Car forums are such special places. They're where enthusiasts go to share knowledge with one another, forge bonds based on mutual passions, and build lasting communities. But sometimes, a forum member will post something so asinine — so insanely stupid — that an epic takedown is in order. This is the story of such a takedown.
Our tale begins on Monday morning at the R3Vlimited forum, a place dedicated to the legendary BMW E30 and the people who love them. User GMOTE, a young man from Georgia who is often called "trina" because of his poor grammar and spelling (As in "I'm tryin' a"), starts a thread called "Crashed my E30 like a tool" about how he crashed his 1986 325es into a house.
It went down something like this... actually, we don't know exactly how it went down, because Trina edited the post a day later when he realized he was getting dogpiled by the rest of the forum for his massive idiocy.
From what we can piece together from other posts, Trina "hit a speed bump" in a residential neighborhood that "poped" (sic) both tires, causing him to veer right, strike a curb, bounce off an absurdly large rock in the front yard of some house, causing him to crash into said house. Here are some shots of the damage that survived his edit:
I don't think you need to be some kind of fancy car scientist or a forensic crash expert to realize that it likely took more than a speed bump to make this crash happen.
So "Trina" puts his car into a house. He then comes to R3V and posts about it, perhaps expecting some sympathy. Here's what he says:
He gets none.
Trina's photos disappeared, but other forum-goers managed to save them, and one even created a clever recreation of the crime scene. Upon seeing the reaction of his fellow forum-goers, Trina realizes he's not getting the support he sought originally.
Indeed. After all, as one reply put it, "You did hit a house."
What follows is some 50 pages of posts in which R3V forum goers do some downright 4chan-esque sleuthing to try and track down more information about how the crash happened, exactly which house was damaged, and who Trina is.
They try to find a police report; look for it on local news; find Trina's now-deleted OKCupid profile (who went looking for it there?); find the house on Google Street View; realize that there is indeed a speed bump nearby and that Trina would have probably had to been going 50 mph or more to pop his tires on it; arrange a group purchase of a pizza for the house that suffered Trina's wrath; and draft up a nifty t-shirt design. You can get in on the group buy here.
And of course, because this is the Internet, there are memes involved. So many memes. This one's my favorite.
One of the R3V folks ends up going to the house and chatting with a guy who works for its owner (and says on video how much regard he has for Trina's skills). He took some photos of the road and the speed bump that indicate just how fast Trina must have been driving.
That's the thing about this crazy thread. It just keeps on delivering. Perhaps out of boredom, perhaps out of a desire to avenge the honor of the E30, or perhaps because they merely enjoy a few laughs at this kid's expense (most likely the last one) the members of R3V just keep digging and digging. It's hard not to want to go through all the pages of the incredible saga.
I personally don't have much sympathy for Trina, even if digging into his online dating profile may be going a bit too far. The kid put his car into a house. He's lucky he didn't kill someone. And while there's no word on whether he faces criminal charges or not, if he doesn't, he's damn lucky there, too.
Maybe Trina got off easy with just a little bit of Internet shaming.
Hat tip to William!