Asking easily searchable questions...

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Does this drive anyone else batshit insane? Why do some people incessantly ask questions of me, and request information (information that takes time, patience, etc, to teach them) that is very obviously easy to find online? An example would be how to use an interface on an online game, when all of this information is in tutorials that you told them they really need to read as they go along, and available on Google to boot? How to you tell someone to f**k off and find their own answers without hurting their feelings? It especially bothers me when I don't have a great deal more experience, and I tell them to search for it or reference the manual/tutorial for a better, more detailed explanation, because I am -not- a good teacher, I lack patience, and I feel like they are wasting -my- time because I actually took the effort to read.

Just tell them you don't know how to explain it and where they can look up the information if they would like.

I can't stand when people do that, either.
The other day boyfriend called me from work to ask the name of the guy who inspired Alanis Morissette to write "Jagged Little Pill". Because I'm the only person in the world who knows that answer, and also you don't have a smartphone pressed to your face that could have told you faster and in a much less annoyed voice.

moved from General Autism Discussion to Random Discussion

Just tell them all the wrong answers, & have a laugh out of it.

Always funny when people start saying things that are totally wrong. Because they can't be bothered to read it.

A few reasons people may do this:

1. They are lazy.

2. They lack the ability to find and sift through the results of searches picking out what is relevant... Your search resulted in 10,918,162 matches.

3. Asking other people questions can be a basis for finding people with similar interests and for making new friendships. It happens often in topic related groups especially in unmoderated USENET / web forums.

I've learnt that sometimes people ask some of the questions because there's just too much information on the subject and they believe you know the subject well enough to summarize and point out the most important aspects. And sometimes they ask just to keep the conversation going.

Of course, sometimes they ask just to ask or because they're too lazy. Then, if it's online, you can redirect them to the 'just google it' page (I can't put the link as it gets censored). It worked on one girl I know.

Once once on a forum I go on people got mad at me for telling a person to just Google something when they wanted to know the definition of a word. I even put a link to the page that had the definition of that word but they were still mad.

Looking it up would have been much faster than posting and asking on a somewhat slow message board.

Redacted

It doesn't bother me so much if someone wants to try to make a connection with me through asking it online. In real life, I don't mind.

Actually, the premise that questions should be answered by 'Google' is what annoys me. If you think people don't learn from talking to each other, then it's your problem.

There is a certain kind of "teaching" that cannot be done by Wikipedia. It is best done by a person.

However, I would hope that people would at least skim the Wikipedia article before asking about something. It can provide background knowledge that helps everyone in the conversation.

I *could* understand, if the OP's question was why do people ask things that are Googleable on a forum, but the question was why do they ask him.

The answer is, because sometimes communication tells you things reading articles wouldn't.

Yes!

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