Online Harley Hate and You: Eradicating Envy One Troll at a Time

A public service announcement from your friendly neighborhood H-D Forums editor.

It can be rough out there for Harley-Davidson fans. There’s a lot of animosity directed at our favorite brand of motorcycle for one reason or another.

Heck, even when LiveWire deliveries were briefly halted due to what ended up being a non-issue, folks were quick to celebrate the bike’s perceived downfall. Before the full details of the incident were released, people were gleefully calling the LiveWire a failure.

Often times the same people who complain that Harley-Davidson builds old-fashioned bikes will be the first to throw the LiveWire under the bus. You just can’t win with some people, and honestly, it’s not worth engaging them.

While there are some valid criticisms of H-D bikes out there, few of the complaints you’ll see revolve around performance, handling, or cost. It seems that most people even forget why they hate Harleys so much in the first place and direct that anger elsewhere. Sometimes, the attacks get personal, even vicious.

This is especially true on the Internet, where anonymity makes everyone just a little bit tougher. People are more likely to say things they wouldn’t dare to otherwise.

This was a lesson recently learned by awhaleofatale, a poster on the Harley subreddit. Apparently, he was watching a YouTube review of a Sportster 48, and made the mistake of reading the comments.

Half the folks who say awful things online about Harleys and the people who ride them haven’t even had the chance to swing their leg over anything more substantial than the 10-speed they got for their twelfth birthday. …Our advice? If the Internet gets you down, the road never disappoints. Get out and ride…

Now, anyone who’s had an Internet connection for longer than a day knows that the YouTube comment section is a complete and utter cesspool. Reading that stuff is bad for your health, be it Harley-related or otherwise. We once saw a racial argument break out in the comments section of a Brave Little Toaster clip. Yeah, we’re still trying to figure that one out, too.

Our point is, you shouldn’t let this stuff get to you. Half the folks who say awful things about Harleys and the people who ride them online haven’t even had the chance to swing their leg over anything more substantial than the 10-speed they got for their twelfth birthday. Almost all of them would be too chicken-spit to say anything like that to our faces.

Our advice? If the Internet gets you down, the road never disappoints. Get out and ride, and don’t let the turkeys get you down.

Photos: Harley-Davidson

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Cameron Vanderhorst

Cam VanDerHorst has been a contributor to Internet Brands' Auto Group sites for over three years, with his byline appearing on Ford Truck Enthusiasts, Corvette Forum, JK Forum, and Harley-Davidson Forums, among others. In that time, he's also contributed to Autoweek, The Drive, and Scale Auto Magazine.

He bought his first car at age 14 -- a 1978 Ford Mustang II -- and since then he’s amassed an impressive and diverse collection of cars, trucks, and motorcycles, including a 1996 Ford Mustang SVT Mystic Cobra (#683) and a classic air-cooled Porsche 911.

In addition to writing about cars and wrenching on them in his spare time, he enjoys playing music (drums and ukulele), building model cars, and tending to his chickens.

You can follow Cam, his cars, his bikes, and his chickens at @camvanderhorst on Instagram.

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