To wonder why people can't just look simple things up?

[CornflakeMum]

We live in an age when it's never been easier to find out information - by googling or asking Siri/ Alexa etc.

Yet it seems our local area Facebook groups and all my WhatsApp groups are full of questions which people could have easily (and probably more quickly) answered for themselves, rather than clogging up social media feeds.

Just today I've seen:

• Is there a post office in the town?
• Do M&S sell cloth face masks?
• Anyone know what time B&Q opens?
• Does the bus stop on XYZ road?

and in my Book Group WhatsApp

• What's the date of the next meeting? - by someone who posted that 'the next meeting is xth Sept' herself about a month ago, with the book we'd chosen!

Is it laziness or stupidity or what? Why can't they just search for themselves?
AIBU??

It's almost as irritating as people who post "can anyone recommend a really good plumber?" and then happily accept all the replies that say:

John H Smith - Yeah, JH Smith Heating & Plumbing are great!

Have people never heard of Checkatrade??!

I hate this! I go out of my way to avoid making myself look or sound like an idiot, and it baffles me that people don't just use Google. If anyone saw my search history, they would (correctly) think I was a cretin.

It's equally annoying when someone asks a specific, perhaps legal or medical question, and people answer despite having absolutely no knowledge or expertise. They just guess!
What's that about?

I agree I've seen it on here too. Anyone know what the weather is like tomorrow/should I go to so and so tomorrow, will it be busy? etc..Don't know why anyone would bother to answer questions like that!

YY, @TonyChestnut. Or when people respond to a totally different question they do know the answer to. I remember asking in a group about fertility treatment if anyone knew the specific benefits of one brand of drug over another, and so many people replied 'dunno, never used them, but I think acupuncture/pineapple/low carb dieting is what did it for me'. Yes, clearly, and if I wanted snake oil recs I'd have fucking asked for them.

Haha - or those reviews where Amazon has asked "can you help Mr Jones with his question about this item" and the published review says "I bought his for a friend, so I have no idea whether it was any good or not..."
There's no need to answer then!!

@CornflakeMum

It's almost as irritating as people who post "can anyone recommend a really good plumber?" and then happily accept all the replies that say:

John H Smith - Yeah, JH Smith Heating & Plumbing are great!

Have people never heard of Checkatrade??!

I'd far rather have a local recommendation from people I know/in my area rather than a recommendations site where the reviews might have been paid for. (I know neither is foolproof though).

Yes, this drives me nuts! And the people who say things like 'Need a hair cut Saturday 3pm - any hairdressers free?' Phone round, like everyone else! Or 'Any full time jobs available?' , with no mention of what skills or qualifications they might have and what type of work they could do.

It's mostly laziness. Like you don't have something better to do than check something for them! Grrr!

or those reviews where Amazon has asked "can you help Mr Jones with his question about this item" and the published review says "I bought his for a friend, so I have no idea whether it was any good or not..."

Why do people do this???

YANBU in general, but some people may do it to be sociable and ask a real person, instead of reduce the amount of social contact they have by asking a computer.

Also not everyone has the same level of internet skills as each other, or they may find information difficult to parse/filter down, so a one sentence answer from someone else is more accessible to them.

The mask one could be a FB only question. In a local group I'm in, people ask if anyone has been to a very particular store and if it has something in stock. It saves a trip.

But M&S in general? That's annoying. YANBU there.

Asking for recommendations is great for those who prefer word of mouth from people they may trust instead of third-party sites.

All the others, YANBU.

If something make me roll my eyes, I just scroll on though and leave people to it. I usually find those answering don't even answer the actual question.

I don't know if it's laziness or just too much information out there, maybe. It's also a bit of needing that social interaction.

I think people do this when they just want social interaction or someone to pay attention to them. To get the ding on your phone that someone's commented on your post.

The Amazon reviews are because the email Amazon sends to buyers makes it sound like you personally are being asked. They should really have two buttons in the email, one saying "Answer this question" and the other "Sorry, I don't know".

*Amazon answers, not reviews

Is it laziness or stupidity or what? Why can't they just search for themselves? AIBU??

YABU because 50 % of the population is of below-average intelligence, therefore there ARE a lot of thick people around. However,
YANBU because even though they can’t help it they’re still jolly irksome!

maskingforit have you got a link for that statistic?

I think sometime it's hinting, for example, someone who is asking what time bus x goes into town is really hoping someone will offer them a lift, especially if it's followed by...I really need to get to the vets at 8am as my pet goldfish looks depressed.

Tbf, with the buses, they're still getting back to normal and it's not always easy to find a definitely current timetable.

And the people who say things like 'Need a hair cut Saturday 3pm - any hairdressers free?' Phone round, like everyone else!

I wonder if people do this deliberately as a balance-of-power thing. Maybe their reckoning is that, if a hairdresser contacts them, she/he is applying for the business, may be a bit desperate, and can thus be beaten right down on price and/or dictated to; whereas, if they approach a hairdresser themselves via the standard route, they have no recourse to dictating terms or prices.

I think some people, especially those of an age where they haven't grown up with the internet being an ever-present part of their lives, are slightly fearful of using it to search. I'm in my 40s, so I've used the internet all my adult life, but there are still some techie things that I don't know and just can't be bothered with. My DS, otoh, is 8, and he either knows everything or is fascinated to learn about it - NOW!

As as a PP said, some folk are just not used to distilling their question down to a search-engine appropriate term. Some of them probably also simply can't shake off the idea that it's somehow extremely rude to type an abrupt 'Brecon bus timetable' into a search box, without a 'please', 'thank you', 'excuse me' or 'could you kindly help me' - no matter how much you tell them that an algorithm-based bot couldn't care less about politeness.

Also, the sheer vastness of the Web can seem very daunting if you aren't used to zoning out all of the info you don't need and homing in on what you do. I can well believe that a lot of older/less technically-minded/non-NT people could be horrified to search and be told that there are 3,875,039 results, when they aren't used to looking down the first page, maybe stray into the second or third if necessary, to find what they need and then simply ignore all the rest.

Some idiot at work asked me what 'metatarsal' meant = Wtaf. It was a millennial too!

I think sometimes it's stupidity but mostly it's just pure laziness.

Sometimes local knowledge is more accurate than official information.

With bus timetables there is little relation between when the buses are due and when they actually go past at busy times of the day for my local bus routes. Theoretically I should be able to just take 30 mins to do a 2 bus route journey of about 10 miles. In reality it takes 30 mins up to an hour and a half. Someone that uses the buses everyday would know that.

@Pawsin

I don't think it's laziness as it surely takes even more time than just a quick google search! I think it's just attention. The people I've seen that do it, then tend to reply to the answers with an attention-seeking reason/back story 🤣

Agree!

@MaskingForIt

Is it laziness or stupidity or what? Why can't they just search for themselves? AIBU??

YABU because 50 % of the population is of below-average intelligence, therefore there ARE a lot of thick people around. However,
YANBU because even though they can’t help it they’re still jolly irksome!

Please tell me this was an attempt at a joke? If not it’s the most ironic post ever !

Someone trying to point out half the population are of less than average iq by displaying a total misunderstanding of averages and statistics

It depends what it is. Round here it makes sense to ask about things like bud times because they have changed since lockdown, yet the published ones, both at the bus stops and online have not been updated for a long time. I discovered this almost to my cost a few weeks ago.

So asking local people who may already have experience of the new routines can make sense.

Some of it is laziness though.