Why?
I think it's because the early Gen 2 owners (and some still even today) paid ADMs on an already overpriced truck, so they had a very large chip on their shoulder and were super eager to defend their purchase decision. Any criticism of the Gen2 was treated as "heresy by those who can not afford"- and to a large extent, it still is to this day. There were plenty of posts from Gen2 owners saying basically- you only criticize it because you cannot afford one.
In addition to regularly spouting off about how they were financially above Gen1 owners, most of the early Gen2 owners were not off-road guys, or truck guys at all. They were former Range Rover sport owners, BWM owners, GTR owners, Porsche owners who just bought their new Ford Raptor "car" because they wanted to own the coolest truck in their town first. Yes, they called them their new "car" when they posted here. They put a lot of stupid money into their trucks. One guy replaced ALL of the stitching in the truck's interior with a different color thread just to look cool. Yea, I know. ******* insane, right? So a lot of the early Gen2 crowd on this site were those types of people- and well, the rest of us just aren't. We didn't hate on the Gen 2 truck all that much since we'd never actually driven one, it was the owners of the Gen2 trucks and their stupid modifications and "look at me" posts that drew the most hate.
Most of the true ********** have moved on to the next cool thing (well unfortunately Jake is still here). I mean a '17 Raptor new longer a new thing if you try to impress people by spending stupid money on cars. So the Gen1 guys aren't really much into Gen2 bashing anymore since most of the biggest Gen2 ego driven owners have left the scene. The current Gen2 owners know what we we think about the Gen2 trucks- so there's not much point in us saying it again and again. However, as Gen 1 guys do get to actually drive the Gen2 trucks and come away unimpressed by all the new techo wizardry that was supposedly so awesome and SO much better- any posts talking about such makes the Gen2 guys jump back into the "heresy by those who cannot afford" mode. They cannot accept an opinion that doesn't match their conclusion. Then all the back and forth shit for 8 pages stuff happens.
In all honesty- I actually did not enjoy driving the Gen 2 truck at all. It shifted too much, sounded bad, had poor legroom, the door panel was too low for my arm. I just couldn't get comfortable in it at all. I fit in my Gen 1 truck so much better, both arms and legs, and it's a much more pleasant vehicle to drive in my opinion. The transmission shifts how I expect it to, and the engine sounds great. The Gen2 was faster, no doubt at all, but I don't go racing around the local streets in a 6000 lb truck, so the additional acceleration was not needed. Personally, I don't like the looks of the Gen2 trucks either, but that's just subjective.
