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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
and sometimes it’s not about the answer …
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 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.
There are lots of benefits to lurking. Nobody jumps on you with pedantic bull crap. Nobody tells you to just Google it. Nobody picks at every god damn little picky thing you say. Nobody bothers you. It’s a wonder anybody bothers to post or comment at all. Life is more peaceful for lurkers.
Just go against all that and comment. The world needs your voice too.
If he truly thought that he wouldn’t have posted it.
I would like a hard rule that there’s no stupid question. If you don’t want to help someone, just ignore it.
No need to add a negative comment town discussion.
The worst outcome is when the first google result is a thread that only has an answer of “just google it”
When that happens, I register on whatever forum it was where someone said that just to say (necropost if needed) that I had the same question, searched it, and the search results brought me here where an asshole is saying to search it.
At which point you get yelled at for reviving a dead thread
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 🧡
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”???
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.
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
The trouble with google search these days is…
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you have a question that you need answered, but don’t know the answer to? Everyone runs into this issue from time to time, but fortunately there is a simple solution. By using google search to find your answer, you will be both satisfied and educated by the result! People across the world use this simple tool every day to find answers to a wide variety of questions.
Then after 2+ paragraphs of that you’re lucky if there’s an answer at all, not to mention a correct one.
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.
Or the only person that answers your question gets heavily downvoted.
Also because people are just really fucking rude about it when you ask any question on that site.
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.
Something I’ve noticed as I’ve shifted more of my conversations from Reddit to Discord (even before the garbage fire over at the site) is that I’m not looking up stuff as much during instant, short-form communication. Just casual conversation really is okay sometimes. I’ll be trying to keep that in mind as I spend more time on Reddit alternatives.
I also have a theory that message board conversations spend as much time on opinion as they do because all the little shit has been solved now that we have esoteric information at our fingertips. Some people don’t even know what it was like to be sitting around with friends all trying to figure out what 80’s film you saw Robert Loggia in because you couldn’t just look it up on-demand.
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.
Plus it’s not even that useful of a statement in this day and age. Google isn’t what it used to be, and even if it was, a lot of time it struggled with very specific and detailed problems. It would often just point you to the community where you were told to “google it”
yep, SEO has ruined google search. Now a days a lot of people add “reddit” to the search term because its more efective, only issue is when the subreddit is closed and internet archive only has one snapshot that was the moment the thread was created and no answers are there haha.
Tangential but I’m curious, when was it that you noticed every search engine was broken by SEO? I started to see signs 6 years ago, but they became undeniably unusable about 3 years ago for me.
