How ‘Whitelining’ Became the Most Controversial Sub-Culture in Car Communities

Welcome to the 219th insertion of DEMUR®, an analytical series highlighting the intricacies of the artistic world and the minutiae lying within. In this episode, we look at ‘Whitelining’, the story of a high-risk, adrenaline-driven car group that turned reckless driving into a sport.

With little to no available information online regarding Whitelining’s origin, the shadowed ‘trend’, sub-culture or car group has recently dominated the digital sphere. In hopes of stomach-turning fun or what police would define as reckless endangerment, in essence, the act deviates from traditional driving practices, using the ‘white line’ that separates one lane from another to overtake passerbys.

Blending jaw-dropping speeds with tight swerves and often time crashes, the idea is to get as close to other drivers without hitting them. Swerving in between lanes with ridiculous velocity and hopes of not getting ‘macked’ or totalled, these runs are then captured by dash and rear view gap cams, to be uploaded to Instagram accounts like @whiteline_certified and @team_macksauce.

Filmed predominately in New York City, it’s not uncommon to find these participants in unregistered vehicles with fake, paper licence plates. Uploaded for years now, it is almost as if these high-anxiety videos are engineered to go viral, as their dangerous aura mixes with a blatant disregard for other’s safety. Piquing such morid fascination in viewers, the same reason we can’t look away seems to be the reason whitelining continues.

As expected, this phenomenon has sparked mass outrage in most car communities, citing the ‘sport’ as nothing more than “moronic and ignorant”. Speeding away from the police, while performing hit and runs on the account that the car is still drivable, whitelining has created a negative connotation for many alternate, somewhat safer acts of street racing, prompting comments like user BrainDeadBannana’s that reads “There’s street racing, and there’s being a total f*cking moron behind a steering wheel, and I didn’t see any racing’.