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??

On my village FB page.. Did anyone hear the heavy rain outside at 10pm last night, and does anyone know if there are at least two dougnuts left for sale in the village shop, ha ha,

Proper lol at the doughnuts

I think that sometimes people want to make connection with someone else.

So while you could easily find a recipe (for example) online, it's nice to hear someone's recommendations.
Maybe even be given a tip or recipe that you couldn't find online.

Sometimes it is lazy though.

@NameChange84

It happens on here too!

“do you have a link to that OP?”

“Is this in the U.K.? Never heard of it before”

“What statistics would those be?”

“if my coworker has Covid and I sat next to them but 2 m apart so I have to self isolate?”

“What’s a (insert brand name here)?”

Drives me mad. I always wonder why, in the time it takes to write a post, don’t posters just google? And expect other people to provide them with a link/definition/explanation/instructions? Bloody laziness.

People on here are terrible for it. No idea why anyone would ask a factual question on a chat website when the correct answer is available on an official website as opposed to on here where they get endless incorrect answers and arguments.

It's like the 'I want to buy a naice big house in a naice place and I've only got a tiny budget of £650k' thread that's currently running. Someone suggested that they look on Rightmove and they dismissed that idea of sheer lunacy with contempt because they wanted to ask the 'real people' of Mumsnet which I find totally bizarre because no-one has any idea who any of us are or whether what we post is reliable.

But if you post a link to a website answering the question they ask, half the time they will say 'summarise it for me, I don't click on random links', which I don't understand because if I wanted to know something, I would want to find out from the official source, not an anonymous stranger's interpretation of the information.

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

Who are Siri and Alexa? Are they those virtual assistants?

I work on a national helpline for a large company. Most of my job involves reading out loud from our website. Our publicly available website. 99% of my job is folk with inability to Google.

But where do Alexa and Siri get their information? I wouldn't trust what they tell me without seeing the information written down and the source.

Are they telling me the actual answer or what they want to tell me, which is not always the same thing.

@Jaxhog

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???

Not to mention that the question is usually something inane like "how tall is this" when the dimensions are clearly stated in the item description

Maybe everyone on here should have a pact that the next daft question we see, just respond with "have you googled this?"
It's more irritating than people that haven't read the thread (or sometimes even the opening post!)

Maybe they just want to chat

@EveryDayIsADuvetDay

Maybe everyone on here should have a pact that the next daft question we see, just respond with "have you googled this?" It's more irritating than people that haven't read the thread (or sometimes even the opening post!)

I use “Google is your friend” to DH and DC who use me as their Alexa frequently.

They don’t get an answer when they are too lazy to look themselves and my stock response irritates them.

The opening hours / do they actually have it in stock I get because I wouldn’t want to traipse into town for them not to have it or be closed (and since lockdown opening times on the internet aren’t reliable)

Just did a search on checkatrade for a decorator in my area and got sorry w are unable to find any matching trades. And I know one lives round the corner. So it’s hardly reliable.

I get asked to turn the TV up or turn the lights on at home

“ Alexa - TV volume up”

“Alexa -turn on lights”

It’s less words for her to do it herself than to ask me to

There's a woman I barely know from my sons school who always messages me to ask stupid questions like when does the school go back. It's all on the website and news letters so I just don't get why she thinks I'm some fountain of knowledge. This was before COVID and has been going on for years. I tell her it's on the website and then a month later gat another similar text. I've just started ignoring.

If people persistently asked me for information that was publicly available I don’t think I could resist telling them the wrong thing.

Any fireworks - "who is letting on those fireworks?"
Any siren - "anyone know what's going on with all the sirens on the main road?"

No, Steve, no one knows, go and have a look if you're so interested.

There’s a regular poster in our FB community group, one of my favourites was ‘how do
I enrol my DD at High School?’ hasn’t lived here long, everyone was “phone the school!!“ she hadn’t even phoned 🙄

The problem with all the tradesperson recommendations is that when you look closely it’s nearly always their partner/family recommending them, or even them recommending themselves!
Unless I personally knew the person recommending them, or lots of people recommended the same company, I wouldn’t trust them at all as being useful recommendations.

@NameChange84

It happens on here too!

“do you have a link to that OP?”

“What statistics would those be?”

I think that’s usually meant to challenge the OP’s assertions. If someone blindly recites some nonsense that they saw on FB then asking what statistics were used to come up with that is a way of pointing out that they weren’t thinking critically before they regurgitated rubbish.

@CornflakeMum

The problem with all the tradesperson recommendations is that when you look closely it’s nearly always their partner/family recommending them, or even them recommending themselves! Unless I personally knew the person recommending them, or lots of people recommended the same company, I wouldn’t trust them at all as being useful recommendations.

But checkatrade could be exactly the same - plus, in my area, it’s useless.

@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 would far rather get personal recommendations for tradesmen, so I disagree with you on this.

Google it, OP! 😆

@daisypond finally some sense. Sometimes it's a way to start a conversation and I understand especially now if people are lonely.
Its a kind of social skill. I'll sometimes even ask people something even if already know, because it'll be a topic they're interested in, or their hobby and they enjoy taking about it.

I'll also ask rather than Google if I want a personal opinion on something from someone I know. Like another poster has mentioned, sometimes the reviews just cant be trusted (thinking of those paid ones on Amazon) or the information is inaccurate inaccurate because of COVID, such as opening hours.

I agree with 'thelongwayhome'. A lot of it is lazinesss but real life conversation is quite often for no reason other than a need to communicate and sometimes online questions are like that too.

This happens on a professional group all the time. This profession involves problem solving skills.

Every day someone will post how do I get a job in x profession?
There is a huge FAQ section that explains it.

The moderator has started deleting those threads since the disrupt the group so much.

I would rather get a recommendation for a plumber via my friends on Facebook than checkatrade, which isn't all its cracked up to be.