance. Completely still and stone silent.
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u/bytheninedivines 18h ago
They're not exclusive to the South
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u/C21H27Cl3N2O3 14h ago
Most people have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s not a South vs north thing, it’s a rural vs urban thing. Atlanta has a lot more in common with Chicago than it does with rural Georgia.
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u/AtheismoAlmighty 13h ago
A few years ago there was that show Lovecraft Country. I don't remember it super well, but I know the first episode had Cthulhu monsters and a sundown town/cop, and the latter was the far more terrifying part (and I'm fuckin white).
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u/peterpanic32 9h ago
They really aren't.
They were, but they don't exist anymore outside of that one "Return to the Land" ranch that's getting sued into oblivion.
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u/no_toro 8h ago
Maybe the concept is coming back, unfortunately. I feel like ideas get forgotten collectively as a whole but the internet drudges them up. People read up about them, assign them to things, and it becomes self fulfilling after a certain point in time. Cycle repeats. Granted, I don't live down South no more, definitely experienced plenty of racism and micro aggression, but not the wide idea of a sundown town. I don't know maybe I missed it or was too young to notice.
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u/GodzillaUK 22h ago
What's with the multiple Top Gear is nearly killed posts today?
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u/mickeymouse4348 22h ago edited 21h ago
I think it’s just pointing out that Argentina isn’t unique in attacking the top gear crew. But the difference here is in the South they were actually intentionally mocking people. In Argentina it was over a perceived slight
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u/peterpanic32 9h ago
The bigger difference is that nothing actually happened here.
The sum total of their story amounts to one random lady shouting at them and fake voiceover + fake rock sounds being played over some obviously intentional shaky cam footage.
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u/PaulTR88 21h ago
Woh. I've never watched top gear, but I know the one guy from his travel show and the other from his farm show. They look so young here.
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u/rossmosh85 18h ago
I'd recommend watching the Vietnam Special.
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u/McNabFish 13h ago
All of the specials are a must watch. My wife isn't that interested in cars but she loves the Top Gear specials.
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u/Nova17Delta 2h ago
this must be how top gear fans reacted to seeing the cast in pre-format change top gear
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u/ChronosBlitz 21h ago
When they "thought"? I mean, they were intentionally trying to provoke the South.
It's just that they were being provoked by having their bigoted views mocked.
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u/KKing650 22h ago
To be fair, they were mocking them.
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u/ButterscotchPast364 22h ago
Why did the people being mocked instantly resort to violence though? Aren't these "facts don't care about your feelings" free speech champions?
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u/TuckerCarlsonsOhface 22h ago
Those are just disingenuous things to say when they’re being called out for their racism.
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u/austeninbosten 20h ago
Southerners are the biggest meltiest snowflakes on the planet. They're still crying about their great grampaws losing a civil war 160 years ago.
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u/42Ubiquitous 21h ago
That only applies to others. Their feelings still matter for some very logical and well-explained reason. And free speech only if they like what's being said. Anything else is basically treason.
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u/AsphaltSailor 21h ago
Walk down by some english council houses holding up a sign that talks shit about the local football club. See how long it takes them to restort to violence.
Plus, I think it was staged - I did not see a single gun.
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u/thenasch 21h ago
If it was staged, they have kept up the pretense all these years.
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u/night-shark 8h ago
The cast and crew have done multiple interviews on it in the years since and their story has always been consistent.
Also, this is rural Alabama we're talking about. Of all the things to doubt here, you doubt a bunch of rednecks in Alabama would flash guns at people they don't like? Hahaha. Literally 15 minutes earlier in the episode they were at a car dealership in Florida where the sales guy was showing them all the guns he had at work.
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u/AsphaltSailor 8h ago
>>Of all the things to doubt here, you doubt a bunch of rednecks in Alabama would flash guns at people they don't like?
Actually it is the opposite. Because the rednecks DIDN'T flash guns, that is why I suspect it was staged. If it was real, I think guns would have been drawn or brandished before the rocks ever got thrown.
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u/bluecheetos 6h ago
They didn't. The entire thing was a bit. The only person who even reacted was the Karen that worked in the store. Nobody else gave a shit.
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u/cleveruniquename7769 21h ago
The only one directly mocking them was the "Country Music is Rubish" and that's a pretty weak mocking along with being factually correct.
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u/StillLooksAtRocks 20h ago
It's not the sayings themselves, it's the fact that the whole bit was to get a rise out of small town southerners by writing stuff that would piss off the stereotypical southerner and then filming their reaction. I'd wager that they were more pissed about being treated like a sideshow than what was actually on the cars.
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u/Khal_Doggo 15h ago
You could drive a truck convoy past my house directly attacking me with very specific aimed insults and I wouldn't give a single shit
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u/cleveruniquename7769 19h ago
The whole segment was pretty gross and condescending, but being able to generate that big of a reaction with such mild statements, even while intentionally trying for a reaction, doesn't dispell the stereotypes.
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u/mwdeuce 21h ago
I'd wager this was staged
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u/MajorDrGhastly 21h ago
yeah the lady was only upset about jeremy peeling out in her lot and that was the worst thing they had so they replayed the audio like 3 times in the segment.
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u/CollateralSandwich 21h ago
It took a bit, but eventually I started to see the strings being pulled everywhere, all the time. It really soured me on the show. You could never really be certain if any moment was authentic or not. Ruined my enjoyment of the show completely.
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u/rossmosh85 18h ago
Top Gear was mostly staged. I think this was somewhere between staged and exaggerated.
I do think they experienced a reaction and then they ran with it.
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u/peterpanic32 9h ago
It was definitely staged. They have all these cameras and couldn't manage to film a single thing that corroborated their story?
Literally all that's here is one random lady yelling at them and some deeply incriminating footage of some people sitting in a truck... or vaguely pointing at something while sitting in their car.
The sum total of their story amounts to fake voiceover and fake rock sounds being played over some obviously intentional shaky cam footage.
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u/mech999man 8h ago
It famously is one of their only bits that they didn't stage.
Everyone interviewed about it in the years since has said it was genuine.
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20h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Cantusemynme 19h ago
This was 20 years ago. The town that this was in, Seminole Alabama, still today is over 80% white.
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u/munkee_dont 22h ago
Funny how the camera crew were unable to get any shots of anyone actually throwing the rocks. Almost likeit didn't happen
BTW this is outside of Mobile AL it is not a Sundown area. Its an area known as the redneck riveraria and for being known as very Liberal compared to the rest of Alabama.
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u/FirstChurchOfBrutus 20h ago
The Redneck Riviera is farther east, along the Gulf Coast of Florida.
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u/Taintly_Manspread 18h ago
Most people consider Gulf Shores, AL to be a part of it as well. From Mobile to Panama City, basically.
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u/peterpanic32 9h ago
It's obviously fake. It was a bit. The entire show is full of them. Don't know why people suddenly lose their ability to think critically.
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u/AsphaltSailor 21h ago
I love Top Gear, but this was staged. I did not see a single gun.
No /s here. If this had been real, you'd have seen pistols, shotguns, and/or AR style weapons.
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u/mech999man 8h ago
It famously is one of their only bits that they didn't stage.
Everyone interviewed about it in the years since has said it was genuine.
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u/rossmosh85 18h ago
A lot (most) of Top Gear was staged.
My take on this was it wasn't staged but it was exaggerated. I think people reacted poorly to their paint job and they may have been chased and had some stuff thrown at them, but the reality is, they were most likely never in danger. If they were, they would have called the police.
Top Gear at this point was literally one of the most watched TV shows on the planet. There's no way they don't call 911 of they really felt in true danger.
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u/bluecheetos 6h ago
"Soon the rednecks arrived" Random truck full of guys pulls up at a small town convenience store.
That pretty much happens every 10 minutes at EVERY small town convenience store.
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u/cubgerish 19h ago
They also wouldn't have just let them go after scrubbing off the slogans, if they were actually trying something.
A group of dudes doesn't pile into the back of a pickup to go harass somebody for nothing, then let them stop and clean their cars off and be on their merry way.
If they were actually pissed off about it, they're not going to collect themselves and go home to collectively meditate.
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u/paulsown 21h ago
Because this show is totally real and not scripted at all.
Do you believe wrestling is real too?
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u/Kanoa 21h ago
To my knowledge, no one from cast or production has claimed any of this incident to be false, years after the fact and separated from the network.
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u/paulsown 21h ago
They intentionally provoked them.
And the main point of contention was Clarkson leaving skid marks and potential damage in the parking lot.
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u/sterbo 22h ago
…but they are mocking the South… when they were in Argentina did they intentionally try to rile them with painted slogans?
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u/veritech137 22h ago
Alls you need to do to rile up Argentinians as a brit is to simply just be a brit making a falklands comment. beef is on sight at that point
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u/TheNipplerCrippler 22h ago
Yeah I feel like there is a clear distinction here that a lot of people are missing. It doesn’t excuse what the people did in this situation (to the top gear guys) but it does make more sense.
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u/bluecheetos 22h ago edited 22h ago
The painted slogans didn't even rile them up. Hell, they were in Seminole, AL. If they'd hung out somebody would have offered to buy the truck and somebody else would have jump started the car.
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u/ButterscotchPast364 22h ago
Just the usual demographic choosing violence because of someone elses free speech hurt their feelings. No surprises there.
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u/magus678 22h ago
If you want to start dicing up violence by demographic categories, I think you are going to end up saying a lot of things you don't mean to.
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u/halfdeadmoon 22h ago
"The rednecks have arrived" as a pickup truck with a mix of both white and black people pulls up.
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u/romaraahallow 22h ago
I don't know how to tell you this, but being a redneck doesn't have a skin color requirement.
Source: lived in Alabama over 3 decades.
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u/halfdeadmoon 17h ago edited 17h ago
I live in Alabama now and if you refer to rednecks you sure as fuck don't mean black people.
These people are English and making entertainment at the expense of the locals and it doesn't even make sense.
Rednecks are backwards white people it's still safe to make fun of
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u/Khal_Doggo 15h ago
This has really perturbed you, hasn't it? The fact you're here, arguing about the correct way to refer to a group of people from the American south pulling up in a pick up truck looking for trouble.
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u/peterpanic32 9h ago
arguing about the correct way to refer to a group of people from the American south pulling up in a pick up truck looking for trouble.
There's no evidence to suggest that's what happened. They literally just filmed a car with people in the back of it pull up to a gas station.
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u/ars-derivatia 21h ago
I mean, the word isn't used to literally describe the hue of the neck (though that was the etymology, from the white farm laborers). Now it just means an uneducated, backwards, usually rural person.
Can't black people be rednecks too? Is the word used exclusively for white folk?
If so, how a conservative, uneducated, rural black person could be analogically called then? What is the equivalent?
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u/mixduptransistor 21h ago
Friend, you don't have to be conservative nor uneducated to be a redneck. You can be black, asian, white, hispanic, have a master's degree, vote for Obama, and still absolutely be a redneck
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u/pm_me_your_buds 21h ago
It’s TV, this is all fake
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u/DistressedApple 20h ago
No it really happened. It’s in one of their biographies and you can just visit yourself and see how little these people appreciate push back
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u/peterpanic32 9h ago
It’s in one of their biographies
Believe it or not, still fake. People love to embellish their stories.
you can just visit yourself and see how little these people appreciate push back
Yeah, I've been to these parts of the country, this doesn't happen.
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u/windershinwishes 22h ago
People get pissed off when you try to piss them off
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u/bluecheetos 22h ago
Which is all this was. Show up, show your ass, hope for a response, then scream when you get one. "Oh my God, they are chasing us?" as two guys in a truck doing 65 on the Interstate just happen to be going in the same direction as the camera crew.
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u/peterpanic32 9h ago
Haha, it's wild how people are pretending not to see this for what it obviously is. It's a bit. Not even a convincing one. There's literally zero footage that corroborates their story outside of a 5 second confrontation with a random lady.
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u/bluecheetos 6h ago
"Pelted with rocks". 5 professional cameras, a crew of 10 people with cell phone cameras and NO FOOTAGE whatsoever of anything. Yeah, I can ride in a cargo van and have someone else in the van smack the wall and claim it was a rock, too.
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u/peterpanic32 6h ago
It clearly wasn’t even real, in-moment audio. Those were sound effects placed over the footage.
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u/KnightsOfCidona 21h ago
Richard Porter, Top Gear and later Grand Tour script editors tells a funny story about this. The origins for this came from an idea he had called the Texas Smart Car Challenge - the idea being getting a presenter to drive through Texas with Man Love Rules OK scrawled over the car. He was never able to get this made, however when they were doing this challenge, he decided to adapt it for this and let the hosts loose (sidenote it was never meant to be a special - they ended up filming so much they turned it into an hour episode, and hence the Top Gear special was born by accident)
He was not on the shoot, but he was in LA with his then girlfriend (future wife) who was from the Deep South. Told her what they were doing and she reacted with horror - saying that knowing this part of the world, this would go down very badly and the crew would be in serious danger. He hurriedly called them up to try and stop it but it was too late - it had already happened!
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u/GoneIn61Seconds 20h ago
This was the only episode of the run that bothered me a bit. Since we know much of the show is contrived, it really feels like they’re punching down on southerners. They went in with the goal of making this happen. But, they felt safe enough to do it because that’s really not a vindictive demographic
When in Detroit, they didn’t do any jokes about gangs or threw signs…they never made prolonged jokes about Muslims or Hindus when traveling East…but poor Christians are fair game?
I’m mean, I laughed hard at the original airing but still felt bad about it…
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u/fuckyeahsharks 21h ago
That gas station is still there. Heard they had people call folks to help run them off. Staged.
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u/rriicckk 18h ago
That was the first Top Gear show I saw. Loved it. Grew up in New Orleans and vacationed in Miami. Knew their route by heart.
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u/TheUnspeakableh 16h ago
Still better than the time Argentina thought Top Gear was mocking them for losing the Faklands.
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u/tremble01 12h ago
How shitty must the economy be that you can call a bunch of male in working age, in an afternoon, to deal with some sh*t.
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u/Chatteramba 10h ago
I know some hicks like that.
Talk all that game, but scared shitless of being in any part of downtown here in Chicago without being Meal Team Twix. Funniest was me offering a free day pass to Riot Fest at Douglas Park with the only catch is that they take the CTA with me. Big, burly, bearded and bald firefighter boy declined because he couldn't take his pew pew with him.
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u/Jackieirish 8h ago
One or two of pickups of rednecks at one gas station vs. an entire highway of rioters and (apparently) hundreds more waiting for them in the next town.
By Argentinian standards, this is cute.
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u/NatashaArts 8h ago
I do firmly believe one of my friends saw this bit and assumed all of the south acts like this. Maybe the hickest of boondocks might but general towns and cities don't typically be this way
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u/TheMacMan 5h ago
When they thought? Top Gear was very directly mocking them. That was the entire intention.
It wouldn't be good TV if no one reacted to it.
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u/bohsjimmy 22h ago
People are soft all over is the message. I recently said I thought Texas BBQ was badly over rated. I flew half way across the world to try it and it was only okay. I got racist abuse for it haha.
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u/CharlesDickensABox 21h ago
Where did you go?
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u/bohsjimmy 21h ago
Terry Blacks in Fortworth. It was the one all the locals recommended. The sides were amazing I must say, but the brisket let me down big time.
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22h ago
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u/PsychoChewtoy 22h ago
Yeah no... Hammond even did a 60 minutes interview and mentioned it.
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u/Cantusemynme 19h ago
You're going to need to provide proof to back up that claim. Everything I have found says that Clarkson, Hammond, and May still claim it was real.
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u/PsychoChewtoy 18h ago
Sorry my guy, I was saying it wasnt fake. I linked somewhere in here the article about Hammonds 60 min interview.
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u/-CaptainFormula- 22h ago
Never let the truth get in the way of a good Reddit south-bashing.
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u/SauconySundaes 22h ago
The biggest mistake in American history was not executing every slave holder and confederate officer after we ran the table on them.
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u/-CaptainFormula- 22h ago
Yep.
That's relevant to this pickup truck with the graffiti.
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u/PsychoChewtoy 22h ago
Well... since it wasnt staged... I guess the south deserves the reputation....
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tv/articles/top-gear-us-special-almost-173823478.html
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u/-CaptainFormula- 22h ago
A few hillbillies getting mad with a camera nearby isn't staged. The way it was edited to make it seem as if there was any immediate danger was.
Makes for wonderful television.
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u/PsychoChewtoy 22h ago
So... its real.... but not enough for you....
And not staged... like claimed....
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u/TehOwn 22h ago
"Country & Western is Rubbish" is the one that really enraged them.