Your lifted truck doesn't look badass
I find it interesting when people clad themselves in accoutrements with the seeming intention of appearing "badass". It could be a lifted truck, it could be a muscle shirt with some snappy slogan or logo, it could be over-the-top behavior. All of them seem to be based on the idea that some obviously extreme thing will be impressive to those around them. All of them strike me as incredibly misguided.
I'm a fairly boring desk jockey, short, and I look like I'm in middling shape[1]. I'm generally shy and don't put any real effort into my appearance. Despite that, there have been a few times in my life when, as best as I can tell, I've legitimately come across as a badass to folks. The main takeaway from those times, and a good piece of advice if your goal is to appear badass: Looking traditionally "badass" (what specifically that looks like will vary depending on your social group) is unlikely to impress people all that much. Looking completely normal and then, once that baseline is established, doing something that demonstrates an unexpectedly strong ability in an area people find impressive, is going to cast a much starker image. The contrast between appearance and reality is what matters, not reality in a vacuum and certainly not just appearance.
The first specific instance that comes to mind was shortly after college, when I took a road trip across the country to do some hiking. After one fairly hard hike in the Sierra Nevada, I chatted at the trailhead with someone who was getting ready to start. When it came up that I had come all the way from the east coast (a journey of 3000+ miles), and they noticed that my ride was a 250cc motorcycle, it stopped them dead in their tracks. "Dude, that's badass. Hardcore."
Another time was just a few months ago. I needed some stock tanks for my animals, and Tractor Supply charges an arm and a leg for shipping, so I borrowed a friend's beat-up pickup and went to pick them up in person. I have to go there fairly regularly, but as I said above I don't necessarily fall into the normal customer demographic. As I was waiting at the loading dock and the guy came out with them, he took one look at me and just said, completely earnestly, "You don't fuck around with a guy who wears those sandals in this weather." It was around 30F and although I was wearing my normal outdoor-work clothes of Carhartt pants and an old hoodie, I was also wearing the same minimalist sandals I do whenever I'm not using a chainsaw or other equipment that mandates steel-toed boots.
A similar occurrence to that one happened at a race last year. I ran a 50-miler, one that happened to be part of a day of races organized so that people from all the distances (4-miler, 13.1, 26.2, and 50) were finishing together. Multiple people afterwards were shocked/impressed by the fact that I'd done the 50-miler (and did fairly well, #4 male out of >50 male starters), as I ran half in sandals and half in super-minimalist road flats and was still looking quite strong at the end[2]. It wasn't the fact that I'd run 50 miles that impressed people most, it was the fact that I'd done it despite having no outward appearances of it, and with gear that people saw as a hindrance.
Based on these and similar cases, I solidly think the key to appearing badass or impressing people isn't in casting a strong first impression. If anything, the opposite is more helpful. The important part is contrast. If someone is over-the-top right from the get-go, in addition to looking like a try-hard, they set the bar super high for everything that comes next. If you look/act relatively ordinary and then do some random subtle or impossible-to-fake thing that hints at a deep well of strength/determination/DGAFitude, that's going to be far more impactful.
If you want to see the most extreme possible examples of this, Mike Vining[3] and Jonny Kim[4] are gonna have far more moments where people stand in awe of their badassitude in everyday life than, say, Jocko Wilink[5] and Chris Kyle[6].[7]
Disclaimer: this post isn't meant to say it's morally bad or there's no reason to have or do things that might come off as attempts to seem badass. I have a lifted Jeep and own far more than my fair share of unnecessarily tacticool-looking gear. I just think it's important to recognize that by and large, those sorts of things seem more likely to be counterproductive if your main aim is to impress people. That isn't at all to say not to have/do those things if you enjoy them for some other reason.
[1] To be 100% clear, this isn't at all meant to suggest that I'm actually some secret olympic athlete who just looks normal. I have enough random niche athletic successes under my belt that my friends get annoyed when I try to claim that I'm out of shape, but I certainly don't look like I'm capable of even the few not-all-that-noteworthy things I've done over the years.
[2] I always find it funny when people are impressed at how still-functional I sometimes look at the end of long races, because it just means I did a terrible job at pacing. I didn't run the race as quickly as I could've if I'm not crossing the finishing line right as I begin suffering from hypothermia, heat exhaustion, or complete systemic exhaustion. (I'm not sure what the correct medical term for that last one is, but the main symptoms are thermoregulation going haywire for a few hours and exercise-induced immunosuppression that lasts for a few days.)
[5] If you've seen a big, shiny-headed Navy SEAL in the media the last few years, it's probably Jocko.
[7] That's not at all to say that Willink and Kyle aren't/weren't legitimately badasses. I generally hate the entire culture they're usually associated with and most of the military stuff they were involved in, but even I can't deny that however you define it they're many orders of magnitude more badass than me or anyone I know.