Look at frying pans.
Reddit will tell you that cast iron is the only option. Carbon steel is wrong ("home burners don't get hot enough", stainless steel is wrong ("too hard for you to use"), aluminium non stick is wrong ("only good for beginners who don't know what they're doing"), aluminium with ceramic non-stick is wrong (ok, they're right about this one).
Ask about boots, or hammers, or any of dozens of products.
Reddit fetishizes some products and disdains others and there's not much reason to it, it's mostly memetic.
Most redditors don't have the money to buy 8 different pans or 7 different pairs of boots. They tend not to work in these industries, so they can't give that experienced view point. And most redditors are young so they just haven't lived long enough to give a credible review of how long something lasts.
A 40 year old person who works with a tool 8 hours a day, and who's used a wide range of those over the years, will tend to give a better review than a 20 year old who works with a tool for a few hours a week.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/4lnezr/best_option...
You have a point, but this "Reddit will tell you that cast iron is the only option." is not accurate.
That scotch you liked? Reddit doesn't like it because they're bitter. And if reddit does like it, well then its probably great!
That's the most useful scenario.
When you have people debating one thing being better than another, gives you specific claims you can follow up on and think about which factors are most important to making your decision.
If everyone agrees, or only one option is argued for, I would be more suspicious of the advice.
and that doesn't have the reddit shill issue?
> Sure you can't get people to spoon feed you answers that way but do you really want to be spoon fed by people who don't actually know anything?
Or you know, people want to spend 10 minutes looking for the best product, rather than spending a few days going down a rabbit hole of their own personal research.
Seeking out niche enthusiast websites, authoritative sources, mailing lists, or actually doing your own research at the libarary are about the only ways you can get anything remotely reliable. If it's easy, it's probably been gamed.
Searching HN can also sometimes be good. Slightly higher signal:noise than reddit, generally.