I just typed out about 600 words in response to the reaction today’s Ask Bark received from the B&B. And then I deleted it. Whew, I feel much better now.
He’s an incredibly dedicated troll. He used to be known as petezeiss, until somebody (I believe it was Derek) banned him, so now he’s back under this name.
It was mostly about people trying to superimpose their values on somebody else. The kid wants a Mustang or an import tuner, and you think he should have a Corolla? Furthermore, you want to talk shit on him because either A) he’s been busting his ass on a paper route or bagging groceries to save money or B) his parents actually give a fuck about him? Pisses me off.
Derek banned him. After Derek left, he came back. He’s had a number of names over there.
If the kid wants a Mustang, he should get a Mustang. He’ll need winter tires around here though (which you recommended).
For some reason, people get pissed when parents buy a 16 year old a newish car. I have the means, so my daughter will have a new, or close to new car when she’s driving. People act like that’s a terrible thing.
It’s generational. Most of the older Xers I know have been through a bump or three and are more inclined to save FU money than splurge relative to even younger Xers or Ys. Or were/knew 16 yo’s that (repeatedly) balled up brand new cars.
but the thing is, the bulk of the comments were at least on point and more or less agreed with you. There’s a big difference between being able to afford to buy a particular car, and being able to afford to own it. regardless of where the money came from, he seemed like he was only planning so far ahead as being able to blow his entire budget on buying a car. Especially on something like a 3000GT/Dodge Stealth, those cars were never big sellers back in the day so he’d likely drive it for a week before something expensive broke, then he’s got an $11,000 lawn ornament.
Yah but the problem here was he’s asking about cars that a brand new driver has absolutely no business being in control of. You and I are about the same age, but I’ve had no professional training or track time. when I had my 2012 Mustang GT there were a few times I did something which could have turned out badly and had me beating myself up for the rest of the day. Now imagine giving that car to a 16-year-old (who is by definition inexperienced, reckless and irresponsible) who has little more than a few hours of on-road experience and no idea that you’re not supposed to floor it around a turn; and when the rear end breaks loose has no idea how to get out of a skid. Now he’s just endangered his life and likely the lives of others.
You’re a skilled driver, and you know how to handle powerful cars. But I think you’re looking at this in the mindset of “I would have loved to have one of these cars in high school” and not considering that if we all had the cars we wanted in high school a lot fewer of us would have lived long enough to graduate.
An ’05 GT is not in the same league as a ’12. Not to say a kid couldn’t kill himself with either, but an ’05 is down about 120 horses. A kid can kill himself with a Volkswagen Fox.
too many comments over there to read through and it’s a day late anyways, so here we are.
seems like he, as was likely true for most of us when younger & still somewhat today, wants a cool ride that gives him a community to be involved with and the opportunity to learn to work on it a bit as well. I understand he asked about several specific cars but if he was dead set on something the others wouldn’t be on the list.
what about a jeep wrangler? expensive to buy but they hold their value. girls always want to ride in a jeep. 4×4 for the winters. cage for when he rolls it. huge community & lots more add on farkles than necessary to start getting his hands dirty.
If you’re asking about Jeeps, yes I think they are. However people tend to do more to keep them running than other cars. Passion, insanity or a little bit of both maybe. They are easy to work on, parts are readily available and are generally pretty inexpensive.
Three of my cousins all got new CLK55 and CLK63 AMG’s when they turned 16; the fourth got a Focus ST and the difference in cash since his father wouldn’t let him get a Boss 302 or a GT500… none of this makes them bad people just because they chose to allocate their resources this way…I’ll never understand shaming someone with the means to have something they want for not picking the most utilitarian choice; just because you derive some pleasure from making the utilitarian choice doesn’t make it the most optimal consumption set for someone else.
Your advice was fine. The commentators over there are 50/50 trolls at best or don’t add anything of value whatsoever. Rideheight especially. Or that Corey guy that dabbles in salvage title previous gen entry level luxury. Is it an informative site or basically a chatroom for lower middle management in their cube farm? Wading through all the crap to get to a decent comment is getting tiring. Highlight is watching morons like HighDesertCat get caught in wrong statements over and over again, most recently the one he made saying that there will be no 2016 Jeep Grand Cherokee according to his “highly placed dealer contacts”. Uh-huh, go to Jeep.com and now see the 2016 JGC in all its glory. Your articles are usually worth reading, the commentary usually much less so. The most enjoyable nuggets are when you come back to reply…
Alright, I could have phrased my pejorative’s better, nothing wrong with middle management in general 🙂 No offense meant to anyone here. And yes, HDC in particular causes me to become practically apoplectic and have to walk away from my computer. I can’t tell if he’s actively trolling or just that out of touch although I strongly suspect the latter. Whenever called on something (often) he abrubtly abandons the thread.
I’m “ajla” over on TTAC, so i’em not sure if I’m on your sh*tlist or not.
Honestly, I don’t like gumming up the comments with barely on-topic stuff or complaining about my Charger (even though it blows) but the TTAC forum area is worthless and I do enjoy the back-and-forth with some of the B&B.
Maybe the solution is to do more “open threads” or something?
I think we need to do a better job of building community at TTAC. BUT, it’s easier said than done. Jalopnik has a great community, and when you meet the guys in person, they come off much less douchey than they do on Kinja.
kinja stinks because of the way it lays out comments. I’ve said something incorrect and had someone correct me, then 15 other people also correct me because they haven’t seen I’ve been corrected 14 times already.
Kinja just stinks, period. I’ve been grayed out on my own articles.
I don’t have a solid position on that. the “grayed comments” thing came back around because trolls were spamming violent porn .gifs in the comments. I don’t care if the site is Jalopnik, Gizmodo, Gawker, or Jezebel, that s**t is not welcome. If I want to watch porn, I can find it myself. I can roll my eyes or rage at stuff posted on Gawker or Jezebel, but they don’t deserve this shit.
the problem is that it’s been so long since they made that decision that two problems have arisen:
1) you can post a bunch of worthwhile comments, but you’ll be in the grays until someone approves you
2) even sub-blogs have to approve commenters. e.g. just because I’m OK to post in the clear at jalopnik.com doesn’t mean I’m in the clear at lanesplitter.jalopnik.com.
at any rate, things are why they are because there are people who see something and thing “I don’t like that, so I’m going to go piss all over it.”
You’re not on mine if you were referring to me. Actually nobody that is over here is. And if you were I’m sure you don’t really care which is as it should be. Maybe I’m just a bit grouchy. There is nothing Best and Brightest about the commentariat anymore to a large degree, it’s more of a sad joke really. Most of the interesting and worthwhile additive commentators left somewhere around the middle of the reign of Bertel. Probably the most interesting commentary these days is left by the guy that is connected to the oil industry or at least understands the inner workings thereof when he speaks in reference to that field. It used to be that the article was part one and the commentary was part two and added worthwhile content. Now it’s like panning for gold with a few nuggets spread far and wide in the worthless dirt.
Also, many of the posts themselves have gotten worse over time. Thank goodness the “news” is finally gone. It’s not news if it’s not fresh and the most recent writer’s overly snarky interpretation got really old really fast. Adding personal insight is fine, adding snark for the sake of it is not. Not witty, not edgy. Just lame. Real industry insights are much more interesting that just regurgitating or outright copying the posts of others but I realize it’s hard to cultivate relationships when so much of the reviewed product sucks and is rightfully being called out for it (catch-22 I suppose) which was the whole draw to begin with.
I have no idea of most people’s ages over there (I’m 46 and stopped commenting several years ago even though I read literally almost everything) but in general I would think that the average commenter’s age has dropped by at least one, possibly even almost two decades. With age often comes experience which can breed wisdom which can help the commentary section. I’m not saying every young person is an idiot or every old person is knowledgable (far from it) but as an overall it’s been skewing bad for the last couple of years.
I don’t mind the current layout of the commentary section. Jalopnik is what’s hard to read what with having to constantly load more comments or figuring out gray vs non-gray crap. It’s not hard to read or respond to unless you’re Ruggles and are too blind (literally and figuratively) to see the Reply button on every post.
One of the best parts of any site is when the original author engages in the commentary. The Baruth’s are OK at it, Ronnie isn’t bad either, Newsbot (both generations) got defensive really fast. DeMuro is absolutely phoning it in, cashing the check and then saving his better (comparatively) stuff for elsewhere. Pretty much the same with Murilee (whom I adore in most of his other settings). It’s obvious when someone corrects something blatantly wrong with the post within the first ten comments or so and then there is no response. Fuck it, why bother with those guys, they don’t care so why should we.
Doug knows when he’s been beaten. He doesn’t dare interact with the TTAC commenters.
Bark, there should be TTAC and TTAC-lite. DDM, current format MM, and Newsbot along with much of the commentariat should be at the lite site. I know, the world and business (i.e. advertising) doesn’t work that way. That’s why dreck like the Kardashians and Housewives are widely watched and good stuff like The Wire has to be hunted for.
I tend to think of Riverside Green here as the “non-lite” version of TTAC, in some ways. We’ve never advertised here, and I doubt we ever will, and we aren’t worried about traffic. It’s a wonderful luxury.
Like I griped above, the real problem is the way Kinja orders/groups “discussions.” Sometimes you’ll scroll down and it’ll show “All replies.” But then later on, it’ll group them by “Author’s Discussions” and show a string of people who replied directly to the article. You have to pretty much go back to All replies and expand/unhide everything to make sure you don’t miss something. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had dozens of people say the same things to me because they didn’t see that a bunch of people had already made the point.
Kinja’d!
I’m just glad Bark pointed out that legitimate snow tires on a rear wheel drive V8 will do just fine in snowy winters.
I might even go as far to say a RWD car with snow tires will do better than an AWD with all seasons.
I drove my 2005 Mustang GT with aftermarket 4.10s year round in snowy Germany when I was stationed there some years ago.
on a car with reasonably-balanced weight distribution (the Mustang qualifies) sure. but if it’s front-biased like a pickup truck, it can be pretty different. my Ranger, even with Winterforce tires, will scrabble for traction in 2WD. When I click it over to 4H, it’s unstoppable.
I never drove my Mustang in the snow, so I will take you at your word.
I just piloted my 2WD Colorado with mud rated AT tires throughout he recent snow and slush here in TN without much issue… But certainly if it was 4wd it would be superior because all else was equal.
Really my point is, if I’m going to chose any random car to navigate snowy roads, I’m going to defer to the car with a good set of snow tires first before I move on the drivetrain considerations.
As for the mustang, the 4.10s gave me enough gearing to start in second, and with a slight slip of the clutch I was moving along fine. I had Hankook Icebears on my GT.
38 Comments
Good idea. https://xkcd.com/386/
That’s what I do to everything I think about posting anywhere on the Internet these days…
I’ve found myself in that same boat quite frequently too.
Was it about Rideheight? That guy is the worst. He’s such an idiot that I almost think he’s just a very dedicated troll.
He’s an incredibly dedicated troll. He used to be known as petezeiss, until somebody (I believe it was Derek) banned him, so now he’s back under this name.
It was mostly about people trying to superimpose their values on somebody else. The kid wants a Mustang or an import tuner, and you think he should have a Corolla? Furthermore, you want to talk shit on him because either A) he’s been busting his ass on a paper route or bagging groceries to save money or B) his parents actually give a fuck about him? Pisses me off.
Derek banned him. After Derek left, he came back. He’s had a number of names over there.
If the kid wants a Mustang, he should get a Mustang. He’ll need winter tires around here though (which you recommended).
For some reason, people get pissed when parents buy a 16 year old a newish car. I have the means, so my daughter will have a new, or close to new car when she’s driving. People act like that’s a terrible thing.
I agree with you. This kid has the option to buy something exciting right now. He should go for it. The B&B can be too frugal for their own good.
It’s generational. Most of the older Xers I know have been through a bump or three and are more inclined to save FU money than splurge relative to even younger Xers or Ys. Or were/knew 16 yo’s that (repeatedly) balled up brand new cars.
I apologize for my “get off mah lawn” stuff.
but the thing is, the bulk of the comments were at least on point and more or less agreed with you. There’s a big difference between being able to afford to buy a particular car, and being able to afford to own it. regardless of where the money came from, he seemed like he was only planning so far ahead as being able to blow his entire budget on buying a car. Especially on something like a 3000GT/Dodge Stealth, those cars were never big sellers back in the day so he’d likely drive it for a week before something expensive broke, then he’s got an $11,000 lawn ornament.
I think it’s okay to make those mistakes, though. Live and learn. You can’t put old heads on young shoulders. Insert additional cliches.
Yah but the problem here was he’s asking about cars that a brand new driver has absolutely no business being in control of. You and I are about the same age, but I’ve had no professional training or track time. when I had my 2012 Mustang GT there were a few times I did something which could have turned out badly and had me beating myself up for the rest of the day. Now imagine giving that car to a 16-year-old (who is by definition inexperienced, reckless and irresponsible) who has little more than a few hours of on-road experience and no idea that you’re not supposed to floor it around a turn; and when the rear end breaks loose has no idea how to get out of a skid. Now he’s just endangered his life and likely the lives of others.
You’re a skilled driver, and you know how to handle powerful cars. But I think you’re looking at this in the mindset of “I would have loved to have one of these cars in high school” and not considering that if we all had the cars we wanted in high school a lot fewer of us would have lived long enough to graduate.
An ’05 GT is not in the same league as a ’12. Not to say a kid couldn’t kill himself with either, but an ’05 is down about 120 horses. A kid can kill himself with a Volkswagen Fox.
I had a 2010 before it, and that car was still something to be respected. they were still sub-5 second (to 60) if equipped with the 3.73 rear.
Yes. The only one that was reasonable was the Mustang. Everything else was either going to be too big a headache or too expensive.
Nobody really needs a Dodge Stealth in their life either. High expectations, total let down.
too many comments over there to read through and it’s a day late anyways, so here we are.
seems like he, as was likely true for most of us when younger & still somewhat today, wants a cool ride that gives him a community to be involved with and the opportunity to learn to work on it a bit as well. I understand he asked about several specific cars but if he was dead set on something the others wouldn’t be on the list.
what about a jeep wrangler? expensive to buy but they hold their value. girls always want to ride in a jeep. 4×4 for the winters. cage for when he rolls it. huge community & lots more add on farkles than necessary to start getting his hands dirty.
Are they reliable at all? I’m very tempted to pick one up but to get to my price range, I have to go back to the 90s.
If you’re asking about Jeeps, yes I think they are. However people tend to do more to keep them running than other cars. Passion, insanity or a little bit of both maybe. They are easy to work on, parts are readily available and are generally pretty inexpensive.
Three of my cousins all got new CLK55 and CLK63 AMG’s when they turned 16; the fourth got a Focus ST and the difference in cash since his father wouldn’t let him get a Boss 302 or a GT500… none of this makes them bad people just because they chose to allocate their resources this way…I’ll never understand shaming someone with the means to have something they want for not picking the most utilitarian choice; just because you derive some pleasure from making the utilitarian choice doesn’t make it the most optimal consumption set for someone else.
Your advice was fine. The commentators over there are 50/50 trolls at best or don’t add anything of value whatsoever. Rideheight especially. Or that Corey guy that dabbles in salvage title previous gen entry level luxury. Is it an informative site or basically a chatroom for lower middle management in their cube farm? Wading through all the crap to get to a decent comment is getting tiring. Highlight is watching morons like HighDesertCat get caught in wrong statements over and over again, most recently the one he made saying that there will be no 2016 Jeep Grand Cherokee according to his “highly placed dealer contacts”. Uh-huh, go to Jeep.com and now see the 2016 JGC in all its glory. Your articles are usually worth reading, the commentary usually much less so. The most enjoyable nuggets are when you come back to reply…
I try not to feed trolls, but sometimes I can’t help it.
commenters at TTAC may sometimes make me roll my eyes (or enrage me like HDC) but at least practically all of them know how to spell.
Hey. I’m normal middle management.
Alright, I could have phrased my pejorative’s better, nothing wrong with middle management in general 🙂 No offense meant to anyone here. And yes, HDC in particular causes me to become practically apoplectic and have to walk away from my computer. I can’t tell if he’s actively trolling or just that out of touch although I strongly suspect the latter. Whenever called on something (often) he abrubtly abandons the thread.
I’m “ajla” over on TTAC, so i’em not sure if I’m on your sh*tlist or not.
Honestly, I don’t like gumming up the comments with barely on-topic stuff or complaining about my Charger (even though it blows) but the TTAC forum area is worthless and I do enjoy the back-and-forth with some of the B&B.
Maybe the solution is to do more “open threads” or something?
I think we need to do a better job of building community at TTAC. BUT, it’s easier said than done. Jalopnik has a great community, and when you meet the guys in person, they come off much less douchey than they do on Kinja.
kinja stinks because of the way it lays out comments. I’ve said something incorrect and had someone correct me, then 15 other people also correct me because they haven’t seen I’ve been corrected 14 times already.
Kinja just stinks, period. I’ve been grayed out on my own articles.
I don’t have a solid position on that. the “grayed comments” thing came back around because trolls were spamming violent porn .gifs in the comments. I don’t care if the site is Jalopnik, Gizmodo, Gawker, or Jezebel, that s**t is not welcome. If I want to watch porn, I can find it myself. I can roll my eyes or rage at stuff posted on Gawker or Jezebel, but they don’t deserve this shit.
the problem is that it’s been so long since they made that decision that two problems have arisen:
1) you can post a bunch of worthwhile comments, but you’ll be in the grays until someone approves you
2) even sub-blogs have to approve commenters. e.g. just because I’m OK to post in the clear at jalopnik.com doesn’t mean I’m in the clear at lanesplitter.jalopnik.com.
at any rate, things are why they are because there are people who see something and thing “I don’t like that, so I’m going to go piss all over it.”
You’re not on mine if you were referring to me. Actually nobody that is over here is. And if you were I’m sure you don’t really care which is as it should be. Maybe I’m just a bit grouchy. There is nothing Best and Brightest about the commentariat anymore to a large degree, it’s more of a sad joke really. Most of the interesting and worthwhile additive commentators left somewhere around the middle of the reign of Bertel. Probably the most interesting commentary these days is left by the guy that is connected to the oil industry or at least understands the inner workings thereof when he speaks in reference to that field. It used to be that the article was part one and the commentary was part two and added worthwhile content. Now it’s like panning for gold with a few nuggets spread far and wide in the worthless dirt.
Also, many of the posts themselves have gotten worse over time. Thank goodness the “news” is finally gone. It’s not news if it’s not fresh and the most recent writer’s overly snarky interpretation got really old really fast. Adding personal insight is fine, adding snark for the sake of it is not. Not witty, not edgy. Just lame. Real industry insights are much more interesting that just regurgitating or outright copying the posts of others but I realize it’s hard to cultivate relationships when so much of the reviewed product sucks and is rightfully being called out for it (catch-22 I suppose) which was the whole draw to begin with.
I have no idea of most people’s ages over there (I’m 46 and stopped commenting several years ago even though I read literally almost everything) but in general I would think that the average commenter’s age has dropped by at least one, possibly even almost two decades. With age often comes experience which can breed wisdom which can help the commentary section. I’m not saying every young person is an idiot or every old person is knowledgable (far from it) but as an overall it’s been skewing bad for the last couple of years.
I don’t mind the current layout of the commentary section. Jalopnik is what’s hard to read what with having to constantly load more comments or figuring out gray vs non-gray crap. It’s not hard to read or respond to unless you’re Ruggles and are too blind (literally and figuratively) to see the Reply button on every post.
One of the best parts of any site is when the original author engages in the commentary. The Baruth’s are OK at it, Ronnie isn’t bad either, Newsbot (both generations) got defensive really fast. DeMuro is absolutely phoning it in, cashing the check and then saving his better (comparatively) stuff for elsewhere. Pretty much the same with Murilee (whom I adore in most of his other settings). It’s obvious when someone corrects something blatantly wrong with the post within the first ten comments or so and then there is no response. Fuck it, why bother with those guys, they don’t care so why should we.
Doug knows when he’s been beaten. He doesn’t dare interact with the TTAC commenters.
Bark, there should be TTAC and TTAC-lite. DDM, current format MM, and Newsbot along with much of the commentariat should be at the lite site. I know, the world and business (i.e. advertising) doesn’t work that way. That’s why dreck like the Kardashians and Housewives are widely watched and good stuff like The Wire has to be hunted for.
I tend to think of Riverside Green here as the “non-lite” version of TTAC, in some ways. We’ve never advertised here, and I doubt we ever will, and we aren’t worried about traffic. It’s a wonderful luxury.
Like I griped above, the real problem is the way Kinja orders/groups “discussions.” Sometimes you’ll scroll down and it’ll show “All replies.” But then later on, it’ll group them by “Author’s Discussions” and show a string of people who replied directly to the article. You have to pretty much go back to All replies and expand/unhide everything to make sure you don’t miss something. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had dozens of people say the same things to me because they didn’t see that a bunch of people had already made the point.
Kinja’d!
I’m just glad Bark pointed out that legitimate snow tires on a rear wheel drive V8 will do just fine in snowy winters.
I might even go as far to say a RWD car with snow tires will do better than an AWD with all seasons.
I drove my 2005 Mustang GT with aftermarket 4.10s year round in snowy Germany when I was stationed there some years ago.
on a car with reasonably-balanced weight distribution (the Mustang qualifies) sure. but if it’s front-biased like a pickup truck, it can be pretty different. my Ranger, even with Winterforce tires, will scrabble for traction in 2WD. When I click it over to 4H, it’s unstoppable.
I never drove my Mustang in the snow, so I will take you at your word.
I just piloted my 2WD Colorado with mud rated AT tires throughout he recent snow and slush here in TN without much issue… But certainly if it was 4wd it would be superior because all else was equal.
Really my point is, if I’m going to chose any random car to navigate snowy roads, I’m going to defer to the car with a good set of snow tires first before I move on the drivetrain considerations.
As for the mustang, the 4.10s gave me enough gearing to start in second, and with a slight slip of the clutch I was moving along fine. I had Hankook Icebears on my GT.
That was sort of the thought that was running through my head as I was halfway through typing the response…Keep it up!
I’m not digging through all that right now. Civic. Any Civic.