It’s weird to me that y’all don’t appreciate the convenience of advancing technology.

You’re operating from the incorrect assumption that an automatic is more convenient while it isn’t.

Try this: stand up, walk to the other side of the room and back. Was that inconvenient? Did you have to consciously place your legs and think about how to use your feet? No. You just want to go in a certain direction and your legs just move without you needing to think about it.

Driving a manual is the same. You don’t consciously operate the gearbox, you just drive. Shifting gears doesn’t require conscious thought. An automatic isn’t convenient, quite the opposite, as it gives you less control.

Why don’t you use a wheelchair? Surely rolling around is more convenient than balancing on two legs? It’s because balancing on two legs isn’t actually that inconvenient once you learned how. It was when you were a baby, but we help babies learn to walk instead of putting them in a wheelchair. Same goes for driving a manual. Once you learn to a point where you no longer need to think about it, it’s more convenient than an automatic.

It’s like going “only mentally disabled folks use microwaves, the rest of us light the wood stove and let it simmer for a half hour”

Good analogy. Now go microwave a steak while I cook one over a wood fire, which steak do you think will turn out the most delicious?

I’ve tried to drive manual vehicles and it just required way too much of my attention for what should be a simple means of conveyance.

Driving a manual doesn’t require any more attention than an automatic. Here almost everyone learns in a manual and by the time you get your license it’s something you don’t need to think about.

If you’re used to manual, driving an automatic for the first time is a pretty scary experience. Half the controls you need to operate the car are missing.

It’s not an elitism thing as almost everyone drives a manual. My late mom drove a manual at 72, including dragging a big caravan all across Europe.

Used to be that the only people who drove an automatic were people with (mental) health issues. If you got a manual-only license it used to have a big stamp across it that said ‘AUTOMATIC ONLY’. If you got one of those as a physically healthy 18yo it might as well have said ‘RETARDED’, as that would have been the only reason to get one.

Nowadays with electric cars becoming more common having an automatic-only license has become socially acceptable.