The Automotive Internet In A Single Photo
I finally found it: the image that sums up all the frustrations of Internet car enthusiasm in just a couple kilobytes.
It's part of a discussion you can find here, but to spare you the tragedy of trawling through the Duramax Diesels Forum I'll give you the high points from my perspective:
Navel-gazing sub-category of a hobby? Check; the forum is devoted to people who drag race diesel trucks on run-what-you-brung nights.
Bragging about dyno charts? Yup.
Asperger's syndrome contrarianism? Yup --- the guy who sees a dyno chart for a 550 horsepower two and a half ton diesel truck and, based on the reporting of an ET at an unknown dragstrip in unknown conditions, confidently announces that the dyno is ten horsepower off. That's two percent.
The whole car-fan internet is like this: people rendering opinions on things they've never seen, experienced, or touched based on some narrow misunderstanding of raw data. It makes me want to quit the business sometimes. There's just no satisfying the people in Mom's basement.