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Humanity has collectively lost the ability to look shit up on the internet (hexbear.net)

submitted 4 weeks ago by SovietBeerTruckOperator@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

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I work retail, and customer and fellow employee alike have no ability to google fucking anything, and this isn't bound by any age bracket or demographic. Young and old alike, half my job is googling shit for them, I'll do it in front of them in an attempt to be like "see you can do this yourself next time" and it never works. People will call my shop and ask me to google the phone number and directions TO OTHER STORES!

I forced a younger coworker to google a question he asked me yesterday and I swear I heard the fucking 2001 Space Odyssey theme played as he realized you can find information to answers your questions yourself!

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[-] Blep@hexbear.net 83 points 4 weeks ago

I mean the search engines are being deliberately made more dogshit to serve more ads. Its only gonna get worse

[-] SovietBeerTruckOperator@hexbear.net 46 points 4 weeks ago

True but they still work well enough that with some problem solving you can generally find what you need.

If nothing else there's YouTube tutorials for damn near everything.

[-] isame@hexbear.net 23 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

I felt a strange sense of what I'm going to call pride when I saw a young person (~20) using a YouTube tutorial to figure out the ratchet straps they were using to move and how to properly secure a load.

The pride comes from more of a personal place, but I think it applies more broadly. 'kids these days' aren't being taught what they need, and I appreciate resourcefulness when I see it.

[-] glimmer_twin@hexbear.net 16 points 4 weeks ago

Honestly YouTube search has become the new google search agony-shivering

[-] sawne128@hexbear.net 10 points 4 weeks ago

Except that Youtube search has become much much worse than even Google. You can type the exact title of videos and never find them.

[-] glimmer_twin@hexbear.net 5 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

For sure, but in terms of the old “how to fix X”, “how to do Y computer thing”, I will usually go to YouTube now before I go to a search engine tbh

[-] ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net 6 points 4 weeks ago

At least with youtube i can be mostly sure that I'm seeing something actually get done in the physical world

[-] glimmer_twin@hexbear.net 5 points 4 weeks ago

Totally. And I just got sick of the SEO, ai generated, ad filled slop that search engines turn up for any kind of common DIY or cooking query these days.

[-] anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net 4 points 4 weeks ago

I still do a regular, non-Google search because damn near every YT video explanation is at least 10 minutes too fucking long.

[-] Enjoyer_of_Games@hexbear.net 4 points 4 weeks ago

it doesn't want to show you something you've seen before because people generally leave the site when they see old results ie: I've seen everything time to logoff

you would have better luck searching on an invidious instance or a search engine with site:youtube.com