It is pretty comical seeing ADV Owners\Admins comment and or “like” discussions regarding the distaste of the ADVRider “likes”. What is seemingly failed to understand is that a group of the ADV crowd has singlehandedly screwed with the entire system. How did this come about, and wtf is @Bultaco206 ADVRiders #1 Liked Inmate?

It’s simple to just say that yes, @Bultaco206 is just the greatest, because well….he is. However its worth jumping back about 18 months and seeing where things took a jump. There were a handful of posters from the cesspool known as ADVRiders “CSM”. The area of ADVRider which is a circular pooh flinging contest, which only real benefit is keeping the sites lowliest of posters out of the rest of the valuable forum. These posters had an abnormally high “like” count, as well as a few who seemed only post in the now defunct “Toxic Britney” thread. A handful of posters from a certain thread over in Thumpers noted this, and at the same time wanted to accelerate @Bultaco206’s notoriety in the ADVworld, so a plan was hatched. Not only would we begin “liking” every post by this member, but we’d go back in his history and Like every post of his that we could.

And thus began the ascent of ADVRiders #1 Most Liked Inmate. Bultaco206 went from sub top ten, to top five in no time at all. It was charted the estimated time for reaching #1, and right on queue, he (yes @Bultaco206 is a He) reached the digital throne of #1 Most Liked Inmate, and now currently topping the “charts” with a 322k+ Digital Likes. An astronomical figure considering his relatively low (when compared to Top 20 Liked Inmates) post count.

However, getting @bultaco206 to the top was not enough for this group, and so it was decided that the entire system was so stupid that it’d be best to screw with it even further. Somewhere in the past ~12 months, it was decided to begin liking every post in a certain Thumpers thread. A thread that moves quicker than Graham Jarvis through a Hard Enduro. With a group of posters as diverse as the trails of the UP, and discussions that are broader than the strokes of Bob Ross, the likes began to pile in. Now, barely a year or so in, it’s no mystery that out of the top 10 most liked inmates, 6 are from the Thumpers thread, and out of the Top 20, 10 are from the same thread.

Yes all of this is as ridiculous, as it sounds. As are the Likes and other crap we’ve seen lately on the ADVRiders. Especially (but not limited to) the now present Auto-Playing Advertisements seen by non-supporters. Something that once would get you banned, is now accepted in the name of the almighty dollar. I understand, websites cost money. And when you’re dealing with 370k+ Members, and 36,000,000+ posts, that is some major bandwidth. Add in that ADVrider allows any member to host their images on the site (Anyone read the EULA if ADVRider then owns those images?…) and you’ve got one hellacious internets bill.

A quick dip into the rabbit hole of money, would show that if 0.5% of members became yearly supporters of 49$, it’d be roughly $91,000 of income per year. If that were “super supporters” at 149$\year, that’s encroaching on nearly $280k\year. And this isn’t even tapping into what folks may donate independently of this pay for no-ad experience.

So what am I actually getting at here? What I’m alluding to here is that ADVRider has changed HEAVILY in the past 10+ years that I’ve been a member. You’ve now got Likes, Pay to remove Ads, Auto-Play ads, and Kale Smoothie based Front Page Articles written by folks who are not active participants in the forum, or those who are faux-writers shilling poorly written ads poorly disguised as “reviews”. I am optimistic though, and hope that many folks can see past the new, hip, modern, whatever facade and see that there is still quality content being GIVEN to the community by its most caring of members. Build threads, ride reports, personal support threads, etc. There is still some good here, I just hope that the core of it is not lost in the “modernization” of the site. Happy liking posting.