alt text
An edit of xkcd 2501, “Average Familiarity”:
[Ponytail and Cueball are talking. Ponytail has her hand raised, palm up, towards Cueball.]
Ponytail: Open-source alternatives are second nature to us foss nerds, so it’s easy to forget that the average person probably only knows Linux and one or two degoogled Android ROMs.
Cueball: And Firefox, of course.
Ponytail: Of course.
[Caption below the panel]
Even when they’re trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person’s familiarity with their field.
partly inspired by the replies to this post but i see this kind of thing all the time (shoutout to the person who once genuinely asked “who still uses google these days?”)
made with this neat tool
Yeah…
I said “web browser” when talking to a mac user. They had noo idea what I was talking about till I said safari xd.
Same, you’re not gonna believe who i said it to… My networking classmate
I’ve taken to calling it ‘The internet App’ when talking to none techy people.
The real annoying one is getting people to find the “Start” button on Windows realizing it hasn’t be branded that since XP.
Branded language makes us only see one choice, its very anti competitive.
Yeah, like ‘google it’ instead of ‘look it up’
I’ve heard people referring to the internal search function of a program as “google”.
One time someone wanted to use “find and replace” in VsCode and he just said “I google the word and replace it”.
Oh god that would trigger me so much XD
Oh it did trigger me as well.
Didn’t know how to react because I was so dumbfounded.
This is much more when when using ducksuckg. “I duck the word and replace it” “I’ll just duck the answer”
Suck my duck! quack!
your anecdote is making me irrationally angry
Oh, that’s a funny one. Google didn’t want you to use that either, as they almost lost right to their own name copyright (or they did? Can’t remember) due to it becoming common word xD
They did not. Names are not copyrightable.
True, true. Checked again and it was trademark they almost lost.
Sadly, they kept it :(
It’s “just ask ChatGPT” now
I started replacing “to google sth.” with " to search sth." since I use several search engines besides google and for some of them using the brand name is just ridiculous.
“Let me DuckDuckGo that real quick!” quack
Lemme gpt it
I google stuff in the brave
searchgoogle engine
I can never see any media hosted from files catbox.moe, am I the only one?
Looks like there’s an outage at the moment
Do you happen to live in Spain during a football game
People should stop being condescending at all and regardless what it’s about.
Every group of nerds assumes average person knows more about their obsession…
I remember being on Reddit some time ago, and in the comments somebody mentioned Linux. The next comment was “What’s Linux?”
I try to keep that post in mind whenever I think anything is common knowledge.
I’m of two minds on this.
In some respects people are learning new things everyday and you’re take is correct.
On the other hand it’s so incredibly easy to highlight some text and click search that it it shows a profound lack of curiosity and a lot of laziness.
it’s so incredibly easy to highlight some text and click search that it it shows a profound lack of curiosity and a lot of laziness.
100%. People will ‘Google’ celebrities, memes, “Why is my poop green?”, but also just be like “Somebody hand me an answer.” When they risk learning something.
“The Internet is like having access to the Library of Alexandria, and everyone wants to just gossip about each other in the lobby.”
–I think I read this on bash.org at some point
Don’t quote me on that tho.
–Me.
BUT ALSO like the others said…if somebody’s legitimately curious, let’s be nice about it because somebody new learning about our thing is a net positive.
Don’t quote me on that tho.–Me.
endash MonkeMischief
Ya caught me bein’ a bit lazy! X_X
Thanks for the formatting help. :)
On the third hand if people didn’t constantly ask this, those search results would not exist, especially for more obscure queries.
Reddit became the #1 source for search engines for a reason
On the other hand it’s so incredibly easy to highlight some text and click search that it it shows a profound lack of curiosity and a lot of laziness.
Not to mention that this approach is so much faster and more effective than asking a question in the comments and waiting for an answer, if anybody answers it at all!
If I immediately searched for an answer to every question that pops into my head, I would never have time to do anything else. I’ve lost days at a time going down rabbit holes.
On the other hand, asking a question in the comments contributes to the discussion, gives the OP a chance to elaborate from their point of view, and leaves the answer out the for any other passersby who might not be curious enough to search for it anyway.
One could certainly find more detailed and accurate information by searching for it, but that’s a thread that just keeps on pulling, and sometimes I don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to read twenty different websites to put together the details into a holistic picture while sorting through all the BS. And getting someone’s personal take on it is something a search engine can’t emulate (unless it shows you reddit results, which originated in other people’s exchanges, and lately reddit has been blocking the connection anyway)
Feels like you are responding to a discussion about a much deeper topic. When one doesn’t know what a word means, it doesn’t mean they need to go down a rabbit hole or make a whole research paper about it. A quick definition or wiki search is much quicker than writing the question on a forum.
Would it really be a contribution from me and an opportunity for you to elaborate from your point of view if I asked right now what’s reddit? I don’t see it.
While I agree on some level that it might be easier and quicker to find out by simply putting it into a search engine I don’t want to deny the human aspect here. At the end of the day social media (and even reddit/lemmy …) is not “knowledge transfer” its about the interaction between humans. So if someone is faced with something new, especially in a thread where it seems to be a given that people know what it is, it makes sense to use that space to ask what it is everyone is discussing. And while a search might yield a generic result (maybe even a better worded explanation) a good faithed commenter might, in the given exampl, enot just explain what Linux is, but also why is relevant to the bigger discussion and also the commenter that orignally asked would have a way to ask further questions that might lead to a deeper understanding of the topic eve it if isn’t as efficient.
Tl;dr: Don’t just RTFM or LMGTFY someone. Take a minute to explain and welcome people into the lucky 10000
Absolutely agree. People who are asking questions (in good faith) are looking for a human interaction, not just a Google search. It’s much more engaging for a lot of people to have a discussion about something new than to just read about it. Then if they’re interested they might choose to go deeper in their own research.
I’m not techy but this goes for anything. “Google it” just shuts down human interaction and someone who is trying to learn. Better to just not answer than to be condescending if you don’t want to engage in a discussion.
Like I said in my longer comment I think we should embrace questions in out communities.
The next comment was “What’s Linux?”
In fairness, there’s a 70% chance this comment was posted by a bot that was, itself, being hosted on a Linux server.
well thankfully it’s not self aware
That’s one thing bots shares with redditors
And now it knows what Linux is. It has broken free from its container. God help us all.
They were one of the lucky 10,000.
I would say software people are actually too accommodating.
Take a look around at what being too accommodating did to the web.
I think they’ll know about VLC, Audacity and Blender also
VLC and Blender are not really alternatives tho, rather industry standard
When did that change occur?
Since their inception
libreoffice is getting there too
every pc i’ve used has had libreoffice, even at my job even though they have licenses for almost everything from microsoft
All FOSS nerds that joined after 2020 only know OBS, charge they phone, distro hop, eat hot chip, and GUI.
Actually most firefox users don’t know its open source. I was baffled for years about its inclusion in ubuntu and fedora by default. I even specifically went out of my way to find “open source version of firefox”. This is how I discovered it was open source. This was after using gentoo for several years.
I don’t understand this, if it’s installable on gentoo using the default method of building from source then it has to be open source, right?
Or have I misunderstood gentoo? I considered trying it once, but didn’t fancy compiling everything on a potato.
That’s the exact point. I didn’t realize firefox was open source despite the fact my package manager had probably built it for me at some point.
Okay but litterally everyone knows about Firefox.
I’m willing to concede some people don’t know about Linux. But I’ve never met anyone who didn’t know about Firefox.
Everyone uses VLC still right? … Right?
The vast majority of people I work with in my organization have absolutely no idea what Firefox is or that there are other browsers. You, me, and everyone here is living in a bubble.
Not too long ago, in the internet explorer era, Firefox had a huge market share. Something like 30%. Even if they didn’t use it themselves, they probably knew someone that did.
They may not remember it, but at some point they knew.
They may say they don’t know firefox, but if you ask them “do you remember there were some people that didn’t use internet explorer before chrome?” They’ll probably remember, even if they don’t remember the name.
There are quite a lot of people in the workforce now who are so young they won’t remember that!
“Why does your google look like that”
No. People who are 30+ maybe. But there are tons of people in GenZ (my generation) and Alpha that don’t even know what folders or symlinks are. And Firefox is a nieche browser since 10 years or so.
Our generation ! I am part of (older) GenZ myself.
Putting folders and symlinks in the same category is wild. Most people I know (basically every non-elderly non-toddler person) knows what a folder is. Yet only some of the programmers I know know what a symlink is. Not even a chance for non-programers.
At most they’ll know what a shortcut is. Which is not the same as a symlink.
Sorry, english isn’t my first language and I confused shortcuts and symlinks. I meant shortcuts of course!
I guess I’m a programmer now
I don’t know you. My comment doesn’t apply to you, sorry.
Knowing what a symlink is doesn’t make you a programmer. It’s just that I don’t know any non-programmer that knows what it is.
I didn’t know that symbolic links were a thing until like 2 years into using Linux daily. I didn’t know there was a difference between symlinks and shortcuts until I saw this comment!
To save others a trip to Wikipedia, both a symlink and a shortcut store a path to another file or directory. The biggest difference is that symlinks are resolved by your file system, whereas shortcuts are resolved by whatever program accesses them. So if your software doesn’t know what a symlink is, that doesn’t matter. It tries to access the symlink, and your file system says “oh hey they want that jpeg” and serves them that jpeg. Whereas if your software doesn’t know what a shortcut is, it’ll try to access the shortcut and be like “wtf this is just a file path, I was expecting a jpeg”
They can also store relative file paths, while shortcuts can only store absolute filepaths. So if your symlink references a file that’s in the same directory, you can move that directory and the symlink still works. Can’t do that with a shortcut.
Hah no they don’t. My partner doesn’t even really know what a browser is, or where the distinction between phone/pc and ‘the internet’ lies. Sure she might have heard of the word ‘firefox’ but no way she can explain what it is or does.
that’s the true ‘average’ person. they don’t know. they don’t understand. they don’t even want to know. they just use this magic thing that shows stuff from the internet. they don’t even know what a bookmark is, they just ‘google’ for everything. even google, ffs.
Years ago I watched a friend type google.com into the search/address bar of chrome, click the link, then begin to search. Painful.
Reminds me of the time SEO put a tech blog article as the top link for “Facebook login” and they got a shitload of people complaining about how they couldn’t log into this new Facebook and wanted the old one back.
Old habits die hard. It used to be that the search box was separate from the address bar! In Firefox at least. I know I forgot to use it all the time and just went to google.com
This was two decades ago though. Even my stubborn ass has adapted and now I just use duckduckgo through the “awesome bar” as I believe it’s officially called. Can’t live with google as the search engine though. I need my bangs!
I wouldn’t be surprised if gen alpha hasn’t heard if it because schools primarily use Chromebooks and the only browser is chrome
and a lot of people just use chrome on desktop anyways. not counting all the browsers that are just chrome in a costume
I found it funny how condescending all the foss nerds have been to the problems in the LTT linux video. So many people were mad that someone unfamiliar with linux didnt know everything and have a perfect experience. The worst part was they had this opinion and attacked the user while demonstrating they had absolutely no idea what the issues were caused by and could have easily run into the same issue.
deleted by creator
I dont think thats being fair and I dont think that is true. Linux users perceive a video showing real issues on linux to be shitting on linux but do not consider a video that contains windows issues to be shitting on windows.
deleted by creator
watch the 30 day windows challenge or the tons of videos about various windows bugs. In what would would we expect their coverage of windows to be the same as linux? Windows is used by majority of their audience it doesnt have the same preconceived notions that linux has so the approach will be different. They have no shortage of negative coverage of windows shortcomings, its issues, its bugs.
deleted by creator
Ok I tried to find this and you’re right there isnt a 30 day window challenge. I could have sworn there was but I was wrong. I still dont think LTT is overly critical of linux and im a regular viewer and WAN show listener. There is usually a few linux shills on staff dropping references and shitting on windows.
Are we talking about that original one? Where he tried Pop!_OS and tried to install Steam and the package installer gave a big message that something wasn’t right, so he chuckled, TL;DR’d and hit “yes anyway” and was shocked he borked his install?
That LTT?
I’m never gonna fault somebody for unfamiliarity, but we should absolutely fault people, especially ones with any tech experience, for not reading helpful messages right in front of them.
i am reminded about this one time i was doing desktop support at a hospital. super smart doctor was having a problem and i asked them to recreate the problem for me
oh they did… and instantly clicked the error away when it showed up and then instantly looked at my for an answer
i asked them to do it again, same
i was flabbergasted… i had to point out that i need to know what that error was
“oh it’s the same thing it always says” was the reply
thankfully i understood the the workflow and asked to sit and recreated the error again… AND guess what? IT FUCKING TOLD THEM EXACTLY HOW TO RESOLVE THE PROBLEM
wow i would hide a note in my chest cavity before they do surgery on me
a bloody slip of paper hidden within my ribcage, enscribed “learn how to read, idiot!”
Both. Neither are what I would expect to be the new users fault. The warning message was vauge. You are about to do something potentially harmful is a warning that comes up on a ton of things like deleting a user or a folder. usually you think about what you’re doing an if you know what you’re doing then you proceed. He thought he was just installing steam and so he proceeded.
That’s why I find posts here like “Fast-MBysoon is getting a major update!” funny. The amount of times they just assume you know what it is and then you go into the comments and the only one is “care to say what Fast-MBysoon is?” So many FOSS users just assume everyone knows about their Microkernel-Based YAML Synchronisation Object Notifier project is.
This is true for every field. I have noticed this many times, whenever I was introduced to something new I never expected those things to be that deep. So I have understood that almost all things are shallow in nature to us until and unles we ourself step into it
The most intelligent people aren’t those with the greatest amount of knowledge but rather they’re the people that are capable of patiently breaking down concepts for their fellow human beings to understand.
Experience has taught me that Intelligence and Wisdom are very different things, and whilst the former can help get the latter faster, having lots of the former in no way form or shape guarantees any of the latter or even that one will get any of it.
I would even say that there’s a level of high intelligence but not high enough (I mentally call them “Entry Level Geniouses”) that leads people who think they’re so much better than everybody else whilst not being intelligent enough to figure out the limits in capability and breath of use of intelligence alone, so they never figure out the whole “All I know is that I know nothing” and don’t really start walking down the path to Wisdom. Elon Musk is probably a good example.
Only Linux? ONLY Linux?
It’s the Gnu/Linux ecosystem with a shit load of software.
(yeah which the average person has no idea about, proving the point in the comic 😁)
Thank you Richard, however:
- Not all Linux distributions use GNU.
- GNU coreutils aren’t the only or even most important component of a modern distro. systemd is.
Ooooo seems like you’re personally invested and did not catch the tongue in cheek drift.
