Holy wah, the stupid is running deep

I screwed up recently. I joined an RV discussion group on Facebook.

Now I already knew, thanks to having been a campground host, that some of the people who take to the road in motorhomes or drag travel trailers around aren't the brightest examples of humanity on the planet. We've seen people do some remarkably stupid stuff in campgrounds. To be honest, we've done some dumb stuff ourselves through inexperience or ignorance, although I'd like to believe nothing that comes close to plumbing the depths of stupid I'm seeing in the questions people ask.

For example, it floors me to read posts from people admitting in a public forum that they just dropped $150,000 or more on a leviathan (class A motorhome) but they have no clue how to back it up, level it, or even figure out what some of the cabinets are for. Here's a clue, people: if it's an empty storage space, you use it to hold stuff you don't want sitting around out in the open. For some people, that might be board games and DVDs. For others, it could be extra bedding. The whole point of an empty cabinet is that you can fill it with whatever items you personally need to stash somewhere. You don't need to ask the Internet for permission to use any empty cabinet to store your Captain Crunch, your DVDs, or your sex toys.

But I digress, at least a little. In the last 24 hours I have seen a person ask about getting a 50 foot extension cord to connect a 50 amp service because they can't back into a space and there aren't any pull-through sites, another person inquire about jacking up a leviathan to "get the back wheels off the ground and level the motorhome," and a third blockhead inquire about whether or not a 1-ton diesel pickup was powerful enough to tow the giant 5th wheel trailer he plans to buy. The person who wanted advice on leveling was apparently unaware that the brand new motorhome she'd bought had self-levelers. She was at a Corps of Engineers campground so there couldn't have a whole lot of slope to the site. The self-levelling should have been more than enough. For sure she didn't know you can buy plastic blocks to place under your rig's wheels, kind of like adult legos, at any Walmart. How can anyone invest in an RV and not even know where to buy accessories for it?! (Personally, we carry pieces of scrap lumber, but the S.O. and I are notoriously cheap frugal. We are, after all, the same people who decided a free used llama stall mat makes a great patio rug.)

In any case, these are all people who are apparently planning to go straight from never having owned an RV into playing around with the largest, most awkward to use equipment they can find. No intermediary stages of owning a pop-up camper, a conversion van, or a small travel trailer. Nope. Straight from being couch potatoes to living the good life in the biggest RV they can finance.

And then having made that decision instead of actually going to an RV dealership and talking with experts, you know, maybe looking at the 5th wheel of your dreams and then asking the sales rep "Just what does it take to tow something that big?" you decide to consult the collective ignorance of a Facebook discussion group.

Jesus wept.

On the other hand, the cheerful ignorance does explain why there are so many ads out there for not very used equipment, leviathans with only a few hundred miles on them and travel trailers that were used for less than 4 months. If you go into something not having a clue just what it is you're doing, it's not going to take you very long to decide it was a colossal mistake.