Social media and reddit are ruining everything.

[Exodus_2pt0]

I just spent the evening getting down voted on reddit because I had the opinion that a guy could easily make 400whp with a m50b25. People were telling him he'd need e85 (e85 would make it easier, but npt necessary for such a mild goal) or swap the engine, others saying he'd need to a complete engine build for it.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting there thinking "orings and head studs, fuel, boost." And if you go by the people in said reddit group, I'm an idiot.

I really think I'm going to step back from social media and get back into the forum side of things. I can't believe what I'm seeing, when established facts are no longer.

[It's Soda Not Pop]

I'm pretty sure M50's can make 500ish or more unopened. Reddit is not really (imo) a car forum. Sometimes you just have to know that you're right and let the idiots believe whatever.

[MrBurgundy]

Come home, friend.

[rmdashrf]

The internet in general has changed the direction of so many things. It is so much easier to harvest group thinking than before.

[kyleconstantine]

It really sucks the way things are going. I find myself on Facebook daily to check the classifieds and I wish that wasn't how people sold car parts. I miss Craigslist but that's just where all the parts are. I usually resist when I see people asking technical questions outside of r3v because of how much bad info I see.

[Panici]

Modern social media isn't great in general IMO.
They try to hit you with rapid-fire information so you keep scrolling.
I'm sure there are teams of people at big companies looking to harvest your attention span and time.

Specific to the car hobby, you have posts that ask/answer a question, and then disappear into the ether. If there is a search function it's limited to the specific facebook group (for example). Good luck finding this information years later.

Forums are closer to traditional books and magazines. They archive information and save it for future use when managed properly.
On top of that, you can have in-depth discussions over either short or long time spans.

A build thread on a forum is like reading someone's story. Pictures posted to instagram are just a picture flipbook. Which one is more engaging to you?

I've seen an influx of new members on well-managed forums like R3V over the past few years.
When I do post on facebook to give advice, I link a thread from here with the question already answered. Hopefully this pushes traffic to the site and convinces folks to sign up.

[rturbo 930]

Reddit is gay.

[ZeKahr]

Social media is build more more for showing off rather than information sharing and discussion like forums are. With Facebook, you can sort of share information but it quickly gets lost in the waterfall of garbage that’s generally posted on there.

I’ve found Reddit to be a slightly better repository than Facebook for E30-related information (at least not for builds, but just general info) as long as you use the search function. The anonymous aspect of Reddit (just like this forum) also probably also contributes Reddit car communities to being less “Bobo” than Facebook car groups.

If you think Facebook and Reddit are bad, IG and TikTok are worse and that’s where more internet traffic is moving to as that’s where the young kids (include the ones interested in cars) are these days. IG and TikTok perfected their business practices to cater to the young-and-dumb Rainbow Flag generation with short attention spans that ate Tide Pods as kids (aka Gen Z). Those platforms literally offer zero tools for sharing info, and a plethora of tools (filters and shit) intended for showing off and being queen Bee or the big Dawg in an internet popularity contest.

The internet has done a good thing in allowing information to flow faster than ever before. Social media had good intentions of allowing people far away from each other communicate with each other on a more personal level, but has quickly degraded into a cesspool where people one-up each other over the past 10 years of its evolution

I’m curious to see how the Metaverse is gonna impact the car community and the discussions that come up on here about it

[E30 Wagen]

Why would you go to reddit to talk cars? It's a liberal echo chamber for indoor cat people.

[82eye]

Why would you go to reddit to talk cars? It's a liberal echo chamber for indoor cat people.

lol

[AceAndrew777]

Yup, as I've mentioned before, there is an influx of participation on forums again for the reasons already laid out.

Another new ray of sunshine I've begun to notice many of my kid's friends (gen alpha is the new one I guess) ditching (or just not joining) online/screen/social-media. I've asked and many seem to talk about their older siblings being worthless social media addicts and others have talked about wanting to rebel against the covid online schooling.

[Chilezen]

Another new ray of sunshine I've begun to notice many of my kid's friends (gen alpha is the new one I guess) ditching (or just not joining) online/screen/social-media.

I heard on the radio on my way to work, that kids are starting this new trend of going out for a walk without their phone. That's it. The trend is walking. They reinvented a million-year-old pastime. And they're calling it "silent walking."
Seriously. Look it up. This is our world now.

[roguetoaster]

I heard on the radio on my way to work, that kids are starting this new trend of going out for a walk without their phone. That's it. The trend is walking. They reinvented a million-year-old pastime. And they're calling it "silent walking."
Seriously. Look it up. This is our world now.

We could laugh, or we could just look at that as a positive trend. Just let those kids live their lives their way, just as we would want.

Then again, if we're listening to broadcast radio we're probably "old" and our opinions are outdated.

[e30austin]

at this stage in my life, people can do whatever they want and i just don't care. used to spend lots of time trying to help people with their technical questions and arguing with folks and realizing it didn't do me or them any good. now i just quietly lurk and watch.

i hate that i have a Facebook, but as previously mentioned, unfortunately, that's where people go to sell stuff now. i unfollowed most of the car pages/groups i used to be a part of and moved over to German Shepherd pages. that's how you know you're getting old, LOL

[Digitalwave]

Big "get off my lawn" energy in this thread.

All car-discussion mediums have their pros and cons. Forums are never going to return to what they once were, though they may make somewhat of a resurgence. Forums have their own issues are often plagued by dogma and misinformation that becomes canonical. I know I was very guilty of this close-minded rule of the forum in the E30Sport and early R3vlimited days. It may not be as prevalent around here anymore since people simply don't seem to care as much, and the forum has taken a sharp decrease in activity over the last handful of years.