I feel like it’s 2000 all over again on the Internet. The bloat has made pages borderline unusable, and using AdBlock or NoScript reverts any so-called "design progress" back to the good old HTML days.

Google is only semi-useful now, while pages like DuckDuckGo are starting to deliver results reminiscent of the old Yahoo or Lycos days.

It feels like my trusty, old-school Internet skills are helping me navigate this mess. The reemergence of usenet / groups feels inevitable.

I never say it like that. But I’ll tell people I found it by searching it. People really need to learn how to search first.

Search for it on the Internet

Never say just, and if you bother answering be proper about it

Noooooo don't "Just Google it" try, "Use a Search Engine" Dont't make Google an integral part of internet

Just Ask Jeeves.

I'm starting to give up on Google. I've literally copy and pasted the same error message in Google, DuckDuckGo, and Kagl.

Google will respond with "no results found" while the others will actually give me a response.

"just Google it" has always been a shitty reply. People are asking for your opinion because they want opinions from people, not some nameless site/author/whatever. Even if you're just regurgitating information, it's coming from a PERSON not a random article. Never mind the reliability of the source. Heavens forbid that we social creatures social about a thing for a bit.

Not sure if everyone knows this, but: if you don't want to answer the question—you don't have to post a reply! Crazy idea, I know.

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The amount of times I've googled a problem, and the first result is a forum post of someone just being told to google it then locking the thread is way too high.

So many times I google something obscure, the top result is the same question asked on some forum with a single reply, "just google it"

As a software engineer...

Don't just say "just Google it". Guide them to the documentation. Ask them about the detail of the question. If it's an bug, try asking them if they can reproduce the bug.

This reminded me of the time I'm looking for how to do certain things in a software. I found a reddit post asking about the same issue and this is the reply OP got:

Here is the link: https://old.reddit.com/r/i3wm/comments/mupjsf/how_to_showhide_i3status_bar_taskbar/

Imagine. You search the issue you have. Found the ONLY reddit thread that talks about this, and the ONLY thread that talks about the issue have NO USEFUL ANSWER and, worse, the only reply is TELLING YOU TO SEARCH IT YOURSELF. This got upvoted too 😭😭😭.

Luckily, I found the solution (tbh the solution was there in the docs, but the wording wasn't clear and it makes it hard to search) and I end up replying the OP the actual answer.

So, this is a PSA for the fediverse: be nice. It's free.

While we're still young, we have a chance to become a better forum.

Also possibly an unpopular opinion: you shouldn't downvote a question, even if it was asked multiple times. Guide them to the answer instead