[paulca]

I think it's a matter of "Hey look mom, I'm cool."

If I put really good ear protection on you so you couldn't hear the engine, I bet I could convince you we were driving an auto without either heel/toe or DD shifts, well at least you wouldn't be able to tell when we changed gear. I'd even go as far as saying I could probably get up through the box 1st to 6th via every gear and back down again without you noticing a gear change and in under 10 seconds.

Not saying that's always the case, sometimes I'm too lazy to be smooth.

To you US guys a manual is a special thing, so you go on the interweb and you research and research and come back with all these fancy and all but superfluous techniques so you can brag about them to your mates and say you "can drive stick the hard way". Over here people will just look at you and say, "You can drive a car? So what, my 16 yo. daughter can drive a car!" and if you say, "But I can double de-clutch!", they will say, "Do what?", you explain, they will say, "Why on earth would you do that?"