Trails are being dumbed down, bikes are being dumbed down, the mass herds of homosapiens meat are being dumbed down. This is an R18 snuff film with blood, guts, pus, sputum and phlegm dripping slowly yet purposefully down your screen.

I want to look at the worst the bike industry has conjured. Some old, some new, some not realized yet. I don’t care if you disagree with me or agree for that matter, I don’t care what your comment says or what you may be thinking, I don’t care about you. Because when the cookie crumbles, cabin pressure drops and the plane nose dives from 35000 feet into the next sensationalized Fox News broadcast, no one else does either you selfish dick. So break out your bottle of lube, that special sock that stands on its own and start stroking that flaccid fella into life. Here’s the worst.

Dropper Posts. If someone told me when I got started that in the future seatposts will weigh 500 grams, cost several hundred dollars and need an expensive yearly service to cater to the useless masses who can’t get off the back of a bike seat, I’d have cocked an eyebrow, kicked them hard in the shin and then in the nuts and gone to the pub. I have more respect now for XC racers who keep it real and crash than anyone out there who runs one of these sack-removing creations; and if you’re a chick, fucking grow a pair.

The Trek Knock Block. Do you yearn for a bike that can’t go around corners? Go out and buy any new full squish Trek and revel in its ability to not do just that. Trek Bikes in their infinite wisdom revamped the Fuel, Remedy and Slash claiming added stiffness, less weight (I’m told less than 100 grams) and some other stuff that none of us will notice. Here is how I imagine that went down. “Jenkins you moron! Those knobs on the fork smash into the downtube when the bar is turned more than 45 degrees in either direction, how are riders supposed to negotiate tricky switchbacks?” queried the boss. “I don’t know boss.” replied Jenkins. “Oh well, fuck it, make up some bullshit and sell it anyway.” Seriously, who are the marketing geniuses that came up with that one?

Sram brakes. All of them for the last 10 years have been and I suspect will continue to be the crapmost crap. A pain in the ass to bleed, a pain in the ass to set up and if you push them on a ride need to be pumped to prevent the lever bottoming out on the bar. I’ve never encountered a brake that feels as though the lever isn’t connected to a brake at all but instead to a soft brie. If you happen to be thinking, “hold on, plenty of professional racers seem to have no problems”, Pros are sponsored and being paid to run whatever garbage said sponsor comes up with, not to mention full-time personal mechanics to make said garbage work. If you have these appalling pieces of cack on your bike, do yourself a favour, go down to the local bike shop and test ride a $700 bike with the cheapest Shimano brakes out there and tell me they don’t feel better… actually don’t, because I don’t care.

Shimano Di2. The idea is to have instantaneous shifting as well as being able to tailor how your bike shifts. It can be set up so one push of the button can have the derailleur move across the entire range of the cassette. You can program the rear and front (if you’re living in the dark ages) derailleurs to be operated by the same shifter. The whole system can also be integrated with electronic lockouts on some bikes as well as electronic dropper posts and if you’re the person who thought of that, don’t come over to my house for dinner. I actually see a point to Di2 on a road bike because I see a point to road bikes having a front derailleur. Shifting between the gap on the two front chainrings does benefit from the ease of pushing a button. However, it cannot be installed at home by you or yours truly without a software update and a special programming cable to make it all work. Joy.

Scott Twinloc. Picture this and start counting. You’re astride your upper mid-level Scott Genius and looking down at the cockpit. There are two brakes, two shifters. There is a dropper lever. There is Twinloc controlling fork and rear shock. That is seven cables nesting in front of your handlebar and nine levers to wrap your mind around while riding. Nine! Scott claim it’s a three-way on-the-fly travel adjustment. It isn’t. All it does is adjust the compression of the suspension. Hit something hard enough with Twinloc in its stiffest setting and you can still make the bike bottom out. Hey Scott, how about you build a bike that doesn’t bob like a fellating Puerto Rican hooker when it climbs and save the gimmicks. Did I also mention Twinloc is integrated into the lock-on grip so when your grip wears out the only ones you can buy are Scott? Now that’s real genius.

Pinkbike, Vital, Rodfather, NZ Mountain Biker, Mountain Bike Action. Getting closer to the root of it all, the link between the faceless cogs churning out disposable garbage and the doe-eyed public that laps it up like a labrador buried deep in a pile of its own excrement. Journalists that couldn’t write their way out of their enduro hip whatever-the-fuck-they’re-called. Journalists that fawn over every rehashed product that isn’t new at all just anodised in this year’s colour. Get a job in the fashion industry if that’s all you care about. Worst of all, worse than anything mentioned above though are journalists too scared to have an opinion of their own or think for themselves. Terrified like an abused puppy of pissing someone off resulting in Jenkins getting the next gig.

Frozen petrified of being honest.

I invite you all to choke on a bag of scabby, pus-infested bollocks.