usually all that was required to get the appropriate help was to say I read the manual, and I tried the XY and z that was suggested that didn't work. What do I do now?

Oh yes this is definitely how it would ideally go, on both the part of the one asking the question and the ones answering it, but hoo boy has it not been my experience a lot of the time, although it absolutely has gotten better over the decades. Ye olde Usenet could be a bit of a shitfest for asking technical questions, and so could eg. Linux forums. I'd know this because when I ran into something like that happening and I had the spoons for it, I'd try to be a bit more constructive.

Not all that rarely, the people answering beginners' questions with something like RTFM at best or abusive diatribe at worst thought what you're describing is what they were doing, even when the question was completely legitimate and possibly even somewhat nontrivial to piece together from some manual or whatever guide. People have some wildly varying ideas of what constitutes basic knowledge of some subject, and many also seemed to feel that because something was hard for them to learn, it should be hard for others too. And metaphorically kicking people in the teeth (and yes that's hyperbole) for eg. not reading some FAQ isn't really going to help anything; people – just like any other animal really – will generally react better to a carrot than a stick.

There's a reason why it's still a semicommon stereotype that Linux forums are full of assholes, although thank the fucking gods things are much better nowadays. The best part about writing about this stuff is that sometimes people show up in the comments to prove me right by acting like assholes