I think it makes the whole meme funnier personally

There are literally dozens of us!

Same.

But at least my car is less likely to get stolen!

You can’t find an image of pushing the brake and throttle at the same time on wikihow.

Huh, I'm a little surprised it doesn't have articles on left-foot braking for racing or brake torque launches for drag-racing.

Of course, it a joke based on the fact that manual gearbox is, even to this day, the standard in Europe. I would be very surprise to meet someone with a driver license who can't drive manual. It seems in the USA manual driving is a hobby for car enthusiast. But what do I know? I have never step foot on the new continent.

They may have exaggerated the risk of a money shift a tiny bit. Stalling is easy, but blowing the car up has to be hard.

nobody with a manual will ever let you practice on their car

I'm sorry that happened to you. IMO folks are way more precious about their manual transmissions than they need to be. I've taught several people to drive stick -- including myself, in a brand-new car I drove home from the dealer in rush-hour stop-and-go traffic -- and it's never hurt anything. (That brand-new car still had its original clutch when it was sadly totaled by a falling tree, 100k miles later.)

You would really have to do it on purpose to blow up your transmission. These guys had to try pretty hard

That's not true, a money shift is very rare.

If you were near me I would help you learn on any of my stick vehicles, it's pretty easy one you have some practice.

Nah, you just can't without being a complete psychopath I guess force in a too wrong gear, the sync won't be able to spin so fast that you can actually put in a ridiculous gear.

And reverse is usually not synced so even harder.

Nah, they just don't want you to drive their car. Chance of a money shift is extremely low, and it doesn't usually happen while learning. Money shifts really happen when you are trying to drive too fast, and you downshift more than 2 gears quickly. Most learners have trouble keeping the RPMs up high enough to money shift. I was perpetually shifting at 1.3k when learning and you can pretty much go from 6 to 2 without money shifting at those low revs.

The third pedal becomes invisible to the ignorant minds.

We did?

Spray cheese - yes. Cars? No.

American too. I don't really like cars, but if I have to drive one, I would prefer one with a manual transmission. Unfortunately, my current car doesn't have one because they don't put them in affordable cars anymore.