I’m a chemist and I really like when my friends bring me their science questions because I get to stretch my knowledge, show off a bit, and have a conversation. I’d be a little offended if I learned they googled and watched a crash course.
Unfortunately there’s also a significant chance that you might just be lazy and value your own time more than mine, so how about we meet in the middle and you try googling it first and then ask me to explain the part(s) you didn’t understand?
Yeah once I found these balls on my porch that kinda looked like frog eggs but where too small and not blonde together like frog eggs and at that kind of situation what do you even put in the search bar and reverse image searches only gave me pictures of frog eggs only when I made the post on Lemmy that I found out what chia seeds look like and that’s what I was looking at
I ask people things because I’ve calculated the efficiency between asking and looking it up and if I can ask you something and get a quicker answer and the probability that the answer is accurate enough, that’s what I’ll do.
When I ask questions to real people it’s because Google either gave me no answers or gave me too many disparate answers to know which one is the correct one.
Lately, it feels like I can’t use a search engine anymore.
If your search is remotely related to something you can buy, you will get amazon, temu and wish listings first, the bullshit AI article and then if you are lucky, a little sliver of what you are looking for.
Thankfully I don’t really know anyone like this, to my knowledge, but I couldn’t help be snarky as fuck if I did. I’d be sure to google it - immediately - then if they try to continue any sort of conversation I’d tell them to shut up while I deeply research the thing I was asking them about.
A couple friends work in the merchant navy and end up explaining a whole load of things that I have no clue about. If their answer to my questions were “just google it”, I’d be studying for years to be a Captain!
I’m like this. I’d rather talk to someone about things than look them up. It’s ok if people don’t have time for it, but people who snarkily tell you to “just Google it” are just being rude and missing the point. Obviously I could just Google it, but I’d rather talk to someone about it. That’s why I asked.
I’m pretty big on spending, say, 100 seconds on Google when I see something interesting come up on Lemmy or in a group chat or something. I often find a snippet or a photo I can reply with, and from there I might ask a question that digs deeper. I might be able to do more research to answer the further question myself, but at that point I’ve shown some interest and further discussion may seem less burdensome since at least the person doesn’t have to paraphrase the first sentence of the relevant Wikipedia article.
Majority of people don’t have this mindset and just want to be spoon fed answers without doing a shred of work themselves.
People don’t properly phrase their question to give the impression you’d want a conversation and instead ask basic questions, don’t reply when they get replies and never engage with the community.
Provide your knowledge and steps you did to get there and ways it stopped working, steps you’ve tried to resolve…then inquire. People skip all that and just inquire.
Context is very much key, too. Asking “How do I [do this thing that is well documented]?” on a forum just comes across as lazy and wanting information spoon fed. Asking the same question in a Discord server of friends seems more like looking for connection and the personal experiences of the firends.
Got invited to a dinner party of people I didn’t know well, they were friends of my then girlfriend.
So we were sitting around before dinner chatting and drinking and I brought up a question about something that we were all talking about. I don’t remember what it was but the point was just to keep conversation going and to interact with people. BUT one lady just looked at me and said “why don’t you just Google it?!” Shut down conversation completely.
Sure I could Google it Karen but that doesn’t make for good conversation!
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