Have Youtube and other media ruined the biker community ?
 

A provocative question. Which, of course, will create reactions. And feel free to write how you think. But avoid claiming what is right or wrong. All opinions are allowed. And is right for that person.

In the past, bikers have always helped each other. With advice in forums and assistance along the way. We parked anyway. And at large meetings you could leave things in tents etc. without risk. One biker does not steal from another.

About sharing information. I have seen trips on Youtube many times. And read books. Which has triggered a desire to exchange thoughts. Pure information, or more thoughts and reflections. Around life and what travel has meant.

In principle, I do not write on Youtube or Facebook or ..... But preferably E-mail.

I have many times (> 10) written E-mails to Youtube producers and authors. For the most part, completely unanswered answers. And if I got an answer, it has been that I should mark like or write a good review. Nothing more.

So my thoughts are that we have an upper class. Who live on us ordinary. And whose only interest for us is to get as many likes as possible and as many subscribers as possible. To make more money.

Then there are many concept bikers. With expensive motorcycles, expensive equipment and all accessories. Who use most of their energy to hate those who are not equal. And who use the internet to spread their opinions. The majority of the posts on some forums are not about facts. But if the opinion expresses that others are idiots who are wrong.

The brotherhood that once existed is gone. At least in these contexts. But it remains within and between the old motorcycle clubs (You know the ones with patches on the back). When we old men from those times meet, the brotherhood remains.

I feel best on old-fashioned motorcycle meetings. (And the Swedish summer is full of them). But that's probably because I'm an disappointed old man.

Have a good time on the road.
Treat others as you yourself wish to be treated

Vaya Con Dios

Interesting view
 

That's an interesting question Erik. I think generally You Tube can be quite helpful in many ways, and there is a spectrum of people contributing to it. For some it is their business and they are trying to line up the sponsorship deals, merchandise, books, online training courses. And that's fair enough as long as you know that ultimately they view you as a potential customer and they are selling something to you. Other are more focused on their trips, planning, maintenance and so on. Its a julbord, take what you like and don't take what you don't like so much. I think bikers in general would help you if you are needing it! Personally I don't comment (or subscribe) on any you tube video
God jul!
James

Nice post. My opinion is

The above part of your post, is not only true for bikers, it is a social problem. I know from experience this also applies to truck drivers in Europe. I think one reason is changing society, another one is overpopulation.

Changing society: no one has time for eachother anymore, more stress, more people only think about themself. It´s more about money then personal relations. I grew up in another country then the one I call home now. Sometimes I go back to that european country I grew up in. When I hear people talking there, they use many words that I was punnished for using them when I was a kid. Even older people like 70+ scold and use bad words now. Society is changing and not for the good I am afraid.

Overpopulation: I wrote already in another post, I hate it. Overpopulation means less space for each individual, more polution of all kinds, more stress, less interest in another. An example, you may like it to meet a traveller from your own country far away in the middle of nowhere. But when that same place is full of your own country menn then you may want to avoid it.

Rögnvaldur

My honest answer is an emphatic 'no'. I'm genuinely puzzled by your comments. I've found Youtube, Facebook etc. incredibly helpful resources, and had some great conversations and useful advice from many folks on these sites.

Sure you have to separate the wheat from the chaff, but you have to do that with everything in life.

I have watched a lot of motorcycle you tubes. i like most of them, with the exception of the speeding on the roads and all those wheelies. I understand being young and stupid--I of course NEVER did things like that. I like the trip you tubes, especially to places I have been to or want to go to. Those YT's are probably the best advertising out there to go get a bike and get going.:thumbup1:

One could argue they have ruined many things.

Even though I use it all day, every day, I thoroughly dislike social media.

It has diluted, capitalised and separated all sorts of people and groups.

We have never had so many friends and yet be so alone.

Life is now conducted through phone screens and emojis.

There is no need to meet people to share knowledge or feel included.

It is a very poor substitute indeed.

But now there are adults who were born into social media. They know nothing else. They will never know what has been lost.

So only you can say what is wrong? :)

This is both still true, and was never true.

I have left things in my tent or on my bike, not just at biker meetings. I have left my bike in a parking lot, with my gear just piled on it, while I changed into street clothes and went up a mountain. And nothing got stolen.

This summer, I went to a moto-orienteering event. It was my second one ever, and the first one where I came the evening before, intending to camp for two days. On the event, a car pulled out in front of me, I crashed, was airlifted to the hospital, had three surgeries. Got out two weeks later to find that my tent had been nicely packed up and delivered to my girlfriend along with all the stuff inside (including my panniers). A month after the accident, someone brought me the bag I'd left in the communal fridge at the event - with my evening beers still in it!

And yet, I am sure we can find stories from any decade about things being stolen out of tents. I am reminded of Hunter S. Thompson's book about the Hell's Angels: he goes on for pages and pages about their origin, motivations, rules, why they got a bad reputation, how they did good things for communities, how he spent months in their bars without problems... until one day he got into an argument with a Hell's Angel, and it didn't matter that the guy was drunk/crazy/on drugs - everyone still sided with him and Thompson got beaten up. After that he did not go near them again.

I was a moderator on Reddit's motorcycles forum for many years. The most annoying thing we had to deal with were not spambots (we could build rules and automation against them), but hundreds and thousands of people who wanted to exchange thoughts and reflections... not realizing that they were the 15th person on that day to post exactly the same thoughts, and get annoyed that nobody wanted to engage with them in a meaningful discussion (except other people who just came to the forum that week, and were not tired of the same topic yet).

That youtube person? They got a thousand emails like yours. Time and brainspace are valuable - they do not owe it to you, any more than the mechanic at your local bike shop owes it to every single customer to discuss how to best change a spark plug. Is the mechanic also part of the "upper class" who lives on you ordinary person, just in it to make money?

The first person to ask will probably get a nice conversation. If you are not getting a conversation, then you are the thousandth person to ask; deal with it, and move on with your life.

You are free to turn off your computer and not watch their videos. In fact, I recommend it.

As always with nostalgia about The Good Old Days: there were never any Good Old Days. What you are missing is not the past, but yourself at age 25.

I would not wish others to say about me, "he is an upper class guy who uses the internet to spread his opinions and make money off of other bikers". So I don't say it about others.

I grew up around "traditional" bikers, the "brotherhood" was just that for the majority - a boy's club where the only women to be accepted had a choice to be "one of the guys" or be some sort of subservient accessory.

I was lucky to have the support of my Dad when it came to getting started in riding, and one positive role model - a mechanic who worked for my Dad for a while. She taught me how to stay on my guard around the men and how to defend myself. But that wasn't enough.

Moving in those circles exposed me to underage drinking, the normalisation of statutory rape, drugs, and abusive relationships. It took me until I was 30 to really break free from everything that I internalised there.

So I would say anyone wishing for the "good old days" of biking needs to think about what it was really like. There were great things to enjoy, but on balance it's no better or worse than today. Just different.

Have Youtube and other media ruined the biker community ?


Hello

Which biker community do you mean?

I live in Switzerland, we and our neighboring countries have great roads in the mountains.

When I got my motorcycle licence in 1991 (the first joke step) and the real one in 1993, I learned in the drivingschool that 50% of the accidents with the motorbike are caused by cars, 50% by motorcyclists itself.

I learned that motorcyclist rise the left hand to salut each other.

On the weekend there was a lot of traffic on the mountain roads, lot of motorcycles, most riding a normal speed, some crazy guys on racingbikes.
My rule was, never go on the opening day of a pass, the next weekend you'r fine.

biker community ?

What is that?
None of my friends rode a motorcycle, they bought cars.
I read magazins and books about motorcycles and travelling.
I went to a few professinal slide shows of more or less famous travellers.

Motorcycle clubs?
I went to a club for archery, but for riding a motorbike?
There were motocycle clubs with batches on the leather vest, they predended to be bad boys (no idea how bad they were, remember it's Switzerland), never had a desire to meet with them.

biker community ?

I did my first trip on the shitty 125ccm toybike, one week Bern-Stonehenge.

Later I did more trips on real bikes.
When I met others on a trip it was nice to talk to them, I would have helped them if I could and would received help if needed.

biker community ?

I joined "the internet forum community" 2011 with my RTW.
Found a lot of information and try to share with others.

But thats all of community to me.

I bought a GoPro in 2011 and uploaded clips of my trip.
Main idea was to show others how the roads were, film is much better than talk.

The only thing I am sure that youtube has made for the worse is that a lot of bad motorcyclists upload their way of riding corners on mountain passes and others think, that's the way it's done.
When I started in 1993 riding on mountian passes, I had one or two occasions per year where an other car or rarely a motorbike tried to kill me by using my side of the road.
Today, I have one ore two of these occaisons per day, mostly motorbikes.
I stopped rising my hand to salute other motorcyclists on sommer days.

When I have a problem at the end of the world, I am sure the next overlander that comes by, no matter what vehicle or status on youtube/Facebook/twitter will help me.

Those who are assholes on youtube/Facebook/twitter, you will never find at the end of the world, they are maintaining their status at home on the PC

cheers sushi


P.S.
Never forget that what we call the end of the world, is the center of the world for those who live there. bier

****heads will be ****heads be they spouting on YouTube or setting themselves up on the committee of some bike club. You can turn off a YouTube ten seconds in or watch another with a different opinion. If you want fixed dogma and bullying of anyone who disagrees, take your time machine back to any single marque bike club in the 1990's.

Theft was always a problem. Rose tinted glasses might hide the closing ranks of brothers not calling brothers out for it, but it happened. Google the problems at Peterborough when the BMF event was there. It was blamed on Gipsies but was well known before if you spoke to people the promoters hadn't got to first.

The money making aspect has only changed. Google broquet fuel catalyst and see how this snakeoil was promoted by the committees of the CSMA and others as a pyramid scheme. It's back by the way, apparently cures the ills of ethanol fuel :rofl:

I am of the last generation to get into motorcycles before the interweb. Trying to make sense of things with only the help of MCN ( "1100cc trail bike? The local MX circuit won't allow it, resale value will be awful, get a ZXR") and the BMW clubs new members sub-committee deputy underbahnfuhrer ("come back in 20 years boy") was not easy. I'll take YouTube please.

I don't do Faceache, don't give a ***s what you had for your tea or what your kiddies/puppies poo looked like thanks, and apologies but If I haven't spoken to you since primary school chances are we aren't best mates.

I wave at all powered two wheelers and many wave back. I stop where practicall to offer assistance. I'm often told I'm not the first to do so. Nice people will be nice (and I occasionally join in :rofl: )

Andy

Each to their own, however, I greatly dislike the whole, give yourself a catchy name (try to include RTW or Nomad or whatever), sign up to every conceivable socmed, proceed to film mind numbingly boring crap, post everywhere possible, wait for comments to hail you as the new Marco Polo.

Massive yawn fest. :funmeterno:

Concerning YouTube - I think it all depends on what the objective of the person posting the videos on YouTube is.

Some folks post useful videos with information such as "How to do this" or "Here's what to expect". The motivation for those videos is to share information with others - it is an altruistic motivation.

Others post videos because they want to make money by being "content creators". Their motivation is selfish (in the literal sense, not pejorative sense). Personally, I don't find those type of videos to be either interesting or useful.

YouTube is a communication method, same as books, newspapers, radio and TV. It's not the method of communication that matters, it is the intent of the communication that has been created.

Michael

An interesting viewpoint, and one I cannot fully disagree with.
I have, however, viewed a couple of useful 'how to...' videos on You tube.
I have also viewed some incredibly irritating videos of people pretending to do stuff solo when it is painfully obvious they have a huge great 'fixing machine' running in the background.

I can't be arsed with them anymore.

Hello internet, welcome to my channel, it's 7.15 in the morning (holds up phone) I'm eating my breakfast (porridge and banana) and the rain is pouring down. Gives false laugh, flicks hair out of lovely fluttering eyes for the boys.

You know the sort....

Ah-ha!
 

I am starting a Glasgow You Tube ADV channel and I am calling it Itchy Balls.

Go for it, go the whole nine yards - get a R1200 stuck in a puddle and bring in the support vehicle with a whole spare bike on board, etc

support vehicle
 

Its a Chinook helicopter, not a van.

Originally Posted by James1959
I am starting a Glasgow You Tube ADV channel and I am calling it Itchy Balls.

James1959, when your new You Tube channel is up and running, let me know.
I'll subscribe!

Youtube is and will be the new book, the new newspaper, the new radio and the new TV in my opinion.

Youtube has made - only through user generated content - itself to the dominating future communication channel. Youtube or video is the medium dominating our future- It combines all aspects of traditional media! Youtube is the 2nd most visited website in the world , counts for 25% of all internet traffic and 500hrs of videos are uploaded every minute.

Youtube socializes bikers. That ones who count the curves on mountain roads as well as that ones who film and sell their trip anywhere on the world as an income.

Youtube let the users travel and visit places all over the world he or she will or can never reach in life for different reasons.

Youtube is a nanny for stressed mums - watch young mums on the streets when they met and talk with a coffee to go in the hand while silencing kids in the stroller with their smartphone playing a youtube video.

Youtube is used in and by politics to build power and to show the good and the evil politically outcomes.

Youtube is making and branding celebs of any kind and creating wealth for them.

Youtube drives the industry in promoting and selling products through advertising - equal for a motorcycle or video game and of course even for selling books. Funny to recognized that people who read get now triggered by book trailers!

But youtube is also a learning plattform to share knownledge for everything imaginable. Traditional educational establishments like universities use it and everybody can take part. You can learn to play ukulele, to cook, to repair your bike or you can learn languages.

Youtube is a channel to build knowledge for a wide mass e.g. in a pandemic about a virus and in the same time it is a plattform for dubious content creators to promote their opinion formation.
And so on and on...

For many users youtube is an injection of life and full of aspects or perspectives they never could imagine before. An injection for your personal life which you cannot find in traditional media like book, radio and tv because these do not use an algorithm to suck the user in his bubble of personal interests. Youtube is the mirror of mankind and showing the full variety of humans and their subjects.

And it is imho unstopable and will have in the future a strong impact to all societies and cultures of the world.

The community is still out there, and from what I've found there are few pretensions or snobberies out on the road. When you're riding you're part of the same family.

Social media is another matter and I have little time for most of the "monetised YT channel" crowd. There are a very, very small number who are genuinely groundbreaking but that's a tough call in a world where our "adventure ride" is a thousand people's daily commute to work. Normally the best you can find is somebody who's doing a major ride for their first time and share in their sense of wonder. There are few "roads less travelled" these days and few new perspectives. But personally I'd rather read such things and not sit through endless cliched drone shots of a motorcycle on a lonely road (tourist bus just out of sight). I certainly can't be *rsed with somebody who styles himself a riding guru telling people to stand up on rough roads or the bloke who thinks the world needs a new instructional video on how to adjust a chain. The ones who pop up with "when we were there in 1996 on our 6-year RTW..." wear a little thin too. Nobody likes a pissing contest.

Disclaimer: I do blog when I travel, but that's as much for my memories as anything else. If others enjoy my ramblings that's nice, but my monetised earnings so far (and projected) total £0.00.

There is a huge problem for YouTube. Credibility.

When enough of it is total ******s in the name of entertainment, the factual stuff is no longer believed. Watergate Tapes on Social Media would have been claimed as their own my every third rate impersonator who could do Richard Nixon.

The mainstream media has reacted by adding rubbish to their own output instead of keeping up the quality, not that the likes of Motorcycle News have been quality in my lifetime. The BBC used to review cars you could buy, not blow up caravans because its fun

YouTube is primary information, the user needs to learn the skills to filter it.

Andy

Time brings always changes. Yes, social media brings too a lot of worrys.
For me is the biggest problem, that they are not regulated, each year more % of the world population are using social media to "read the news".

After the cambridge analytics scandal, after censorship of a leaving president we can just guess about the power behind of social media. It even can kills the loved democracy in many different ways. But that seems another chapter.

Recently I wrote about Eva Beck who is a travel vlogger who starts too overlanding by 4x4 at 2021. With the amount of Views/Like/Comments we can assume that she earns around 110'000 Euro a month.

Is what we do all day from morning to night just a hobby or our work? We should consider to look after it - as a new profession.

Compared to Eva are the most well etablished social media travellers like Dan Grec or GrizzlyNbear - just beginners. But even they - live from sharing their trips on social media - or are sharing their experiences.

Everyone as he likes. We dont have to watch it, if we dont like it. :thumbup1: We can just go out and travel, without having to edit videos and vlogs.

Like Turbofurball wrote, those "good old days" - can be remembered too very very differently.

Surfy