User forums are, some would say, simply microcosms of powersports ownership community. That they are essentially egalitarian, democratic, even grass-roots in nature. This seems an intelligent, comfortably reasonable, powerfully simple defense, but it is actually a very simplistic one and very wrong.
Powersports forums are essentially incestuous. They are destroying the industry through the misinformation that ensures that new powersports consumers are ignorant. If a large number of people believe a thing, it must be true. Yet rallying around a falsehood, celebrating it, codifying it, repeating it incessantly, in no way adds value to it. Opinion unmoored in objective, qualified fact has an echo, but no substance. Forums are completely silent on literally hundreds of issues vital to powersports consumers, while at the same time their leaders think their discoveries and observations exhaustive, definitive, despite their actually being very limited. It's like someone reading a book on the subject of war and from then on lashing out at the decorated military veteran whose real experience questions their superficially informed view. And the more authoritative the questioner, the more vitriolic and confrontational the attack. This should constitute a resounding alarm for any thinking person.
