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foss nerds stop being condescending to those who don't know the same things you do challenge (impossible) (files.catbox.moe)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
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alt textAn 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

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[–] 196 points 6 months ago (11 children)

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.

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  • [–] 88 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    The next comment was β€œWhat’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.

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  • [–] 39 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

    I'm of two minds on this.

    In some respects people are learning new things everyday and your 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.

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  • [–] 16 points 6 months ago

    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

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  • [–] 12 points 6 months ago* (2 children)

    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.

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