What’s wrong with our automotive websites and how can YOU change it?

I’m bored.

There’s so little inspiration out there! To read 1 good article, you have to wade through a tsunami of 100,000 bad ones. Everyone writes the same, everyone thinks the same, it’s just a festival of mediocrity that I can’t seem to escape from. When was the last time you read an article that made you think? 

It’s all about being “viral” nowadays.

As a self-proclaimed “writer”, I believe I need to consume good stuff before I can produce good stuff. I have repeatedly asked for help, on social media and in real life, but unfortunately there is not one single automotive website out there that consistently churns out readable stuff.

Why is it all about NEWS? Don’t we already have far too much of that? If I really want to read stories written by the PR department of a motorcycle corporation, about the aforementioned motorcycle corporation launching another new shitty little bike that’s basically just the old bike with some new stickers, I would go to fucking Times of India.

I don’t understand where things have gone wrong, but here’s what I think the reasons are for this demotivating madness. I’ve seen this pattern in all of these idiotic websites, and I’m kinda surprised they haven’t noticed it yet themselves. I guess when everybody looks like everyone else, it’s kinda hard to remember who you really are. Here’s what wrong with ALL of our automotive websites.

1. Rumors are more important than reality:

I just don’t fucking get it. Let’s say there are 2 news stories, one where something real happens, one that people would most likely care about, one that doesn’t involve a bunch of imaginary bullshit, and the other that’s just a figment of somebody’s mind, an obvious attempt at “creation” rather than reporting, a baseless rumor about an irrelevant object.

The second story is the one that always wins, the rumor always gets published.

WHY? I don’t get it. Let’s take for example this post, which talks about a twin cylinder CBR250R. My first question is, who gives a fuck? What possible difference could 2 cylinders make on a 250cc engine? You really think adding a bunch of pistons and valves will make any discernible difference to your top speed or acceleration?

But what’s really interesting about this article is their source, the site that they’ve linked to for this “scoop”. I hate that word, it means nothing, what is a scoop? A scoop of sugar? A scoop of horsecrap? But truth be told, they are being honest here. The site that they’ve linked to here is truly a scoop of donkey doo doo. It’s some weird shit in Japanese that I couldn’t even read. The cover doesn’t even say anything about twin cylinders, it’s just a photo of a whacky looking bike with a lot of numbers written around it. When you translate the page, you see this line:

Decorate the top of the Young machine March issue, it’s scoop about new models Honda to enter the twin 250 sports front.

Are you fucking kidding me?

In a country that has the most number of motorcycles in the world, a place where something new is happening everyday, a land of opportunities and learning, you pick up an unsubstantiated, retarded little line from some punkass little magazine and write a whole article about it? It’s almost like the writer purposely wants the reader to punch his arm right through the screen and die of electrocution.

It may well be true, based on what you’ll see in the next point.

2. It’s all about numbers:

Check out this post about requirement for a writer at Bikeadvice. Do you find anything odd in there? No? Allow me to help.

• This is a full-time from-home job which needs you to stay online between 09:30 am to 6:00 pm on regular days.
• Saturdays are half days and Sundays are holidays..!
• Write a total of 7 quality articles per day on both cars (for MotorBash.com) and bikes (for BikeAdvice.in).

To me, that entire post is a temple of ironies. You want somebody to write about cars and bikes, by staying indoors from 9:30 in the morning till 6 in the evening, on every day but Sunday. But wait! How could  I forget they are nice enough to give half a day off on Saturday! Don’t you find this amazing?

They expect this person to write 7 “quality” articles per day, for 2 completely different domains and interest types. Does anyone have any idea how difficult it is to write just one good article a day? Writing a well-researched, well-worded, good-looking article easily takes 4-5 hours of work, a whole day if it’s big. Just for reference, the part of this article that you are have read till now took me 5 hours to complete, the rest is still work in progress. But fuck that, be a man and write 7 of those motherfuckers every day, and make sure they are “quality”.

It’s OK, I get it, it’s all about money isn’t it? I’ve been working my ass off these last 4 years, doing shit I didn’t want to do, just for the sake of Rupees. I understand you have to be practical, so let’s talk greenies here, how much would I make if I can meet this obviously impossible target?

• Consolidated payment between Rs 15,000 to 20,000 per month
• Add to this another few bucks based on performance
• Additional internet charges (fixed)
• And there will be pay hikes after regular intervals
• Needless to mention truck loads of motoring fun you will be entitled to, for free

Do you see the patronizing tone here, or is it just me? Doesn’t it sound like Kim Kardashian is offering you to clean out the semen from her anus 6 days a week, while amazingly managing to sound like the soulless little piece of cunty trash that she is? Most importantly, how the fuck are you supposed to get the “truck loads of motoring fun you will be entitled to, for free ” shit if you get out of your room only on Sundays?

It’s all about numbers.

Nobody cares about quality, it’s all about quantity. The unfortunate fact is that it works, people are dumb enough to just click on ANYTHING they see on their stupid phones. This also explains why rumors always win, it’s obvious! The dude who’s writing that shit is like blow me! I’ll just copy this text from this website that isn’t even saying what I’m saying it is, and voila! Article done in 10 minutes. Why would anybody spend the time and effort to write a useful post when he has such ridiculous deadlines to achieve? Even if he is able to do it today, there’s no possible way anyone can keep churning out 7 awesome articles per day for the rest of eternity, unless he’s George R. R. Martin.

Which brings us to the next obvious consequence of this chain of stupidity.

3. There’s no personal touch:

How can there be? You’ve already seen how dim-witted you have to be to survive this creativity-raping environment, how could one possibly write emotional, thoughtful, close to the heart articles when clearly nobody gives a rat’s ass what vomit he is uploading onto the internet?

You could just randomly exchange the writers from Autocar with those from Overdrive, and no one would fucking notice.

The articles that you read nowadays almost feel inhuman, like those bald little Observers from Fringe wrote them. EVERYBODY writes the same diarrhea, vile, unreadable, brainless excrement that should really be declared a biohazard and quarantined in Area 51.

There’ll be a dude reviewing the most powerful bike in the world, and his words will make you feel like he’s talking about his grandma’s moist, wrinkled and saggy boobs.

There used to be a time when legends like Dilip Bam reviewed shit and got sued for 100 crore bucks by giant corporations. Where are those balls? Where’s that originality? I can’t imagine somebody became an automobile journalist even though he hated cars and bikes, it’s not like engineering that you just HAVE to do. Where the fuck is your passion? When did you die and got buried and then rose from the dead to become a zombie asshole auto journo?

If you don’t enjoy writing about cars and bikes, get another fucking job. Don’t ruin my day just because you can’t get your shit together. Go work in IT, nobody gives a fuck what you do there anyway. You’ll get paid better, get more respect, and eat the brains of some pesky foreign snob rather than mine.

If you thought this was enough, wait, it gets better.

4. The cycle of weirdness:

Like I said before, these websites are not in the reporting business anymore, they have upped the game and become the creators. Here’s how this cycle of ignorant weirdness works:

1. The Scoop: You claim that your “sources” have “reported” this “scoop” that bikes in the future will run on urine and fart like human beings.
2. The Discussion: You’ll endlessly refer to this totally-not-baseless rumor in your discussions, because if you say something enough number of times it ultimately becomes the truth.
3. The Claim: You now think well, what the fuck, why half ass this shit eh? So you “claim” that you now are the first to report that piss drinking and methane farting motorcycles are indeed a reality and they are coming to the showrooms “very soon”.
4. The Discussion Part II: More usage of the obviously-not-a-lie in future articles, cleverly disguising your idiocy with words like “allegedly”, “soon”, “LOL you are fucking dumb aren’t you?”.
5. The Retraction: Now it’s time for the climax, the punch line, the final blow. After creating that entire shit storm of lies, you very nicely walk up to the people and piss right on their faces. You say you are sad to “report” that no bikes will run on urine and fart like humans.

And repeat. 5 genius articles manufactured out of thin air.

Do you now understand how somebody would write 7 articles a day? He’ll of course go psychotic and write a bunch of imaginary shit! But wait! He’ll then write ANOTHER post saying the psychotic shit he just wrote yesterday isn’t really happening, and then run naked and happy into the sunset.

Let’s take the example of Motoroids and Motorbeam now that we’ve played with Bikeadvice enough. A while back this rumor was started by Autocar that KTM would start selling ECU maps in India. If you read their article, they cite NO source, Mr. Kartikeya Singhee heard a booming Aakashvani while taking a steaming dump and none of Autocar’s editors thought of verifying his claim.

So obviously as it always happens, both Motorbeam and Motoroids picked up on this news, changing a few words here and there from the Autocar article and publishing their own version of the bullshit. Even I joined in on the fun and wrote this article! But this is where the two Motor thingies went a few steps ahead of everyone.

1. As is expected, the Autocar, Motorbeam, and Motoroids article all sound EXACTLY the same.
2. Motorbeam and Motoroids a few months later ran stories that NO official KTM maps are coming and that was all a bunch of hogwash to being with.
3. The best part is that both the Motoroids articles are written by Mr. Yatharth Singh Chauhan, who literally copied half of the first article into the second one before adding a few lines and publishing that sorry little excuse for a post!

It’s just sad the way things work. I tried doing what these guys do, I also copied shit from other unsubstantiated sources, but I just couldn’t keep it up! It’s such a boring, heartless, downright disgusting way to use English. I have no idea how they keep doing it year on year, but the next point may explain something about this ignoramus-ness.

5. It’s very easy to be a lazy ass son of a bitch:

I’ve tried it, and it’s a cake walk. Not just on RiderZone, there was a time when I officially wrote for Honda, pushing their propaganda posts about the Honda Amaze through 20 different dummy websites a day. I was promised 11,000 bucks as payment. I never saw a single penny of it.

I also tried hiring people to write for me, it’s so damned easy! All they had to do was troll the internet every morning, see what everyone else was talking about, copy their content, change a few words here and there, and done. In hindsight I paid them far more than what they deserved, but fuck it, it’s gone.

In some ways I understand why these people do what they do. Writing is difficult, and you get paid next to nothing for it. The only way you can make money is if you are popular. There are 2 ways of being popular, the easy way and the hard way. In the easy way you just post a whole bunch of dog poo every day, indiscriminate fuckery, and because of the sheer amount of content, you get views. The hard way is to write one or two good articles a day, be more or less unknown for a decade, survive on goodwill and your dad’s pension, before finally hitting the big league and still not get paid much because you are too late to the party.

Writers have a hard life.

It’s easy to do what everyone is doing. It pays the bills. I can’t help it if you do it, I don’t even care that much, but when EVERYONE just becomes a bloody zombie, you really gotta think what’s going on. Even if there was ONE website in India that pushed some slightly sensible articles, I won’t be this angry. There has to be somebody out there whose testicles haven’t rescinded into his abdomen. There has to be someone who actually understands what automotive enthusiasts really care about. There has to be at least 1 non-undead writer out there.

I can’t say foreign websites are doing a much better job than we are. Motorcycle-USA, Cycleworld, Motorcycle.com they all also just arbitrarily copy each other and write more or less the same boring stuff. There are exceptions like Visordown, Asphaltandrubber and Rideapart. I’m not saying these websites push daily interesting content, I’m saying they try.

It’s very easy to be a lazy ass son of a bitch, and that applies to YOU as well. It’s like asking why does Bollywood keep producing such horrendously disfigured movies day after day? Dude, they are minting money out there, millions of it. If moronic buttwipes like you stopped paying for the tickets, they’ll obviously not have the money to spend on Honey Singh and the heinous ass shoveling that are his songs. That guy seriously needs to die, with a blunt knife, slowly peeling away millimeters of his skin and muscle and bones, over 2 months, while he is crucified upside down in the middle of Chandni Chowk, and fed intravenously to keep him alive and conscious.

It is because YOU read that shit that THEY write that shit. You are responsible. Which brings us to the second part of this article.

How can you change it?

It’s really simple, stop following such websites! I’ve repeatedly asked people to stop reading Times of India, that shit will make you slit your throat someday. I’m now asking you to do yourself another favor and stop these maggots from entering into your brain.

What food does to your body is what words do to your mind, treat what you read with the same importance as you treat what you eat.

Want to get an opinion about a new car or bike? Want to read some authentic news stories? Want to connect with real people with actual experiences and proven knowledge? Go to Team-bhp. That portal is THE cleanest, most relevant, most awesome automotive website in India. You’ll never need to go anywhere else. Yes it’s hard to navigate, yes it’s hard to find what you are really looking for, but sadly that’s the best we have as of now.

There’s another thing that you can do, which is to start your own website. I don’t mean you should buy office space, hire a bunch of cunts and get a dedicated server, I mean go to WordPress.com and start penning your thoughts on a free blog. Write about your experiences, your thoughts, what you love, what you hate, and why. Write what you feel, the way you feel it. Don’t care about anybody else, don’t write for anybody else.

I would read it.

I don’t know about others, but I desperately need motivation. I’m bored. There’s so little inspiration out there! To read 1 good article, you have to wade through a tsunami of 100,000 bad ones. Everyone writes the same, everyone thinks the same, it’s just a festival of mediocrity that I can’t seem to escape from. When was the last time you read an article that made you think?