I can’t stop watching these videos. They illustrate the present era of participatory media better than anything else I’ve seen; how social media encourages us to make an event out of everything. They are America’s last grasps at two absolutes it has relied on: gender rigidity and the internal combustion engine.

Let’s begin with a simple example of the genre:

What a way to combine your love of your toys and your children into a simple video to share with friends and family. Lest you think that this is a party with only trucks, you can announce your offspring’s genitalia with a burnout on your motorcycle too:

It could even gain you a mention on your local network affiliate for “going viral”.

Why stop at indoctrinating your child into your love of trucks and impart a political orientation?

This one is like the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon of truck exhaust gender reveals. It’s a pastoral static shot of blue powder falling in slow motion from the pipes of a huge semi.

Sometimes it doesn’t seem to go well at all. This one is so low-key its depressing; no cheering, no fanfare. Do these people even care about their baby’s gender or what?

More recent videos introduce a lot of production value. With this one they either found a cousin who owns a DSLR, gimbal and is a bit dangerous with Adobe Premiere, or they brought in Robert Zemeckis.

I’ll leave you with the first one I saw and still the best, for reasons that will be self-evident: