“There’s no such thing as a dumb question.”
The phrase above is meant to teach kids that asking is better than not asking because – at worst – you’ll learn something new. That’s how I was raised. As an adult, this axiom still holds true, except that what I’ve been learning is that people are assholes.
Lately, I’ve been encountering the Google effect when asking questions, especially in any online forum or social media. Someone mentions something I’ve never heard of and when I ask what it is, I get the online equivalent of a scrunchy-faced scoff. Apparently, the advent of ubiquitous online information and search engines means that no human being ever has to answer a simple fucking question anymore, and people who ask them without hitting up Google first are lazy, incompetent assholes. It’s the modern day equivalent of the schoolyard taunt “Go look it up!”.
It keeps getting worse. The more I try to engage people, the more flak I get for not looking shit up first. The problem is that if I Googled everything I ever saw in social media and never asked a question, I’d never directly interact with anyone. Twitter has been called the “place where everyone talks and no one listens”, and it’s now becoming the place where no one wants to listen. I’m just gonna whip my shit out there and expect you to know. You don’t know what I’m talking about? Go fucking Google it, asshole.
For the first time recently I was linked to a website called “Let Me Google That For You”, where the whole idea is given a snotty twist. It probably takes more effort to create a LMGTFY link than it would to just answer the fucking question in the first place, but people have now been given an engine with which to be douchekits to question-askers rather than simply engage them politely.
I like asking questions. I enjoy hearing people’s answers, especially about things they love that I might not know about. Listening to people’s slant on the information they dole out helps me to learn more about them from how they talk about the things they feel strongly about. Questions drive conversation. But as time goes on, people seem to want conversation less and less, and rather only want to commiserate with like-minded people who already know.
Is answering a simple question really that hard? Have we become so hopelessly inured to the ubiquity of online information that we can’t be bothered by someone wanting to hear our own answers, our own viewpoints? How does anyone pass along knowledge of the things they love to people who don’t know about them anymore? Isn’t that part of the point of social media?
I guess not. It’s the place where everyone shouts into the abyss. The place where, for want of as simple answer, several people I once followed lost me as a follower or an online “friend” because they couldn’t be bothered. When I ask a question and get a snarky “Google it” type response just remember: I’m not the one being the dick.
