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An edit of xkcd 2501, “Average Familiarity”:
[Ponytail and Cueball are talking. Ponytail has her hand raised, palm up, towards Cueball.]
Ponytail: Open-source alternatives are second nature to us foss nerds, so it’s easy to forget that the average person probably only knows Linux and one or two degoogled Android ROMs.
Cueball: And Firefox, of course.
Ponytail: Of course.
[Caption below the panel]
Even when they’re trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person’s familiarity with their field.
partly inspired by the replies to this post but i see this kind of thing all the time (shoutout to the person who once genuinely asked “who still uses google these days?”)
made with this neat tool
i am reminded about this one time i was doing desktop support at a hospital. super smart doctor was having a problem and i asked them to recreate the problem for me
oh they did… and instantly clicked the error away when it showed up and then instantly looked at my for an answer
i asked them to do it again, same
i was flabbergasted… i had to point out that i need to know what that error was
“oh it’s the same thing it always says” was the reply
thankfully i understood the the workflow and asked to sit and recreated the error again… AND guess what? IT FUCKING TOLD THEM EXACTLY HOW TO RESOLVE THE PROBLEM
wow i would hide a note in my chest cavity before they do surgery on me
a bloody slip of paper hidden within my ribcage, enscribed “learn how to read, idiot!”