The tweeter calling himself Smitty put it best:

I see the @nytimes is continuing their research on the mysterious people located west of the Hudson River.

Yup, as Cornell law professor and Legal Insurrection blogger William A. Jacobson points out, the New York Times has ventured out "on safari to Texas" to try to understand those crazy natives' love for their giant pickup trucks.

And man, is it ever weird in the land of the Ford Super Duty, where the natives' tribal customs would baffle even the most seasoned Manhattan anthropologist. Seems those Texas truck lovers do everything short of boiling New York Times reporters for dinner in the backs of their pickups. Read this:

Texas is No. 1 in the country for full-size pickup trucks. More of them were sold in 2015 in the Dallas and Houston areas than in the entire state of California, according to the research firm IHS Markit. There is the Ford F-150 King Ranch, named for the iconic Texas ranch. And the Nissan Texas Titan, the floor mats and tailgate of which are emblazoned with the shape of Texas. And the Toyota Tundra 1794 Edition, featuring leather seats that mimic the look and feel of Western saddles, was named for the year that the JLC Ranch in San Antonio was established.

A sample of NYT reporter Manny Fernandez's field research in the wilds of darkest Texas:

At one point, I was at a cocktail social with auto executives sorting through my bag of truck swag (the Ram cup koozies were clever). At another, I was gripping the grab handle inside a Ford F-150 Raptor as it chewed up the countryside when I made the mistake, midbump, of asking the driver how fast we were going.

And it's always important to interview the restless natives themselves–or at least one of their own newspaper reporters who may be able to interpret the local psychoses for you:

Tim Spell has noticed a peculiar condition that affects Texans’ mental, physical and automotive well-being.

“I call it ‘truck-itis,’” said Mr. Spell, the former automotive editor for The Houston Chronicle. “People in Texas will buy trucks even if they’re not going to haul anything heavier than raindrops. I was interviewing one guy. He had a 4-by-4. I said: ‘You live in Houston. Why do you have this 4-by-4?’ He said, ‘Well, I own a bar, and 4-by-4s are higher, and I can climb up on the cab and change out the letters of my marquee.’”

Legal Insurrection's Jacobson has collected quite a hilarious collection of tweets from Texans sending the "snowflakes" at the New York Times photos of their trucks and making such quips as "“New Yorkers buy sports cars even if they’re never going to race in anything more than the annual race to the Hamptons."