Social media and reddit are ruining everything.

[MrBurgundy]

That's a really good point about FB, Northern. You CAN find more technical groups where a lot of knowledgeable people frequent. The e30 ITB forum is a great example... very specific and in order to be in that group you have to have a set of ITBs, so it weeds out the stupid questions about what brand to get, what oil should I use ect ect so all the real tech questions are drowned out from the noise of people who want ITBs and will probably never own a set.

The more I use FB and look for those groups, the more I ............. *sighs* appreciate it for what it is......

It's no "classic" forum space, but it's better than reddit.

Reddit makes me want to go skydiving without a parachute

[Northern]

And reddit sucks now because it's way too mainstream.

I agree with this a lot. Basically any car subreddit is full of the bottom tier enthusiasts that have nil technical ability.
he Volvo, Mini, and even the E30 subreddits are like this and it's painful. Every once in a while, a decent post surfaces, but it's rare.

Why does this suck? Whenever anyone posts something cool in the Volvo subreddit, it seems to get downvoted into oblivion.
Someone posted a new turbo/manifold/catless downpipe and the post and all their comments were we getting blasted by people who were obviously not even enthusiasts but were for some reason in the group.

Facebook seems to have a leg up in this respect because all the dorks end up in generic named groups, and the more niche groups actually end up being quite technical, but reddit doesn't really seem to have these.
"N18 Mini Group" "M50/M52 Builders" "BMW EST E Series Tuning - advanced (RomRaider MS4X)" all are great groups (albeit the new name of the last one is awful and has been slowly infiltrated with people who can't read)

[strickland]

My wife & I (millennials) both deleted Facebook & Instagram accts. We don’t miss em!

[Kershaw]

Forums > social media.

And reddit sucks now because it's way too mainstream. I quit that shit with their 3rd party app cash grab. Back in my day, the narwhal bacons at midnight. The Vanagon forums are actually fairly active because most of the posters are older than 65, so not all car forums are dying. We're getting there too, lots of gray hairs on my head.

[Chilezen]

"the R3vlimited forum lets you do all that and has the answer to almost any E30 question ever asked. You should join."
his responce was
"There isn't enough traffic there so I wont get an answer"

Kid wants to be spoon-fed the answer he wants, and nothing else. In other words,
"I couldn't be bothered to explore the vast database of information, where I might learn about other things I'm not looking for, in my journey to discover the answer that applies to me. I'm special and my situation is so unique, it couldn't have possibly already happened and been discussed on that ancient website. The group here on this website outnumbers the traffic over there, which is important because the quantity of people obviously has greater value to me than the quality of people and their experience on the matter."


I mean the search function here could be better, but damn it's still a good resource.

Suppose he asks on facebook and gets an answer there. It'll be lost in a day and never seen by anyone outside that group, so the cycle will continue.

[der affe]

We can see how social media has fucked up a generation of kids. Imagine if you will, that same generation growing up on car forums like the old R3vlimited. The world would be a different place.

[der affe]

This reply does not fall in sequence with the above posts, but about a month ago, I had a kid ( I am 52 so everyone but Blunt are kids to me) complaining how the FB group (I am a mod on there also) could not group the For Sales posts the way he thought it should be. I responded with
"the R3vlimited forum lets you do all that and has the answer to almost any E30 question ever asked. You should join."
his responce was
"There isn't enough traffic there so I wont get an answer"

Fucking kids.

[e30davie]

haha. You are only as old as you feel.

I went to a skid pan day in the e30 the other day, and I think at least half the kids were provisional drivers (first year drivers) in their "classic" cars from the early 2000s. So around 20yrs younger than me maybe. I felt quite old in my old car.

[McGyver]

... I'm a bit too old to be going to McDonalds carparks at 10pm to find out...

Wow, that statement hit harder than it should. I'm not Blunt old, but I think I'm old now.

[e30davie]

My first experience with car forums in the early 2000s (late to the game perhaps), but they were local forums, and we had meet ups in carparks very often - sometimes weekly. so you actually knew who the person was behind the user name, you had often met them, seen their car in person, so it was more personal. And I think generally speaking you were less likely to be a jerk on forums as you knew the person behind the user name. I had a lot of fun both on the forum and in real with random guys who I wouldn't normally associate with at all, but we were brought together by owning the same car.

Maybe the same thing exists now at a local level on small Faceballs groups, I'm a bit too old to be going to McDonalds carparks at 10pm to find out. But places like reddit/r/e30 are global forums, everyone is anonymous, nobody knows anyone in real life, so people don't have any reason not to be jerks.

Of course there will always be jerks on the internet and in real life, but back in the day it was only the nerds on the internet. Now everyone gets to have their say.

[AceAndrew777]

^Yes, %100 on point.

My first experience was circa 2002 on IdahoStreetRacing.com (gone now). To my freshman eyes, those guys were the sh**. Their no-nonsense banter was something I'd never been exposed to. I got made fun of initially. However, emulating their attitudes and adopting it for myself is what really helped me out of pretty severe depression. It also helped foster dreams/goals. Shoot, I remember one guy posting photos of his trip to Modena. That was mind blowing, never even considered that was possible. Reading his stories and looking at those pictures was directly responsible for me moving there to study design.

[lambo]

I think back to gym class - the runt of the litter, the small awkward guy in class always got a lot of "Come on man, are you a wimp or what? Do a pull-up! Come on man!" thrown at him. Some would say it was bullying, but looking back at it, it was more of a way to help the guy. He was underperforming to his own standards (not just ours), and we all needed to get him up to snuff - do his personal best - It wasn't to tear the guy down to nothing - it was to get him on the same page. The goal was to, of course, get laid and do well with the ladies, and we were just helping the guy out.

This sounds like my exact upbringing in the r3v community, except I don't get laid.

[george graves]

social media sites lack the amount of bullying that forums provided.

You call it bullying, I call it shaming. Sometimes it's two sides of the same coin.

I think back to gym class - the runt of the litter, the small awkward guy in class always got a lot of "Come on man, are you a wimp or what? Do a pull-up! Come on man!" thrown at him. Some would say it was bullying, but looking back at it, it was more of a way to help the guy. He was underperforming to his own standards (not just ours), and we all needed to get him up to snuff - do his personal best - It wasn't to tear the guy down to nothing - it was to get him on the same page. The goal was to, of course, get laid and do well with the ladies, and we were just helping the guy out.

[E30 Wagen]

We really ought to just ban tiktok. Of all the social media platforms I've used tiktok is by far the most addicting, it's almost scary how much of a timesuck it is. The algorithm will figure out if I'm in a bad mood and queue up more depressing, cynical shit to reinforce it and make me feel worse, and I know I'm not alone in that because those videos have tons of views. And considering it's a chinese owned company it almost feels like psychological warfare to be wrecking our attention spans and make us feel like crap about everything.

[Northern]

Yeah social media has a lot of muck and wrong info to sort through, but so do forums.
For example, look at all the shit out there telling people to OBD1 swap M52s and M54s, delete DISA & VANOS, etc.

I think all the general groups - r/e30, any general e30 group on facebook, etc. are all full of basic googleable questions and bad answers.
The more niche groups have a lot of good info - E30 Forced Induction Crew, Boosted E36 world, the MS41 Romraider group that now has a fucked up name, etc.