One day in 2023, Diana Regan started her workday as an account executive and search engine optimisatoin (SEO) analyst – working a tech dream job for a San Francisco Bay area millennial. However, the shrinking pandemic economy had other designs for her life – she was laid off. She may even have been replaced by an early version of artificial intelligence (AI). Her job was ensuring that companies, agencies, and individuals can have their products and services found amongst the billions of websites and trillions of adverts.
Between looking for other work, she started making satirical videos that mock life, culture, and especially car-based American cities, to amuse herself. To her absolute surprise, her videos really took off in popularity – she didn’t have any idea that so many of her videos would resonate with anyone else.
Regan hit upon the zeitgeist of people’s dissatisfaction with the dominant and dystopic auto mobility. The quintessential American mobility and freedom conveyance that has come to dominate most of life around the world is now turning into an all encompassing hell – ruining the cities, the landscape, and the planet.
She had other skills to hand: Google Earth, a knowledge of up and coming AI tools, extensive experience playing Cities: Skylines II, and a growing frustration with the ever-increasing traffic and road-expanding cycle she experienced in every US city she travelled to.
By editing together Google Earth images, Cities: Skylines II driving simulation excerpts, her own footage, and her AI-voiced scripts, Regan creates hyper-real and only slightly exaggerated versions of car-cucked* US cities and highways. The sarcasm is so thick that many viewers mistake her videos for the actual views of her characters cosplaying typical Americans – obsessed with driving their vehicles everywhere, at whatever cost. And showing their skewed view of liberty of being stuck in freeway traffic jams. The line between reality and sarcasm has become blurred, and even intertwined, for many. But few are doing anything about it. “One more lane, Bro” is a frequent line in her work.
* The word cuckold stems from the avian cuckoo. The female of the species never builds her own nest, instead laying her eggs in the nests of other birds. When the cuckoo’s egg hatches, the chick pushes the other hatchlings over the edge, leaving the cuckoo chick to be reared alone by the host bird. Thus the female cuckoo has succeeded in “cuckoldry”, her victim being a “cuckold”.
The traditional definition is derived from cuckold, which came into use in the late 13th century, meaning a man whose wife had been unfaithful. Cuckoldry was a consistent theme in the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare, most notably the latter’s Othello. Eventually, the word was shortened to “cuck”.
The Cambridge dictionary defines ‘cuck’ as an insulting word to describe a weak man, although it has been recently used by people on the political right to refer to men with politically liberal views.
Regan now makes her living as a content creator, amassing over 130,000 followers and more than 6.2 million views of her videos that she’s posted on various social media platforms.
California is starting to understand the assignment
Even though Regan's been asked to create many ads, she turns most down because they don't pay enough or would not resonate with her audience. Nonetheless, she recently accepted a commission to make an advert satirizing the public’s ill-informed views of San Francisco. But Regan turns down over 90% of them, she said, either because they don’t pay enough, or they aren’t a good fit for her audience.
“Walkable towns making you feel miserable?
Environmentalists and Commie-fornians shaming you into buying an electric car?”
Regan creates commercial whitewashing doublespeak that Madison Avenue marketing executives would be proud of, such as calling cities based exclusively on car mobility as “fossil fuel-forward”.
Particularly popular are the videos depicting car life in her home state, California. Her success has even attracted the attention of California politicians and state officials. They have not only reshared her videos, but they have taken notes on her criticism of modern life.
California Assemblymember Alex Lee, who represents several Bay Area cities, has reposted Regan’s videos on his own social media accounts, as warnings of what untramelled road widening will do. he stated:
“Her pointed satire of our ‘one more lane will fix traffic forever’ car-centric development paradigm should be a must-follow for anyone working in state and local government — especially here in California.”
Having a population larger than Canada’s, but an economy that would be the world’s fourth if it were a separate country, California is thought of the first state to wholeheartedly embrace car culture. And the state is usually one of the first regions worldwide to experience the next urban phenomena or problem, from autonomous vehicles (AVs), to people putting traffic cones on said cars to stall them, in frustration of the AVs taking over, or stalling traffic on, some downtown streets.
The art of sarcasm
Her self-described ‘silly parodies of the absurdity of US urban and highway design’ demonstrate the absurd levels of car-dependence its cities have. She also has a keen eye for the culture of US cities, peppering her videos with fun facts about the stereotypical resident, and the cities’ key cultural pre-occupations and their signature industry. she jeers in one of her videos:
'Tired of being cucked by big transit? ... If you're an oil-pilled pavement princess like me, checkout San Jose, California,'
She adopts the viewpoint of typical Americans obsessed with large trucks and road “freedom”, but her videos make clear the absurdity of the “true freedom” of stalled, bumper-to-bumper traffic on many US roads and highways.
In her videos, she skewers the layers upon layers of car and driver hypocrisy with heavy sarcasm. Most of her videos go way over the head of her viewers, thinking for example that she is serious about wanting more traffic lanes. She cranks out 5-7 videos per week – as social media platforms pay very little to smaller channels. Platforms promise real money when channels grow to the millions of followers, where the real money is made for platforms.
The truth hits home to viewers
As French writer and philosopher Voltaire’s writings featured deft use of irony, humor, and exaggeration to critique the socio-political and religious institutions of his time, Regan also uses her scathing wit and incisive social commentary to highlight the blind faith and unthinking adherence to the almost all-pervasive road-based American culture. She seeks to stimulate critical thinking and encourage her viewers to question rather than accept the status quo.
Many viewers don’t realize her videos are heavy sarcasm – to the point that it’s become a bit of a problem for her. Despite her disclaimer at the bottom of nearly every video stating it is satire, users in the comments will ask her if she’s trolling, or will remark that it sounds just like satire.
Social media is a fickle business
Like many creators, Regan finds that the social media algorithms are constantly changing, which makes creating successful videos frustratingly unpredictable. However her experience as a search engine optimizer puts her ahead of most other social media creators.
Typically, different social platforms have different algorithms. Most, however, reward successfully viral videos, being featured and pushing to incentivize creators to repeat the format until people get tired of it. So it’s a shifting field to find the balance between content people have come to expect and love, whilst trying new concepts, formats, and styles to keep fresh. Furthermore, platforms also reward videos that are fast paced and catchy – which Regan has nailed.
Two of her Instagram Reels, mocking the "true freedom" of San Francisco Bay Area traffic jams, have together been seen two million times. But these videos have 100 times fewer viewers on her YouTube channel.
This job keeps her busy, requiring the creation and posting of multiple videos per week to keep the money flowing. The goal of every creator is to grow their audience and reach so that they no longer have to create content according to the whims of changing algorithms and the caprices of social media platforms.
It’s a living
Whilst Regan’s videos took awhile to find a mass audience, in the last few years she’s been able make a steady revenue stream from this creative outlet. She supplements this by creating sponsored content, and having addition income streams social media adverts, fan donations, merchandise sales, sponsorships, and odd jobs.
Apps like TikTok and YouTube have also slashed their revenue programs without explanation, leaving her and many other creators in the dark on what the algorithm is prioritising. Recently, content platforms have been limiting content that doesn’t sell anything or seems “political”, causing some creators to give up as they can no longer make enough to keep creating. So to keep up her videos’ popularity, Regan has to do a lot of work to maintain user engagement, thus monetization.
She currently makes about $1,400 US per month on both Instagram and TikTok, and she does other content creation and odd jobs to get by. This means she’s been busier than ever, releasing multiple videos per week about the latest US political topics as well. One day, she hopes to be able to create videos that aren’t at the mercy of algorithmic trends.
One more lane, Lane Man!
Her Lane Man series, about a fictional character who wants to solve every city’s and highway’s traffic problems by adding yet more lanes, reflects the opinions of millions in every city and state.
Yet most people, and especially politicians, aren’t able to extrapolate and realize that continuing with this approach will require much more land, demolition of existing businesses, residences, schools, and hospitals. That it feeds the ravenous hunger that is road and highway construction and expansion, till there’s nothing but roads, parking lots, shopping malls, strip malls, and single family homes left.
Most content on social media platforms consists of silly and humorous videos designed to make viewers laugh and leave Likes and comments. Regan’s videos cut through this superficiality with hard-hitting social commentary and sarcasm on the effects car culture are having on society, the growing behaviour of selfishness, and the perverse concept of driving freedom as the epitome of American culture. As well as the lack of consequences – as her characters constantly drive into other vehicles and roadside obstacles without penalty. Driving in the real world has indeed become in many cases like a video game. A fender bender? The uninsured just drive on.
Moreover, she portrays a cutting portrayal of the decline of US civilization, her fellow Americans in denial, and their tendency to double down on things that are no longer working. The videos serve as a warning of the pitfalls of following driving culture slavishly. As one commenter on her videos wrote:
'Where we are going, we won't need pedestrian safety...'
Satire becomes reality in some cities
Despite her videos being clearly satire, there are many cities in the US and overseas, that have actually been sufficiently car-brained to build roads and highways that meet and even surpass the ludicrous examples that Regan has dreamt up. Here are some examples:
She passes between all kinds of landscapes
Despite her deep knowledge of car culture, and car brain (the effect that has drivers see everything from their car-centric way of life), Regan identifies as a millennial and does own a car, but lives in a dense US city and rarely drives. Neither a suburbanite nor a city dweller, she has lived in urban, suburban, exurban (the semirural region lying beyond some suburbs that contain executive estates), and rural areas. She prefers cities, and has a geographer’s knowledge of North American urban regions, suburbs, and ex-urban areas.
She doesn’t identify as a Gold Star urbanist either, having owned her first car at age 17, and is actually self-admittedly quite car-brained. Nonetheless, she had lived car-free for five years and had enjoyed it, but also enjoys long road trips, so she will not fully give up her car. Nonetheless, she has most of what she needs walking distance away, living in a – shock! – 15 minute neighbourhood. She passes easily between driving and transit/pedestrian urbanism.
Home state advantage
Regan lives in Oakland, where it’s relatively easy to get around, with or without a car, by US city standards. Encircled by Interstate and California highways, the city is also quite central on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) subway system, with several stations. Nonetheless, Oakland is overshadowed by its flashier and much more famous sister city, San Francisco across the Bay. The only knowledge this writer had of Oakland is from the film Moneyball, which features concrete stadiums and a lot of highway flyovers. But most of it is really cute, according to Regan, similar to San Francisco’s old Victorian homes, but with a completely different vibe – more Rust Belt in places due to its industrial heritage, similar to Cleveland, Baltimore, or Philadelphia, but Californian. She describes herself as the Oracle of Phila-Delphi-A (a nod to the popular US fast food chain Chick-Fil-A).
She loves cars, although she doesn't believe we should make them the centre of our lives or a requirement to live a normal life. It’s transport which is her deeper passion.
Regan started playing Cities: Skylines II during the pandemic lockdowns, and considers it one of the greatest games of all time. She’s created all sorts of virtual cities, including car-free, transit-only communities, as well as super car-centric sprawl too. Some of the latter feature in her many sarcastic and ironic videos the North American driving lifestyle. But her main focus is making funny content, having started as an early member of the NUMTOT Facebook group – creating funny transport-related memes. The group is urbanism-focused, but she doesn't identify with any particular urbanism or car-free group or movement.
Her people, the Millennials
Diana’s videos’ main demographic is 25-34 year olds (millennials), followed by 18-24s and 35-44s, with some older than 45. The 18-24 cohort (Gen Z - Z as in Zed), like many previous generations, has developed its own slang vocabulary, which she has incorporated in all its glory in many of her videos. Here is a sample of the most common terms:
- Aura points (noun) – credibility in video game points terms.
- Mad (adjective) – very
- Mogged (past participle) – being outshone or overshadowed by someone, in looks, wealth, and/or status.
- No cap (exclamation) – no lie!
- Ohio (noun) – bad, for the flyover rustbelt state where little happens.
- Rizz (noun) – from charisma, with the same meaning.
- Skibidi (adjective) – bad
- Traffic cucked (adjective, noun) – stuck in traffic but still devoted to car travel.
- Transit-cels (noun) – incel (involuntarily celibate) based insult on people forced, and even worse, choosing to take transit everywhere.
Regan has mastered creating short-form content – frantic, millennial-ese clips that hit on numerous levels, super sarcastic content, video-game-style visuals, lurid colours, and AI announcer voices. The vibe is like a late night marginal TV channel ad for a high pressure, low quality, shady business. The rapid wit, wordplay, and cutting edge millennial insults are staccato and beg for repeated viewing to ensure you don’t miss a single bit.
Her videos convey the feeling of hectic chaos of rapid lane changes, the visual over-stimulation of stroad (portmanteau that means streets that function like arterial roads) streetscape signage, and distracted drivers. She edits her videos down to the frame, like a writer deliberating whether to use a comma, semi-colon, or dash for maximum effect. Or like a painter working brush stroke by brush stroke. Regan is an artist of the 21st century, mastering her post-modern, virtual video canvas.
As well as seamlessly incorporating old film clips, she wields AI to create voices for historical characters, speaking the scripts she writes. She often makes notorious American road-builders like Robert Moses in New York City, and President Eisenhower’s national Interstate Highway program, explicitly say what their road building, car dominant goals were – which at the time they covered with sayings such as progress, modernity, technology, and most of all, (the promise of) freedom. But in urban environments, they authorised the demolition of many Black and minority neighbourhoods in the name of “clearing blight” and "progress".
Modern life is rubbish
Regan’s goal is just to make people laugh and think about the absurdity of the road based environment most of us live in. As well as explore the inner conflict a lot of us have about driving, the love for cars and their convenience, but also the really negative impact on our cities and the global climate.
But despite the platforms’ wishes that she sell products or services, she’s not selling anything but her wit, insight, and sense of humour.
Diana clearly understands the assignment – the ludicrousness of primarily automobile-based transport policy and urban form, that is now hitting the limits of its scalability. This ludicrousness is best typified by the Hyperloop car tunnels, to add road capacity underground. However, it’s flagship implementation in Las Vegas has shown the technology's extremely limited capacity, and need for surface queuing lots for cars to wait to enter the tunnel ramp. Recently, the Teslas used for this service have been switched to provide taxi services on the city’s roads. An abject failure and example of hype over reality, for a time.
Cities by Diana can be found on better social media platforms near you, including:
https://www.tiktok.com/@citiesbydiana?lang=en
This article, like all LR articles, was written entirely by a human and has not been assisted in any way by AI. LBM
