True, just for some reason lately I've seen a lot of people riding mountain bikes with short stems. Not saying it's right, just had seen a lot of that lately and that got me thinking.

To be honest though, since mtb riders on flat bars are typically grasping the bar at the distance of the stem from the fork, while when I ride on drop bars I'm grabbing my bars the length of the stem plus the length of the ramps from the fork, you'd think that flat bar riders would want a longer stem not a shorter one. Obviously, I'm missing something vital like mountain bikes having a longer top tube to account for that or something equally obvious. Like I said, I know nothing.