Maynard Hershon January '10 Print E-mail
Two Weeks Clean
Hi! My name is Maynard and I’ve just kicked an unhealthy addiction to three online forums dedicated to Kawasaki KLR650s. I would check each forum two or three (or more) times each day, especially if I’d posted to one of them myself. I learned from those forums and contributed to them in return, but not often—only when I had solid personal knowledge of the matter at hand.
I’ve followed forums about my last few bikes. There wasn’t much drama on the Honda GB500 or Triumph Thruxton sites. They’re happy bikes, I’d say, with happy owners. Many of the owners/posters could spell and punctuate. Most were gracious to newcomers asking the same old questions, and would advise guys who obviously wanted to avoid paying too much for a bike.
Because those forums were so civilized, I figured that, like them, the KLR owners forums would be places for the exchange of ideas and sources of help for new owners or not-so-mechanically inclined owners. I thought that the dialogue on the KLR sites would focus on the bikes—good and bad. I thought the members would be knowledgeable guys or women who’d think about what they were posting. I was so wrong.
I found all three KLR forums to be frequented by tunnel-vision KLR freaks. If a guy’s new KLR used a quart of oil in 1,000 miles, he would not waste time asking Kawasaki for help. He would not take it to his dealer (“stealer” in forum-speak). He would take the head and barrel off his bike (still in warranty, mind you) and replace the offending piston and cylinder sleeve with upgraded parts. If he did much of the work himself, he could spend about $500 doing the job. All the while, he’d defend his choice of bike.
If you said you intended to seek Kawasaki’s help about the oil consumption, either from the dealer or from Kawasaki USA, you were called names and shouted down. Hey. Cowboy up. Upgrade your almost-new motorcycle yourself, was the message. Some of the guys calling you a wuss were six-month motorcyclists.
All motorcycles (all vehicles, really) have problems, said the posters time after time after time. Why do they feel that way? I don’t know.
The posters evidently hate BMW motorcycles, singling them out especially for criticism, citing rear drive failures on recent twins and the expense of repairing the German bikes. KLRs, they’d say, are cheap to fix. You can do it yourself. For the price of a BMW, they’d post, you can buy two KLRs and have money left over to spend on upgrades and accessories to make “your KLR your own.”
Or they’d say, “You think KLRs have problems! Check out the Harley forums!”
Almost no one felt that new bikes should be relatively trouble-free. Guys insisted they’d bought new KLRs knowing about the issues and laborious fixes. I bought mine despite all that, they’d state, and I just love it! Posters would forgive Kawasaki anything...anything. But most would never take their bike to a Kawasaki dealer—or any dealer.
Doing “the first things every new KLR owner should do” meant hours and hours of labor in your garage. If you groused about all that effort to correct factory sloppiness, you were called names and shouted down. If you said that you’d been inconvenienced by the several recalls that meant leaving your bike at the stealer’s store, you were called names and shouted down.
If you said you weren’t convinced that a KLR is the most bike for the money in motorcycling, or that it isn’t the finest adventure tourer bar none, you were called names and shouted down. GS BMWs? KTMs? Junk. KLRs rule.
You could exchange ideas all day if your ideas were the same as the posters who dominated the forums. Other ideas were not tolerated. Either you were a KLR cheerleader—or you were not welcome. You were a troll.
Nothing in the names of the sites or their owners’ descriptions of them led you to believe this narrowness of vision would be the case.
And the posters would often go off-subject, typically about politics. The posts about national affairs were the sort of offensive America First, self-reliant, Get Government out of our Lives parroting we live with today—pop politics. If you suggested that you had not come to the site for political punditry, you were called names and shouted down. Forum moderators never interfered.
I’d never encountered so many experts in one place, so many guys so sure of themselves, as on those forums. Experts in riding and repair and maintenance, in constitutional law, in firearms lore and back-country rough ‘n’ ready skills. Experts who could not spell or make readable sentences, who confused “sight” with “site.”
I realized that the forums were unhealthy for me, depressing. I’m a print guy, remember. When I read what someone has written—for publication anywhere, really—I expect that that individual will have tried to identify with his/her reader, and will have tried to follow generally accepted rules of grammar and spelling. I was repeatedly disappointed.
And I’m a rider. So I expect a certain standard of decorum or class or consideration from one rider toward others. I expect guys who don’t know what they’re talking about to listen, not expound. I was routinely disappointed. I asked myself: When I’d been riding for six months, did I try to pass myself off as an expert? Oh, I hope not.
I’m sure I held the rudeness and ignorance of so many KLR owners against my KLR. The forums were ruining my experience of the motorcycle. So I abruptly quit following them. I took the icons off my home page. I unsubscribed to the automatic notices that appeared when someone posted to a thread to which I’d previously contributed. I just quit, cold turkey, all of it. Whew.
Within hours, I felt better generally and specifically about my bike. After all, my bike is okay now. Its issues are dealt with, it’s paid for, I have a terrific set of new Happy Trails aluminum pannier boxes (www.happy-trails.com), the bike always goes further than 50 miles on a (U.S.) gallon of fuel. I can indeed fix most things that might go wrong. And on a certain level I have enjoyed doing the work, though God knows there’s been a lot of it.
If I had conclusions about the Internet and online forums, I’d share them with you. But I don’t. If you’ve thought about this phenomenon and share some of my opinions or hold conflicting ones, please write me care of the editor: ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ).
 
[ Back ]