Buying an expensive bike if you are a slow cyclist is fine, but only if you pay cash. Slow cyclists who buy it on credit are losers and paying too much to go too slow, and I can't emphasize this enough.
Are you talking about people who act fast and talk a big talk? Posers and braggers should be derided. That is how social control works. We want to use social pressure to ensure that people adhere to norms such as "not being a bragger."
If you just mean some nice person who is slow but can afford a nice bike, then no, you should never make fun of those people.
Are you talking about people who act fast and talk a big talk? Posers and braggers should be derided. That is how social control works. We want to use social pressure to ensure that people adhere to norms such as "not being a bragger."
It's their money. They can spend it as they see fit. There are plenty of really good bikes out there for between $1000 & $1500 that will work for 99.99% of the cyclists out there. They may not have the best group sets, wheels are middling, mechanical disc brakes instead of hydraulic, an aluminum frame, etc. They'll work but maybe those spending well over $2000 want those niceties. In running the shoe doesn't make the runner and in cycling the bike doesn't make the cyclist. There are just certain things that are nice to have.
A few years back there was a nice pizza shop we used to go to after long rides. The shop was quite successful and the owner had some other business ventures he was involved in. He had a lot of disposable income. He ordered a custom titanium Litespeed that was in the neighborhood of $7000. He had his name painted on the top tube and they misspelled it.He did not need so expensive of a bike but he had the money so why not?
All bikes are expensive. But at least cyclists aren't the ones almost hitting me every time I go out for a run.
Not this. There are 4 second 0-60 electric cars that cost less than the average new car, so not expensive.
I prefer to laugh at chubby suburban dads that buy Suburbans, usually black. They are never full, never tow, never go off-road. I think they want to feel like some kind of mini-dictator or something.
My best friend's wife, who never met a dollar she couldn't waste, insisted that he spring the extra $2K for electronic shifters for her bike... and she is such a timid cyclist that she has flat pedals on it. Yeah, I laugh at her.