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.
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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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.
>google question >reddit thread with exact question as title >one comment >”just google it”
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.
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.
I feel "just fucking google it" culture is toxic and driver away new users on a lot of discussion boards.
Don't ask a question, post a wrong answer to the question you have.
That'll give you many answers.
Of course you can always start by RTFM you lazy sod.
IF your post doesn't get deletet for being obviously wrong. You need a little bit of knowlege in the field your asking in for this method in my experience.
The problem with this mantra for me is that in a discussion, I don't want to know what website x thinks the definition or answer is, I want to know what you think it is. If the term/issue is uncontroversial then googling is fine, but if it's vague, confusing or has different interpretations, Google could make things worse.
E.g. someone complains that cultural marxism is bringing down western civilization. I could Google this and find out it's an antisemitic conspiracy theory espoused by the Nazis and now the American right. But will this definition help me understand the person I'm talking to and what they mean? Will it help the conversation? Absolutely not.
But if I asked, "what do you mean by that" nd the person responded, e.g. "how the left is pushing diversity in society against the will of ordinary people" (or whatever), then we can have an actual conversation about what is bothering this person.
antisemitic conspiracy theory espoused by the Nazis and now the American right. But will this definition help me understand the person
Well... If you know where someone is getting their information, it actually does say a lot about a person.
When I run across an argument like that, I know to back out of it and reassess if it's worth it in the first place.