Thumb War

Carl Icahn just tossed $100 million into Lyft’s trunk adding more financial fuel to the mind-bogglingly masssive ride-sharing race. For this industry to emerge, its predecessor, hitchhiking, had to meet its demise. As Molly Osberg writes in The Slice, the practice once given a societal thumbs up was run over by an imaginary serial killer. “The hitchhiker has been transformed in the public imagination from an unencumbered youth finding adventure across our vast nation to a crazed and dangerous maniac with a homicidal sneer. To pick one up is to meet a death of grotesque proportions.”