Periodic reminder that "Just google it" is dangerous advice. You're asking someone with professed ignorance of a topic to wade through a sea of adversarial SEO hacks and deliberate misinformation. This is how people fall for e.g. the propaganda from Autism Speaks.
Amber (@amber@toot.site)
@abloo@fedi.absturztau.be
@jaycie You have a point there.
@jaycie our therapist tried to look up something related to autism during an appointment and immediately ended up at Autism Speaks - we had to tell them that it was a hate organization because they had no idea
- 🎒💧
@not_on_pizza @packbat @jaycie ughhhhh that's so bad.
@packbat Ooph. Glad you were there to catch it.
Big oof. offers sympathy hugs
@jaycie Agreed. If someone asks you, replying "I'm not sure, do you want me to look into it?" is nicer than saying "just google it". If you can explain it without googling your self, doing so would be nice.
I also sarcastically love it when someone posts a link in an article or post about a subject that's just a google search for the thing. 'cuz clearly I don't know about how to do that.
Also also: Google's quality has gone to crap these last few years. To the point where duckduckgo is almost as good.
@suetanvil @jaycie tangenting: so I've only *just* started trying it so this is not a recommendation, and yes I do hate Microsoft and would prefer ddg, but i encountered recently a critter who found Bing to be more helpful than Google nowadays??
So. That's something I'm beginning to use sometimes, esp if ddg doesn't get me what I want.
@certifiedperson IIRC, ddg bases its search results on Bing
@aprzn huh, I'd never seen that anywhere? Might have just not seen that tho.
I have only tried using Bing a couple times yet when ddg wasn't quite as helpful as I wanted, so if they are super similar, i hadn't got to the point yet of figuring that out myself aha
Despite everything, I still find that a little sad.
@suetanvil @jaycie oh yes, it absolutely is.
@suetanvil @jaycie so duckduckgo is almost as good as crap?
@jaycie “You know where I can get help with this?” “Yeah, go talk A++ Very Legit Seteeven.” “Oh, you know …Seteeven?” “No.” “Then a friend recommends…” “Not really.” “Then why?” “Oh he put signs all over our neighbourhood. Posters on telephone poles, the works. Here take a look.” “I don’t think… there’s a lot of typos here, and I don’t think this area code exists.” “He put up a lot of signs though.”
@jaycie Maybe if you told someone to look it up on YouTube they’d have a better chance at realizing you just told them to feed themselves to the beast face first.
@jec That's the ideal, yeah. We could all use more curated lists and FAQs that those with limited time/energy could share when others ask them for answers. Lists of resources by tier - tl;dr, single-pager, essays, books, etc. - would be fantastic.
@jaycie I've similarly heard (but not been openly privy to) arguments like "if you aren't informed by now, clearly you don't want to be informed, and I don't have the energy to deal with someone like that" and it's like...
At that point you're just telling them they're not wanted, aren't worthy of being helped, and that they're better off being your enemy.
You could at the very least provide known good sources for people to start from, you know? Or cautions of groups to be wary of.
@Facet We can blame sealioning for no small part of how many of those people have been legitimately exhausted (among many other contributing factors).
@jaycie ddgr !aur links
@jaycie Bring back DMOZ
Posting a question on fedi often beats searching these days.
