21 January 2010

"Just F**king Google It"


Last year when I posted a list of list of the types of commenters that bloggers encounter, I listed a "Please feed me with a spoon, mommy" category, and offered one of the few rants you'll find on this blog:
From high school to college to graduate school, a recurrent theme from instructors and professors is “I’m not going to spoon-feed you.” What they are saying is “look it up yourself” or “figure it out – you’ll remember it better that way.”

If I post something about butterfly farming and mention a chrysalis, someone may write in the comments “What’s a chrysalis? Is it like a cocoon?” Google/Wiki, for crying out loud. You’re sitting in front of the most powerful information-retrieval system in the history of mankind. The Library of Alexandria pales in comparison to the resources of the web, and you want me to spoon-feed you info you could find by typing eight letters and hitting “Return.” Get with the program.
Last week I encountered the "Just f**king Google it" link.  Apparently it's been available for a long time. but I hadn't run into it before.   The link will be of interest only to other bloggers; insert it when responding to a particularly inappropriate query in a comment thread.  The link will offer a mild reprimand to the target audience, then automatically redirect to Google; the only deficiency is that the pre-redirect screen only lasts 15 seconds, which is probably not enought time for those who need it to read it.

7 comments:

  1. Better still, if you haven't seen it, is "Let me Google that for you" (lmgtfy.com). E.g, for chrysalis.

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  2. Ha... I just made that same link. Consider me in full agreement with Anderov

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  3. Sadly, some people are incredibly lazy.

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  4. This one is better: http://lmgtfy.com?q=lmgtfy

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  5. lmgtfy.com is certainly a lot more polite...I'll have to keep this in mind. Perhaps a policy of lmgtfy.com for a first offense, and "just f**king Google it" thereafter? But then you'd have to actually track the presence of idiots in the comments...

    The best of all possibilities is to become a blog superstar, like PZ Myers, and have so many commenters in your personal horde that as soon as an idiot appears, the horde takes him or her down. Ah, if only.

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  6. Just to clarify, the link doesn't include the profanity that's in the blog post title.

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