There are some people who choose to use their free will by creating joke accounts at news publications and providing non-stop laughter. If you’ve been on the Internet for long enough, you’ve almost certainly run across a comment by the infamous Ken M. On the car side of things, Jalopnik had the legendary “Mergio Sarchionne,” which was a parody of the late CEO of Fiat. The Autopian? We have more than one reader with an account themed after an infamous transmission.
Thomas wrote about the 2027 Nissan Rogue Hybrid and its lack of a real transmission. Jatco Xtronic CVT:
I am livid. I am hurt. I am confused. Why are they doing this to me? Haven’t I been a good transmission?
Pupdog:
Oh jeez, CVT whine again?
RidesBicyclesButLovesCars:
You’ve been slipping for years, it’s time to move on.
D-dub:
I am livid. I am hurt. I am confused.
Rubberbanding is exactly what we expected of you.
Poor Jatco! First he got burned on the track in our Murano, now this! Speaking of our transmission-based meme accounts, I haven’t seen a comment from Ford PowerShift DCT lately. Maybe that transmission failed?
Matt wrote about us hitting a million comments. Well, maybe a little less than that once you subtract my 4,071 comments. Livernois asked:
Who had the first comment and what was it?
If it was one of those sad sack FIRST commenters, I hope you tied them up, covered them in road salt, and dropped them off in Northern Michigan to rust out their undercarriage.
On page 50,677 of all published comments that I can see on the backend, we have this sitting as the oldest comment that wasn’t from our team. From Andy on our introduction article:
Can’t wait for all the epic content you two/three will come up with! All the best! <3
However, weirdly, the article itself reports Matt’s (not Matt Hardigree) comment as the first comment:
Awesome. So excited to follow along.
ChefCJ asked:
Can you do a cross reference to see how many are about rust? I’m going with 12%.
31,891 comments contain the word “rust” in either the username field or comment body. “Shower spaghetti” shows up only 319 times.
Data:
I’ve seen things you Autopians wouldn’t believe.
Jeeps on fire off the shoulder of the road.
I watched high beams glitter in the dark in the rear view mirror.
All those comments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Time to subscribe.
Jason wrote about Yom Kippur. StillNotATony:
How many ophthalmologists does it take to change a light bulb?
1 or 2?
1 or 2?
2 or 3?
I’m so sorry…
Have a great evening, everyone!
Avid reader since the Greep Jeep and member since the presidential mattress event
I had forgotten all about Ken M! Some of them are just so, deeply funny and I enjoyed reading some of the ones linked in the Wiki again.
Now I’m reminiscing about David Thorpe and the spider too.
I recently shared the spider-drawing tale with my tarantula-keeping partner! Fun to see it referenced in the wild, and of course it’s here.
The happy seven-legged spider was the image that went along with an old TurboBricks (redblock Volvo nut forum) meme/copypasta about “a common garden spider” so it’s extra-seared into my brain.
You could do an entire article on comment statistics and I would absolutely read it.
I appreciate all irrelevant and slightly confused Internet responses that receive a “WTF did I just read, this guy is sniffing glue” comments, having experienced life as an amateur stand-up comedian in my 20s. This Ken M person? Never heard of him. I go back to dial up BBS days.
I’ve been on the internet since 1993 and never heard of Ken M
I’ll count that as a win!
Only 3%? I’m a little dissapointed to be honest, I feel like we put more effort in than that
I think you need more than 12% rust to be considered Michigan Rust Free ™
<50% rust was DT’s old rust free metric.
I dust my shower spaghetti with rust flakes of past projects. Gotta keep my iron levels up.
320!
I can’t believe my stupid joke got me a COTD.
Now I gotta go atone all over again!
Don’t you have to wait for a year? You’ll have to write that down on a sticky note somewhere.
Are you still not atone-y?
Okay, you win. COTD.
Cheer up Jatco Xtronic CVT, you can keep that username until the last of those Nissan transmissions finally dies. So about 6 months after production ends.
This feels wildly optimistic…
PowerShift, meanwhile, was in enough otherwise-cool Euro-flavored Fords to go by a new name; “Parts car or manual swap candidate”.