After seeing them on PBS around '98 The Motley Fool was to me at 19 what I'm sure Jim Cramer was to many folks around '05: a contrast to everything else at the time. I thought they were young, funny, and old-fashioned, which was appealing.

But the disjointed approach soured me on them. I feel like they wrote and spoke about value investing but then sold newsletters on timely hot picks.

So, in my mind they fell back in with everyone else contributing noise.