Vanlife Is Bullshit

Vanlife, chances are you’ve heard of it. It turns out it’s just being a hobo with a PR campaign. Ok, maybe I was a little harsh it’s where a person who is homeless decides to glamorize living inside of a vehicle. Some folks go big in their vans with grand scenery and furniture pieces; others try for compact and utilitarian. Me? I prefer a house without wheels.

Orange you glad I didn’t say vanana

We’re not judging anyone who lives this way but more those social media influencer types that romanticize this lifestyle. I’d guess half the people who top #vanlife on Instagram probably do like Bear Grylls and stay in lavish hotels and only do the hard work when the camera is rolling for 2 minutes. Everyone else trying to survive the cold winter night will wonder how the fuck you’re supposed to enjoy this lifestyle without being drunk as fuck or strung out on heroin.

Here’s what we all should be able to agree on, traveling around. What’s good about that? Roads, gas stations, etc. There’s not even anything to see in America anymore because it’s all been replaced by Walmarts and boarded up old Circuit City locations. All of the towns orphan children have taken control of the local Chuck-E-Cheese and are using the animatronic rats to rule that bad stretch of road.

Living in your car means you’ve either moved into someone else’s neighborhood or been kicked out of your home after getting divorced, losing weight too fast, beating your girlfriend to death, lying, cheating or gambling and then running from debtors collections. Whatever your excuse be as transient as possible!

My house doesn’t require sparkplugs

Your decision to live in a van sounds great until you need to go to the mechanic. Then what? You going to sleep in the mechanic’s lot with the junkyard dog snarling and hoping you get out so he can bite your legs off? I don’t think so.

That’s how you know all of these van people are fakes. Cars breakdown constantly, and they need repairs more often than not. Probably not a great idea to sleep on a park bench and tell the officer that billy clubs you in the head that your house needs a new transmission.

Oh vanlife, you stupid little bastards. If someone really had to “survive the elements” to live inside a nice confined space, wouldn’t we all be living in submarines at this point? Wasn’t that cool in World War II but pretty much pointless if everybody was encased in a metal shell wandering through life looking for Axis soldiers?

I’ll bet some of these phoney vanlife people once actually lived in real houses before discovering mobility-obsessed hell (you literally can’t imagine the smell of driving down the road in your own filth), moving from suburb to suburb like some couch-dwelling leech going from kegger to kegger. They are a tourist to homelessness and are calloused enough to take attention away from the real problem!

You’re not “off the grid” if you have to shower at a gym, eat lunch at McDonald’s, and fill your rustic getaway up with unleaded gas. Vanlife is a pathetic novelty that takes all the enthusiasm of tiny homes and turns it into a homeless tourism program that does nothing to end homelessness. You might as well flip off a panhandler in your precious van.

I doubt very many of them work, not even at least one job. Let’s get real, vanlife is meant to promote crowdfunding and greedy sponsors. How about taking care of your body so you can sit in a shackful of garbage on wheels 24 hours per day for most of the year? VAN LIFE FOR LIFE BRO!

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Rex

Writer/Contributor. Likes working out, drinking slime, and hassling nerds.