And when you finally find some helpful forum with content from 15 years ago, you’ll have someone be like “GUYS I FIGURED IT OUT! Here’s a [broken] link to someone else who solved it” with a dozen or so “Thanks, that solved the issue immediately for me!” Comments after it.
Anybody remember this site? Google used to be so good that anybody with half a brain could find a good result if they would just type a basic phrase into it.
My sweet summer child, issues with google search existed in 2008, things just accelerated at a massive rate once it became the de facto standard and people figured out how to manipulate search results.
It was even wrose when there was a site by the name “let me google it for you”, which insulted you while made an animation about how to use this “not evil” website google. You google “how to do [X]” find a nice looking forum, and people either are angry that OP didn’t google it, or they deceptively linked to a lmgify page.
After a month of suffering, I instead reinstalled Windows XP, which I had a lot of trouble with (fugly UI, stability issues, performance issues, etc), but not as much as with the “king of stability”, Linux.
I always used to use “Let me bing it for you” at least then it was probably something they hadn’t tried, and it was proper trolling instead of just being passive aggressive
This was always dickhead behaviour, but not for the reasons you guys are circlejerking about. Often the answers to these questions are extremely easy to find online (even today, Google is nowhere near as useless as people make it out to be). But the entire point of asking other people through social media or a forum is because you want to engage in discussion with other humans. That’s literally the entire point of these websites: to foster discussion, both for the sake of learning and for the social entertainment we all need. People who sign up to them and then completely shutdown attempts to start discussions are absolutely braindead and don’t understand any of this. Modern forms of social media only encourage this kind of performative social interaction. So many people seem to think the sole purpose of discussion-based social media is to dunk on others with a vicious reply and “win” by earning more points (ratio) instead of having an actual back and forth discussion with another human.
I mean, there has definitely been a noticeable and significant decline in the quality of search engine results, particularly on Google. It used to stand out at least a little bit from Bing (a search engine that went very hard into inserting ads into results early on), but they’ve essentially become indistinguishable. Aesthetics and connections with other platforms like Gmail and YouTube have become the only real reason to stay with one over the other.
Sure, I completely that it has declined significantly. I think the comments in this thread about it “sucking cock”, being “just ads and SEO crap”, or a “bloated, shit site” are hyperbole though. It is still the best search engine for most use-cases and queries, including finding answers to “how do I do X” type questions. I use DuckDuckGo (AKA Bing) but only because it gets close enough to Google’s results to be a superior choice for me overall when I take into account its massive privacy advantages. In terms of results, there is still enough of a gap that I will occasionally need to rely on Google’s results for particular queries. I actually used to use StartPage for this exact reason and only switched because it had issues with VPNs.
Lmgtfy used to be a great site to send to people when they asked easily googled questions. Now it’s a bloated shit site that barely works if it even still exists. It would do a flash animation on how to go to Google.com, type in their question and click search. I always got a kick out of sending it to people. R.i.p old Internet. You were great.
I mean, that is still what I mean. For you - it sounds like a great choice. For the people who want it to die, it might be an awful choice. It’s polarizing, but that doesn’t always mean good. It’s hard to make an informed decision even with a popular choice.
Ah I think I was unclear. The meme is what folks get tired of, the distro is a popular one on its own or as a base for others.
If you’re interested in looking into Linux but don’t know where to start, the only thing you really need to know is how much time you’re willing to put into learning it, and how big the community is. Arch has a huge amount of documentation, but will make things a little harder if you want stuff to “just work”. Debian is more of a middle ground (but huge community), and Mint is a popular easier to get into environment but honestly I’m out of the loop on that one these days.Arch is actually the base of the one I use at the moment for gaming and dev work (EndeavourOS). Options are overwhelming, I get it 😁
The cool thing? Try em all. You can easily find simple installers to slap a whole distro onto a bootable thumb drive and goof off while you feel things out. If you don’t like it, reboot. If your wifi doesn’t work and you can’t find a solution online in a few minutes, reboot. Things are easier and more flexible now then they’ve ever been, but the new user experience is still where Linux really struggles.
Anyway, I’m super into this shit clearly. 😆 Happy to point you in a more solid direction if you want at some point, or I can just shut up lol
It’s great for some people, awful for others. It became a meme because it started to be suggested to everyone even though it’s an awful first introduction to the Linux ecosystem.
I tried to get into making Skyrim mods, but some basic info just isn’t on any forums. I then find it discussed on discord servers as if it’s common knowledge discovered a while ago, but those same servers also perpetuate myths from Morrowind that were debunked a decade ago by an experienced modder. However, that modder is also a toxic asshole who’s now impossible to work with, so finding reliable info from him after 2018 is hard. All the while I’m just sitting here wondering if it’s even worth the effort.
And this is why I have always hated every single jackass that responded to a question with “just Google it” even when Google didn’t completely suck cock.
If I had just one single answer from a reputable source doing that, I wouldn’t be asking real people. Search engines were never infallible. Niche topics have always garnered shit results.
A lot of people don’t consider the future even when writing helpful posts. I’m as guilty as anyone.
If you link the correct answer, the person finding your post in 6 years better hope the link is still good. That’s the legitimate reason scholarly papers needs to cite specific book editions and journal page numbers instead of using hyperlinks in a bibliography.
If a copy of the book or journal can ba tracked down, the citation will still work.
It’s also why online-only published journals are still often formatted like a book with static pages instead of websites. If you find a journal article that’s important, you’ll likely still be able to find an achived copy in PDF somewhere even if the journal stops publishing or they change domains or whatever.
7 million AI generated SEO optimised bullshit websites: Here’s you do xyz (we don’t know either but we use lots of words Google likes so we get put first)
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