Having information at one’s fingertips makes everyone an expert in everything. Information is now so easily obtained it has made some questions seem obsolete: who, what, when, where, and why (oh, and how). There’s just no need for them when you can find out answers to almost anything so quickly yourself.
When I’m blogging, tweeting, blipping, or the other 1,000 things I do simultaneously online, and someone asks one of these questions about content I’ve published (what does that term mean, who is that author, when did that movie come out), I always responds in links rather than offering an explanation.
Wouldn’t it save some time to cut out the middle man and just Google is yourself? I mean, I can understand why The 5 Ws come up in the context of a conversation where no Internet access is available (in real life), or if they have to do with opinion, experience or personal preference, but otherwise they seem like kind of a waste of time. I’m not your assistant; do your own research.
$@bs
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niceguyted on 04.20.2009
Right there with ya, baby. I hate it when people ask me stupid questions like that – funny how they usually do that via gmail or some other electronic means of communication, huh? It’s like “can’t you just open a new tab/window and google it, buddy?”
On the flip side, I rarely ask someone else one of these questions for exactly the same reason: I can just friggin’ google it myself. I’ve spent enough time doing internet research that I have a pretty good idea of how a boolean search works and how to pick the right search terms to return the results for which I’m looking. I wouldn’t trust someone else to get as correct an answer as I would find anyway.
Good point, $@bs.
PS: Brian’s a pederast.
Jennifer on 04.20.2009
Is this the same as when you send out a party invite with all the info and someone e-mails to ask what time it starts? Cause I hate that shit too!
Robbie on 04.23.2009
Ok. I hate to be the party pooper, but I completely disagree with taking a hard stance on this. I google as much, if not more, then the average person. My entire career has literally been salvaged from the google search engine database. With that being said…
Exchanging questions and answers is a simple form of respectuflness between friends, or any two people who commonly communicate. We absolutely cannot fall into this mindset where we no longer need to be helpful in passing out information. Which this is exactly what you are proposing.
Sure, google is handy to us all. But we got where we are today by freely and personally exchanging information to one another. If the historians of the past had said to one another “Go to the scrolls and find it yourself, it’s there somewhere” where would we be today?
I promise you I would not have a single close friend if I took this stance. I would have a ton of impersonal contacts with whom I would just exchange a few pleasantries that could not be googled… and that’s it.