I've got a story that doesn't really add much to what's going on currently at SA but I've got to post it somewhere, and if we're dropping some deep lore...
SA had an automotive forum, Automotive Insanity or AI for short. It was without a doubt the best car forum on the internet in the 2010s. Where every other car forum on the internet was some niche hugbox where you had to jerk off every other use no matter what OR get assmad that their car was wrong, AI was a middle ground.
There were threads about some guy's supercar right alongside threads about jalopies. AI was a place that anything mechanical was venerated, especially if it was weird. Notable threads included one about a guy who turned his shitty Mazda 1/4 ton into a bosozoku monstrosity and a guy who was using some very niche software to build the perfect racing moped. It was a fairly tight knit group of weirdos.
Enter Initial Dave/Inch Dickari. He was a homeless meth addict mechanic with some kind of personality disorder. He couch surfed or just stayed in homeless encampments around Seattle. He had a number of megathreads he'd made chronicling his disastrous life.
I only started paying attention around the time another goon bought the truck of his dreams: some 1930s rustbucket of a Dodge dump truck. It was sitting in a field in the midwest. The guy was moving himself and wasn't able to arrange a flat deck to haul it so he made a last ditch plea to the AI foeum: can someone get this thing running and drive it to me? He was expecting a nearby farmer or something, but Initial Dave took him up. The forum regulars and old time AI posters warned everyone about Dave. He couldn't keep a job at AutoZone and he was a train wreck of a person.
A short saga involving meth psychosis (Dave was convinced his blood had worms in it) followed, but after a quick goon run Kickstarter Dave drove out to the truck in a scrap heap of a Jeep. The injectors pissed fuel all over the block and it burned down on the first night he was there.
The following months goons donated regularly to Dave who lived in a trailer and pissed the locals off because he'd turned his living space into what could best be described as a goblin encampment. Goons routinely sent him money and food so his diet was mostly gas station coffee, beef jerky and hot peppers.
Scrap vans showed up to be harvested for parts and some Jerry rigged motor swap happened. To his credit, it was some top notch wrenching given the conditions. There's a picture somewhere of his wiring job, trying to rig an ECU to this ancient truck. Miles of twist and tape wiring, but it worked.
The truck was barely running come October and the temperature dropping. The OP finagled a trailer and carted off the truck. Dave was left stranded in a field (another short saga happened here involving meth fueled cycling out to the Florida Keys).
Another goon, Tremclad (AI goons are awful at reusing their names so I've changed it here, no reason to dox the poor guy) took in InitialDave. Dave stayed at Trem's house, they did car stuff together and in exchange Dave helped Trem with projects.
Dave, as thanks, ended up raping Trem's wife and escaping back to the Seattle meth camps. The old timey goons said "I told you so!" And basically fucked off to off sites. The schism and loss of talent has made AI a ghost town and the forum will likely never recover.
Edit:
If I can get at least 4 autistic ratings on this post I'll sperg out about Doobie's Dog House
