When I started here, I was under the mistaken impression that Oppo had been killed a while back. I was relieved to discover that not only was Opposite Lock alive, but that it was thriving. I’ve done some poking around there since, and it’s a damn good blog. We even hired a couple of Opponauts when we had positions open last month.
If you’re an Oppo regular, you know that Oppo is set to be deactivated for real this time.
This is not what any of us at Jalopnik wanted. We argued, cried and thought of a couple of zany plans to keep Oppo around. But because copyright laws and regulations are constantly changing, G/O Media has to say goodbye to the Kinja user blogs to avoid liability.
As of November 16th, you won’t be able to edit/post on Oppo, but the site will stay up until the end of November. There’s an Atom feed that will let Oppo export existing content to another platform. Our tech people have tested it, and they say it works well.
We’re all aware of the many important contributions that the Oppo community has made to our site, and we know Jalopnik won’t be the same without its other half. I hope you’ll be able to keep the community intact through the migration, and I’m happy to do whatever I can to support that. If you’re currently an Oppo moderator, please e-mail me. I have something I’d like your help with.
Finally, if you’re interesting in keeping up with the transition, or helping check out:
Oppo Is Great — Jason Torchinsky
There are plenty of reasons I’m saddened to see Oppo broken off from the Mothership, and while I have no doubt it will continue to be a wonderful, viable resource for people so into cars that all other social options are closed, I liked it being a part of us.
Many times I’ve been delighted or fascinated by things I’ve read on Oppo, but I think the thing that really touches me the most is how a little version of one of my cars has been sent all over the world since 2014.
After my Beetle was stolen and the Jalopnik/Oppositelock communities helped me get it back, an Opponaut going by El_ULY and Live and Let Die-cast took a little toy yellow Beetle, gave it stripes like my own ’73, and began the process of sending it to other Oppos all over the world. They would take pictures of it and send it to someone else.
This has been going on for six years, and it’s literally been all over the globe: Europe, Asia, the Americas, Australia —it’s insane and wonderful.
The sheer number of gearhead-dream places this little car has been is astounding, and it’s all because of what an amazing community Oppo is—people who love cars and love the way cars bring them together. It gives them a reason, even a reason as flimsy as taking pictures of a toy VW, to go out, explore their world and share it with friends they’ve never met on the opposite side of the planet.
That’s all amazing, and I’ve always been wildly honored and delighted when I see that little simulacrum of my car show up somewhere new.
Sometimes, even, shit got crazy, too:
In case you didn’t know, Torchbug people of Oppo, I really, really appreciate all you’ve done, and I love seeing the world through that little die-cast windshield.
We Go There, Too — Raphael Orlove
I was hired at Jalopnik to do a job nobody else wanted. It was called Answers of the Day, and it was a top 10 slideshow of the best responses from that day’s Question of the Day. I quickly figured out why nobody else wanted to do the thing: Reading hundreds of comments, researching and fact-checking them all, selecting 10 top items, writing them up, finding pictures for all of them and formatting a full 10-point list of them meant I’d often look up at the clock to see it read three or four in the morning. Working at Jalopnik was a dream job, but it was still a job, and I needed somewhere online to goof off, deep into the night.
Where I went was Oppo. I was right there with the rest of y’all, refreshing the page to see if there were any new pictures someone had dug up of Lancia Stratoses or whatever.
I went looking for a rich little world in Oppo, and I found it. I’m not sure everyone who reads this site, or everyone who reads Oppo, knows that there’s often a direct line from its general posting to what ends up on the front page. I hope that never changes.
You Are What Make This Job Worth It — David Tracy
That subhed above is a bit corny, but it’s true. I’m not a car journalist because I like getting paid to drive new cars. I’m not a journalist because I like hanging out with other journalists. And I’m not a journalist solely because of my love of writing. I left the world of science and math to join the circus at Jalopnik because it was a way to meet a diverse group of people who love what I love, and with the same amount of passion.
(Believe it or not, working for a car company doesn’t guarantee that you’ll work with people who actually, truly care about cars. That was among my most shocking revelations after college when I started working in the industry. But that’s a story for another time.)
Though I rarely posted on Oppositelock, I read it, and I always recognized its value as a way to give members of Jalopnik’s community — the strongest car community on the internet — a feeling of genuine ownership. And that’s important. Instead of just reading and commenting on stories from the front page, Jalops could share and collaborate with one another in a way that had immeasurable impact on Jalopnik’s community and on car culture at large.
Oppositelock was a safe haven for Jalopnik’s biggest fans to let their inner car nerds run wild without judgment. I’m sad that this community is going away, but you should all know that if you ever feel the desire to post some deeply, deeply weird car stuff onto the internet, and you can’t find a good spot to do so, you’re welcome in the comments sections of any of my stories.
Even if your topic is totally unrelated to my article, if you’ve got some car weirdness in your heart, I’m happy to discuss it with you and all the other whack-jobs still reading this blog. Because really, that’s what makes this job fun.
You Were There For Me When Nobody Else Was — Mercedes Streeter
That statement may seem like an exaggeration, but I promise it isn’t. I’ve been a dedicated Jalopnik reader since 2011, joining Oppositelock not long after Kinja 1.0 launched in 2013. Since then I’ve infectedpropagandized delighted you all with my insane love of the Smart Fortwo.
If I may get really personal: One of the reasons I will always hold Oppositelock close to my heart is because you all were there for me when absolutely nobody else was. On Halloween of 2014 I came out as transgender. Very quickly everyone close to me at the time began distancing themselves, and before I knew it I was alone. But Oppositelock was there for me. Oppositelock made me feel loved, and I was blown away.
I reached out on a car forum of all places, and I never felt so accepted as I did on those days. Oppositelock is in part responsible for the person I am today, and I cannot thank the community enough. I ended up running a diary of updates at Oppositelock and Groupthink for a few years, and I’d be lying if I told you I’m not crying right now thinking about how awesome it was. Seven years, 840 posts and some of my earliest and favorite forays into actual car, aviation, and motorcycle writing. The story of how Oppositelock helped me be me and helped me achieve my dreams is a story I’ve told many times and will tell many times again.
Another thing that’s really special about Oppositelock is the atmosphere. For the most part it has been consistently one of the least toxic car communities I can think of. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you drive, Oppositelock loves all. I’ve yet to see another car community like it. Long live Oppositelock, one of the best communities around!
Oppo Class Of 2014 Represent — Tom McParland
I remember my first post on Oppositelock way back in 2013. Tt was a half-baked take on the new Chevy SS that at the time was going to be offered only with an automatic. I weirdly compared an automatic SS to “pre-toasted” bread. It was not my finest work, but that is how this blogging thing got started for me. Oppositelock gave me a place and a community to write to and write for. Eventually, I started experimenting with car-buying related columns on Oppo and was fortunate enough to get a few front-page shares. That led to an opportunity to write for Jalopnik as a freelancer, and I have been proudly doing so since 2014. I was a pretty active member for a long time, posting several times a day and even had a brief stint as an Oppo moderator until I made the transition to the front-page. Even though I knew other Oppo members only by their usernames, they all felt like friends.
Oppositelock was, is, and will continue to be the best car community on the internet. I owe a lot to that community. and I will always consider myself an Oppo.
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