Your Name wrote:
[...]
Ah, the ridiculous "flappy paddle" system that's becoming a fad in the
car industry these days. :-( Usually that means it's not a real manual
/ "stick shift" car, but a silly automatic pretending to be a manual /
"stick shift".

Well, in the Formula 1 (and most of the rest of the car racing) world
they don't consider them "silly" at all.

Remember that most of what we consider quite normal or even standard
now, was a "fad" once or/and came from other industries (like my car
racing example).

And to get somewhat back to the topic of the thread, these "flappy
paddle" can make driving *safer*, because your hands can remain on the
steering wheel, instead of fiddling with the gear-stick (or worse :-))!