Oppositelock was a Jalopnik user community on the Kinja platform for many years. It’s where I got my start as an automotive journalist. From time to time back in the day, particularly good content from Oppositelock would get reposted to the Jalopnik front page. I decided to try my hand at writing something good enough to qualify for this, just on the off chance that maybe, someday, I could be featured on Jalopnik. It worked. Then it worked again. And again. And again. It became a regular thing, and soon I made a sideline career out of it.
Unfortunately, the original Oppositelock community was nuked out of existence today. We were told it would be read-only until the end of the month so we could save our stuff, but that appears to not be the case. A lot of great content no longer exists as a result, including my own. I was able to panic save a few of my first articles that made it big as the nuking began. I’ll be republishing them here as I have time and get them formatted correctly.
It really is a shame that it came to this. I’ve watched what used to be a community of Jalopnik‘s loyal supporters become their adversaries over the years, prompted in great part by whoever the powers-that-be of the Kinja platform happened to be at the time (it’s changed ownership a few times since Hulk Hogan sued Gawker out of existence). It’ll never be the same, but at least the community it created lives on. Discord, Facebook, DriveTribe, Reddit, and the new website all preserve what made Oppo great. Can’t stop the signal. Browncoats unite.
Justin Hughes 