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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
Absolutely agree. People who are asking questions (in good faith) are looking for a human interaction, not just a Google search. It’s much more engaging for a lot of people to have a discussion about something new than to just read about it. Then if they’re interested they might choose to go deeper in their own research.
I’m not techy but this goes for anything. “Google it” just shuts down human interaction and someone who is trying to learn. Better to just not answer than to be condescending if you don’t want to engage in a discussion.