I’ve always been a “lurker” on all platforms and communities because when I do have a question or would like to contribute my first thought has become:
Actually, let me google it first
In which case I’ll usually have some answer. Usually it isn’t a complete answer but enough for me to not want to share my question anymore.
Some questions are overasked tho in certain communities. I remember for example on r/AskMiddleEast that people where asking what the people’s thoughts on Ataturk were, multiple times a day, sometimes even multiple time in an hour.
I was on that sub for only a month and people were doing this everyday. Some seemed genuinely curious, some played it up for the meme, but it still never stopped. Apparently this has been going even long before I joined.
In the end I left the sub, because the sub always had the same 5 posts on repeat constantly, even the comments and debates played out everytime exactly the same, to the point where people were just giving copy-pasted responses from previous discussions to each other.
I can understand, why someone would perhaps answer with “just google it” in this case.
Though the more healthy thing for this type of person would be to just log off and stop getting annoyed by reading through the same questions again and again and do something entirely new.
and sometimes it’s not about the answer …
I always thought this was blindlingly obvious. Why the fuck else do you ask a question instead of like… going to the library (before internet anyway)? It’s always been for human contact. That’s why questions exist.
i hate how accurate this is
True, but sometimes it’s about harassing and arguing in bad faith, so I totally understand why sometimes the default answer is “google it”
I always try to answer even though I know the answer is on Google.
Either because it may be a more up-to-date version or because you simply never know when other websites will stop being available and therefore that source of information will be lost. Also because many times no matter how hard one searches before asking, sometimes we do not know the concepts we want to reach and our search is limited.
Imagine if everyone responded with “Just Google It”, we would never find an answer to anything.
I really hate that mantra and it should be part of “If you don’t have anything to contribute, don’t comment.”
this is how it should be dealt with!
thank you 🧡
Yeah, I know what you mean. Its a hard habit to break out of though - I always feel like I should exhaust other resources before asking questions.
When I ask things without looking it up first, it feels like I’m not doing my best to solve my own problem before “bothering” others
My favorite is when I would use a google search for something, and several of the top results would be posts detailing the exact question I have, with the only responses being “just google it” and the post locked/closed to further responses.
Interesting, I’ve never seen that. The opposite happens quite often, though; the question is the same as mine and there’s 5 other people in the comments also not finding an answer.
Maybe I’m just Googling for too many obscure missing .dll files and such.
same for me, google filter sucks sometimes… or those sites who had the answers is down 🫠
i always search before askin’ in a forum… maybe i just didn’t know how to search it? let it be because my native language doesn’t have the answers on google?
so how am i supposed to know what i should search for as a non native english speaker on english? and a few more reasons ofc 😅 (applies if u still learn english)
so it is quite disappointing if i get a answer and realize… oh it is just a… “google has the answer” answer… well how about f u self? it’s even better if u try to explain that u already did and how u did it… and get another reply like, “uninstall your browser, the web isn’t for you” or some type of shi*… yes that’s something that happened 🤐
is it that hard to take those few seconds you had to comment for and help me to answer the question if you seem to know “everything”???
Googling something is probably the most efficient way to find an answer, in the same way that flavorless nutrient shakes are probably the most efficient way to fuel your body. Asking questions and conversing about the answers is fun. It’s madness to abandon an entire genre of human conversation just because some search engine exists.
I’ve been in situations where someone on the table asks a question nobody knows the answer to and the conversation just dies then and there. For example, someone might say: “…and then I saw wallaby from my hotel window, so I started wondering if they would eat those nice flowers I saw the day before”. Well, nobody on the table knows what wallabies eat, so nobody said anything and the conversation just died.
Instead of anyone saying “let me google that”, there’s a long silence and then someone just takes the conversation in a completely different direction by saying something like: “oh, BTW I’ve been thinking of getting a new car and that’s when…”
Is it possible they eat cars and that was part of their answer?
Well, the Australian wildlife is known for being “out there to get you”, so I wouldn’t rule it out. Sticking to the spirit of the conversation, I’m definitely not going to check any facts related to wallabies.
There’s also the benefit of discussion. You can find perspective on information which is arguably just as valuable as the information itself. Wisdom isn’t just knowing the facts but understanding them in practice and in proximity to other facts.
If every time a person has a question, it has to be re-answered, it’s vastly less efficient than having it be answered once and then have people just Google for it. When I answer a question, I want it to benefit not just one random person but all the future people who can find it via searching.
I understand the people who object to people being rude about it, but not with the people saying that they should not be expected to at least search – a small expenditure of their time – before asking other people to spend their time fixing the first person’s problem.
It takes you seconds to hit Google. If you broadcast that question to a forum, maybe thousands or tens of thousands or even millions of people read your question. Then they donate their time to try to solve your issue, and multiple people may spend time on it. It almost certainly takes more time per individual to craft a good answer than it takes the asker to perform a search. That is asking for a big chunk of time from people who are trying to donate their time to help others. Their time is much more limited than Google search cycles.
Common courtesy is to search first. If that doesn’t solve it, then ask.
You’re making the assumption that everyone is capable of using Google to the extent needed to find an answer. Being able to fully utilize and understand exactly what it is you’re searching for is a skill in and of itself and not everyone knows how or what to search for. Of course this is dependent on the question/issue but I still think that too many people take for granted that Google-Fu is an actual skill that some can lack
If plugging the text of the question that you’re asking into the Google Search bar turns up pages with the answer, then that isn’t the situation. And that’s generally what I think people get upset about.
It depends. I get your point but there are a lot of questions to which answers change over time and a restatement of the question can lead to a discussion about new and better ways to answer them. Plus if I’m new to something I often simply ask the wrong question. Something a knowledgable human recognizes, but google does not. So a better answer to basic questions often is ‘google this not that’ making it way easier for the new person to find the answers.
Not “google it”, but when people who seem to be trolls keep asking nonsense questions that make it clear they haven’t read past the subreddit name, I have no problem with them just being linked to the FAQ (I hate when people don’t link it: it’s not people’s fault reddit, especially official app, make finding such impossible) or told to search their question and read the other 1000 times that question has been asked on said subreddit (and ideally link to one of them that people have actual answers to but not necessary imo).
Just chatgpt it
Not to mention that Google is also terrible for retrieving some (most?) kinds of information. It can work with basic facts but then you’re still relying on Google (or any other search engine) not to omit other salient facts or sources.
I was like you and mainly lurked for this reason, too. The fediverse can be a lot friendlier. The atmosphere had changed a little since the latest Reddit exodus. Hopefully, most of the toxicity of that platform is left behind.
It might be helpful to reiterate that knowledge isn’t fixed and the while Google provides one answer, we could get a better answer after a discussion. So keep asking questions!
Than there’s the element of sites going down. Redundant conversations serve as a form of backup.
True. I’ve noticed this happening more in recent years than ever before, too.
Now we don’t have to discuss facts because we can look them up but rather discuss whether things are good or bad or certain aspects of them. We don’t have to discuss “is there climate change?” But we can discuss what to do
I do google a lot of stuff before bringing it up in a conversation, just to be sure I’m not making stuff up, even if it’s something I’ve looked up 100 times
Same but mostly because I’ve had conversations with people who will Google something to tell me I’m wrong when the whole point was the conversation, not being right.
Googling niche topics usually takes me to reddit/quora where someone has already asked the same question and someone has already answered. But sometimes (rarely) it takes to threads where the first comment says “google it” 😑.
Did you mean recursion?
In a similar vein have ever ready portal to all of human knowledge constantly in our pocket it has killed some avenue of debate in face to face social situations, like out at a bar. In the before time you could spend an entire evening debating which came first or who wrote some film, or which song sold most albums and the argument would not be settled by some whipping out a phone, googling and done.
I kinda get where you’re coming from, but at the same time, I think there are just as many people these days coming up with absolute rubbish which too many people have the misfortune of falling for.
And as much as we would like to believe that we can search up facts about any topic in the world, there is just so much rubbish on the internet that even when you do look it up, the search results are far from helpful (depending on what you’re looking for).
Personally I like asking people stuff that I could have looked up, just to hear their take on it.
yeah, I think that almost builds on my post not contradicts it. Someone may whip out a phone, go to the first result in google and say “there proves my point” without assessing the validity of the source.
This is so true, I haven’t asked question on stack overflow for a long time because often I find the answer by myself or by googling it. On rare occasions I asked it gets closed as duplicate of barely related question that doesn’t answer my question or I get no answers.
Also because people are just really fucking rude about it when you ask any question on that site.
Or the only person that answers your question gets heavily downvoted.
Yeah it’s kind if strange behaviour to be on a discussion board and only contribute by killing the discussions by pointing to Google.
I get that people get annoyed by low effort posts and people’s general inabilty to find information independently. But there are better ways…
Especially since that discussion might be found later via Google as well. It’s more helpful to say that you looked it up via a specific search and give a couple of the results. That way it’s not a dead end and the person hopefully learns how to help themselves in the future by example.
