: How did the bastardization happen?? I fell for the wrong method for
: sure!!

When it comes to recreation, most people, no matter what the activity, are only going to work on their technique enough to grasp the very basics, so they can go out and have fun. Technique may get more efficient (if they do it a lot) over time, or bad habits may get ingrained, or both. When that recreational activity doesn't have a large contingent of sport scientists, coaches and athletes perfecting technique, and equipment manufacturers optimizing gear, good information about paddling and paddles is going to be hard to come by. For comparison, look at how much euro paddles and boats and coaching changed once that became a widely practiced sport. There's no Greenland paddling equivalent. But that doesn't stop everybody who's paddled for a few years from having an opinion, and there's no credentials to differentiate for a new paddler the smart guys from the not-so-smart. So you end up with a lot of people who don't know what to do taking advice from people who don't know what they're talking about.

You also get people aping what the fastest guy in town does, which usually won't work either, because a novice looks at the wrong things. E.g., knuckle position relative to the boat is a silly metric. Two guys can be the same height and weight, but the first guy has a torso 6" longer than the the other, and his arms could be 3" long or 3" shorter. Those two guys are likely to have their knuckles in different positions relative to the boat and the water and the boat and even the blade won't be traveling the same way. That's two guys of the same height and weight. The differences between hand and elbow position for a 5'6" Greenlander and a 6'2 American (who likely also have different torso: upper arm: lower arm ratios) are probably going to have greater differences still.

All of this is totally standard and nothing to get too frustrated about. Keep working through what makes you faster over whatever distance you are trying to travel, understanding that there will probably be changes over time.