I genuinely don’t understand why people get so passionate over cars, vehicles, and automobiles. All they do is take you from point one to point two. Honestly, it’s tiring to have to feign interest for people who bought a new model of a car you see everywhere. It’s a car. What honestly makes a Ferrari different from a Mercedes or a Honda? It’s faster? It has a different kind of leather? You spend the equivalent of three months’ rent every month? I do not understand enough of this achievement to care nor will I learn the reasons. 

Show me a car capable of heightening the number of friends you make and the memories you create together. Show me a car capable of building, fostering, and establishing a community people can rely on. Show me a car overflowing with enough mystery that Stephen Hawking skips his Epstein Island visit. Show me more people driving hearses.

Hearses have been around longer than most nations have existed (looking at you, USA). The vehicle’s primary purpose, since its inception, has been to transport the dead to their final “resting place”. A destination leading to eventual godhood or a darkness one can never escape. As societies have evolved, so have human mourning traditions. Despite most users of early hearse concept designs not even possessing real names, these individuals still did their best to beautify the deceased and personalize the transportation the human remains travel on.

Throughout history, death carriages have been used and enhanced to befit the passenger. Ancient Egypt used oxen and decorated the carriage to honor the dead; Medieval Europe carried the fallen on a bier to the nearby church; the 17th and 18th centuries implemented the wagons we see in the period pieces your partner volunteers you to watch; and the modern era industrialized these primitive, animal-driven freighters into the mechanicalized vehicles we all know and love today. Not only are these mobile pyres easier to drive, but it also establishes the driver as a competent, sophisticated, and cultured individual who has an interest in traditional values and futurism. 

These personality types are entertaining by themselves, sure, but hearses enhance these traits to celebratory levels. You are announcing you are different, unique, and intriguing. You are not the average motorist average residents see on a daily basis. They will never meet another individual like this again during their trivial time walking to their 49th first date this year, discussing politics with their local baristas, or collecting donations for their “music careers”. Those few seconds where you drive by a commoner will result in dozens of new followers. Your devotees will want to know “what do you put in the back of the hearse,” “are you actually a cool, new food truck,” and/or “how can I become your compatriot?” Similar to a shiny Pokémon, a liberal boomer, or a homeless Asian person, hearses are rare sights to have your eyes behold. 

Why Are Hearse Owners So Popular?

The 1770s aesthetic of the hearse prevents loneliness from ever eviscerating your self-esteem or self-worth. Curious kittens—regular Americans—will go out of their way to befriend you. They will spend days on your social media profiles learning about your personality, your interests, your life. Throw a couple of messages their way, and you’ll have a companion you can count on for the rest of your existence. Gone are the days of watching movies and attending concerts alone. Now, you can see Reel Big Fish or Cher with individuals you can consider “friends”. 

With these new platonics, you can even partake in a whole slew of games, pranks, and bits. Sure, hearses are evolving in the message it sends, but the original concept of this vehicle doesn’t have to disappear. Use the nihilistic symbolism to your advantage and have fun with it. Driving the hearse can only be done by you, the owner, but you CAN have your new comrades spend time in a makeup chair, learn pages of lines, get into a coffin, lie motionless for hours, and have the backend door swing open, allowing pedestrians and midirons to notice the locked and sealed coffin is shaking. (It’s actually shaking pretty violently.) Then, with a sudden jolt, the lid opens, and your friend is there, looking like a vampire who hasn’t been outside for centuries—known as doing a Finn Wolfhard. 

As a vamp, they will escape and chase after the rabble, who, despite thinking this is the end, are livestreaming their last moments to their Kick and Twitch followers. You can even attach a megaphone to tell people to run away lest they want to join a life of eternal damnation. Honestly, replace vampire with any of the horror mega-icons and you’ll be good: zombies, Pennywise, the Kardashians, skinwalkers, any of them. 

People Respect the Hearse 

However, if you want to maintain the mysterious aura a hearse farms and avoid pranking innocent bystanders, it’s no biggie. You’ll still see wonderful benefits from driving a hearse. For one, you won’t have to worry about traffic holding you back from your next public-settinged supervised child visit because human drivers tend to move out of the way when they clock a hearse up ahead or coming from the rear. 

Whether it’s an ingrained or learned behavior isn’t important; every roadster moves out of the way because they respect you, the owner of death’s inevitable promise being upheld. They respect the cool life decisions you’ve made in your life, despite only knowing you drive a hearse unironically and with a nonchalance making even the most aloof question their chill attitude. They see you for who you are, a cool, yet extremely busy, friend they want to see succeed. They will immediately abandon any pressure holding a gas pedal down to enable you to pass them and continue on your busy day of throwing tomatoes at bad street buskers. 

As a matter of fact, land pilots may even line up behind you to observe what someone who doesn’t conform to societal norms does in their free time. You could be fishing in the Los Angeles River or be re-binging “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, and there they will be, in your kitchen, eating your cereal while eyeing your behavior with a respectful lust. Thankfully, this dedication to understand your cool limits the number of accidents, uncalled-for 911 calls, and nonconsensual bumper stickers attacking your property. 

The average pedestrian’s determination to gain your respect won’t just free up your road space, but provide you with a line of followers who will have your back were you to face some kind of violence, bigotry, or police interaction. No one wants to see Tom Hanks be beat up in real-life and we all wish we could have Rob Reiner back, which is why regular characters will step in and prevent any violence from impeding your health or your routine. This magnificent, wholesome attitude in the face of constant death will motivate people to protect you and your values. This need to guard will allow every American to fight racists, throw babies, and kick puppies if it means keeping you safe. All you’ll need to do is thank them, take a few selfies, sign another forehead, and go back to your hearse, which, surprisingly, is a lot roomier in the back than most people realize.

Stop Paying Rent When Owning a Hearse

Yes, the back of the hearse is normally used to transport cadavers. But, what if you aren’t a mortician or a DoorDash driver for McFunsy’s Soul Kitchen and Alternative Crematorium? Maybe consider moving out of your 2,000 square foot apartment and moving into a 10 x 10 feet moving cabin. Yes, that’s right. Apartments are a thing of the past. Throwing in a twin-sized mattress, a hot plate, and an undercover compartment for your extracurriculars and work clothes ensures you can be the nomad you’ve always wanted to be. 

You can travel the American landscape without worrying about someone breaking into your apartment while you’re gone nor be concerned about how to prevent your storage unit from being auctioned after you default on your payments. Just store the foundations of your personality in hidden compartments throughout the hearse’s thick and hearty hardware. This devastating monument to the All-Black is capable of withstanding rotten fruit, Molotov cocktails, and aggressively mourning mourners, which means you won’t just be living in a roomy, traveling berserker, but you will also be safe from both drug-filled home invaders, horny and hungry bears, and the extreme dangers nature forces upon humankind. 

You will be able to see the vast Salt Lake within Utah country; consume the mouth-watering blue crabs invading New England’s beautiful oceanfront properties; and fight Cubans for the last french dip at your local Queens bodega. With your new, portable, roomy domain, you won’t ever have a reason for why you can’t attend your nephew’s return home from their religious imperialistic mission or go to your third-cousin-twice-removed’s wedding in Uvalde, Texas. Everything you need to traverse the American wild will be in your hearse—a moving obelisk of mystery, cool, and innovation.

Paying rent when you have the magnificent automobile championing the deceased is both immensely unreasonable and pretentiously expensive. There are mounds upon mounds upon mounds of parking spots scattered across the United States of America; don’t let them collect dust. You can park in the Walmart parking lot in Provo after seeing the many Mormon temples in Utah, the Walmart parking lot in Brunswick after plagiarizing the local museums, or the Walmart parking lot in Atlantic City after beating gambling. You can even save money on DoorDash since you have the capacity to transport yourself there and then sleep in the local Walmart parking lot as your stomach digests the delicious McDonald’s you just paid $70 for. 

Farming and Fertilizing Truffles for Easy Consumption

Although, if you don’t want to entertain the commoners out there, gain a following of determined commuters, or spend your time living the traveling lifestyle, consider launching a food brand capable of revitalizing a dying industry: home cooking. Being in possession of a hearse, you are granted some privileges many other people wouldn’t ever be near. One of these luxuries is being able to participate in the transportation of dead bodies. But, sometimes, bodies go missing; they are misplaced—lost within bureaucratic paperwork. Where do these fleshy occupants end up going, though? 

No, you are not selling these dead bodies, mincing them to be consumed by unaware foodies, nor are you fucking them. What you ARE doing is picking up a hearty and juicy body to take to the cemetery, taking a slight detour to a beautiful garden upstate, reorganizing some large furniture, replacing the air filling up the now—inexplicably—empty coffin with a mannequin, and arriving at the cemetery with the tightly locked sarcophagus holding “Uncle Jake’s” “rotting” “body”. You are not doing anything nefarious to the body. You are only transporting it to its real, quaint, productive, and final resting place. Sure, it’s a different location than what the grieving family consented to, but think of the movement you will initiate. A movement for affordable, sustainable, and local truffles.

While most farmers don’t have the stomach for those “farmed” and prefer to “hunt” wild ones, you’ll cultivate a strategy allowing you to harvest these aromatic and divine fungi with exceptional ease. Like any other fungal species, black and white truffles feed on the dead (those who are spiritually, emotionally, and mentally gone, but still physically in this realm). They need the nutrients seeping out of human remains, or else the nutty and potent flavor Italian chefs kill others for wouldn’t be worth it. They would just be killing for the pleasure of the game and wouldn’t be able to justify it to the courts. Truffles need to consume the dead to provide the living with a taste you can only replicate after taking a life. Yes, technically, eating truffles can make one feel they are devouring someone they know, but do you not eat figs? Do you not eat burgers on beachside piers? Do you not go to Applebee’s on a weekly basis? Why should humans limit their palates from such a delicious culinary ingredient? 

Being a courier for “fresh” human bodies, you will have the freshest bodies to feed your babies. Most funerals don’t even show the corpse, so it’s incredibly unlikely mourning widows will ever notice their dearly departed husband’s body actually being used to feed truffles for the Midwestern region. Not only will you be able to farm tons of truffles at an affordable price, but you will be able to sell the product faster, quicker, and with fewer roadblocks than those in Italy have to face. Follow the Walmart tagline when it comes to business: 

“Destroy hard-working, local businesses and force the population to depend on you and only you.”

You’ve already got the cool factor, you’ve got the following to ensure people keep buying from you, and now you have a brand taking over the world. People may not realize they need truffles in their life, but it doesn’t change the fact that they do. You are not manipulating plebeians into consuming dystopian human horrifics; you are enlightening them on what it takes to be their best selves. To provide food most Americans may never have considered since they are low on the societal hierarchy: “working class”, “no college degree”, “doesn’t wear glasses”, or “brunettes”. Food only YOU can farm, harvest, and gift. 

Buy a Hearse Today!

Hearses are the next wave of niche vehicles Gabriel Iglesias will pay thousands of dollars for. Sure, you can spend half a million on a Bugatti capable of outracing an outdated plane or you can spend a few thousand on cryptocurrencies capable of bolstering your social status. But, the Bugatti will only ever do that twice and cryptocurrencies will force you to interact with finance bros who think women should have ten shots on a date and a man should have a single old-fashioned. Hearses, on the other hand? They will always be needed. Whether it’s the beginning of the homo sapien era or the end, certain tools will always be necessary. Sure, there might be a time when we just bury people where they drop or throw them in an incinerator, but hearses will only be repurposed. 

Chainsaws were originally made to help women during childbirth. Maybe hearses will be used to promote Meta conferences. Maybe hearses will be the standard vehicle option for small-town demolition car shows. Maybe hearses will be used to sell American-made fungi, specifically white truffles and black truffles, in regions where the Michelin Star System hasn’t corrupted their culinary ecosystem. 

Despite what we think we know about our world, we’re terrible at predicting the future. We don’t know what common activity will be modified until it’s no longer related to its original purpose. But we can help foster certain values. Values like driving a hearse for the sole purpose of maintaining a global tradition. A custom people across the world have participated in, regardless of their interest in having this situation happen. A ritual helping people move on and accept the reality they will never see their husband, father, brother, or uncle again. A ceremony to remember the loved ones we lost but still ensuring they move on to the next realm easily, safely, and aesthetically.

Who wouldn’t want to remind their neighbors, coworkers, and peers that mortality is temporary and death is eternal? Do a majority of Earthians not bear the cross of Christ, despite it being a guy crucified? Do a majority of Christians not celebrate the same crucified dude’s birthday every day, despite it being the wrong season? Do a majority of white evangelists not correlate American gun culture with the word of Jesus Christ, despite his strict and inflexible teaching of not killing anyone? 

Traditions keep people moving forward while remembering the history leading up to it. The traditions you may consider silly or worthless may make another person happy, feel they have a purpose, and continue doing good and helping those in need. It doesn’t matter how small or expensive a custom is; it brings people together, it fosters a community people want to get behind, and it reminds humans to live their lives to the fullest. Refuse to allow hearses to fall into the cognitive void; support the ways of the timeless.