The short answer is the people you interacted with are assholes. The stereotype of IT people is that they don’t know how to play with others. Just because it is a Stereotype doesn’t mean it is not earned.

Because there is a huge demographic of nerds that are actually chuds and learned absolutely nothing from being bullied and/or being a beginner when they were younger.

I bet you can picture the demographic that they overlap with, but I'ma try not to explicitly make this political.

please do not delete your question. it could easily help someone else who has the same issue. by deleting it, you are throwing away the work of the person who took the time to answer it.

I think there’s a few different things worth addressing here, so please bear with me since this might be a long reply.

What you experienced here is, unfortunately, very common for anyone getting into tech. A lot of us can recall the first time reaching out somewhere for help and receiving a mixture of belittlement and vague answers as a response. I’d argue it’s probably one of the biggest issues we have in this space.

If I had to guess why tech forums are so vitriolic to newcomers, I’d say a lot of us simply forgot what it was like to be inexperienced. They forgot how daunting it is to want to learn, to run headfirst into a bunch of errors you barely understand, and then try navigating a sea of concepts and terminology that practically requires a dictionary of its own.

While the forums rarely get better (unfortunately), never let those people drive you away. It’s incredibly overwhelming at first, and there’s a lot of us who are long overdue for a slice of humble pie, but someday things will start to click and the things you want to do will start to come to life.

It’s late, I’m rambling, but you’ll your footing. When you do I hope you get the satisfaction of telling one of those assholes on the forums to shove it while giving another newcomer the welcome they need

…what is is to be a woman in STEM. and why a lot of women leave and why it’s a sausage party. And also why women online often disguise themselves even in games.

That being said I suggest this when some rando online is trying to pressure you: when a person is so fragile to be easily annoyed by your existence: exist harder. They are the fool for giving you such power. Lean into it. Ask more questions. Watch them stir in their seat overreacting.

Cuz one thing I’ve learned is when you are that brave: there are twice as many newbies hiding around you thinking you’re awesome for asking all the hard questions.

Don’t delete because of some elitist assholes. Leave it up for the other newbies. Get more newbies up in their business.

Producers too, like music producers I mean. Though I can only speak to that field personally, it might be a similar situation, so I'll share.

Well actually, I mean I guess it's two things- one is that a male-dominated field with a lot of egos involved can pretty easily develop in a snooty direction. STEM careers are famous for that as well. It blows.

The second thing, the thing I was initially going to mention is that at least in the case of producing, there is an epic shitton of information you need to learn to do it well/properly, for starters. Even to just make your first piece, you need to actually STUDY it. That attracts two different archetypes, and the one that sucks is the overwhelming majority. :(

So, as you can probably imagine it's super easy to find courses/tutorials online to learn stuff; you can find the whole field plus music theory on YouTube for free. The problem is that a lot of beginners don't bother to do that, and/or don't think they'll need to. Unfortunately, it's these lazy fucking casuals that saturate all our "ask someone who knows" spaces with asinine, uniformed nonsense questions.

So you see, by the time you see a question from a legitimate learner, sometimes even a peer, you're so annoyed by the other sort that you can't sort them.

That's not fair to the legitimate learners, of course (and as someone who is not yet a full-on expert, I've been on the wrong end of this myself), but thats the sad state of things.

"Growing a thicker skin", or so I'm told, is the only solution. :(

Unfortunately there's a lot of pretentious and impatient assholes in this field.

That being said, IRL, I've had coworkers that are assholes, and I've had coworkers that have been the most amazing people. Just depends on who's on your team and who you have to interact with.

Some people are just dick. There might be a bigger crossover between programmers and socially inadequate people, but thankfully it's not a complete overlap (I hope).

Hopefully you'll find saner people somewhere else. It's fine being snarky with people you know and know can handle it, but doing so with stranger online really looks bad moist of the time.

Gamer culture I am assuming?

Btw they weren't ignoring you, they just didn't know the answer themselves and wanted to hide it.

In short, this is a social faux pas that you didn't know about, because you're new to asking questions online.

And as you can see from the existence of that wikihow page: it's a common problem and you are not the first or the last to run into this. Sorry.

https://www.wikihow.com/Ask-a-Question-on-the-Internet-and-Get-It-Answered

Learn the culture of the forum. Every community on the internet has its own style and set of rules (both written and unwritten). Spend some time reading through other posts before making your own. This will help you learn the etiquette for that specific forum. Knowing how to ask your question in a way that fits in with that culture can really help you get the answers you need.

Make your title a succinct version of your question.

Go into detail in the body of the message. After writing the title, explain the details in the body. List specific problems and what you have tried so far.

Describing what you have tried so far, is extremely important.

Writing it out can make you go through the thinking steps necessary and you will answer your own question in the process of asking it. That's so common it's called "rubber ducking". Everyone does it. But if you don't do the writing, people can be cross because you're asking a question you didn't need to ask.

Keep an open mind. There's a chance that you won't like the answer you receive. There's also a chance that the answer that you don't like is the only available option. Make sure to keep an open mind about your responses, and try to avoid getting defensive.

Don't give up. If you don't receive any responses, or the responses are not satisfactory, take some time to examine your question. Was it specific enough? Did you ask too many questions? Was the answer easily obtained through a web search? Is the question even answerable? Rework your question and ask it again, either in the same place or a new one. Never believe that you are entitled to an answer. Responders volunteer their time to help out other users. No one owes you an answer, so you should avoid acting like they do.

There are different kinds of communities that have different levels of professionalism and question asking culture. You picked one at random at the wrong level.

I promise you not every community online is like that. Try a different one.

And also, you didn't do your research for this question either. Or you could have found the wikihow page. 😜

It’s funny, right? These dudes will simultaneously decry new programmers relying on AI to teach them but then will also turn around and mock and troll new users like duh… I’d talk to the ai too!

I run into people like that at work and what I've discovered is they have no idea they're being rude. Some people in technology are genuinely that out of touch.

It's because they're stupid and mask their flaws by being rude so you don't question their authority or intelligence.

If you asked the question properly and they still gave you more grief than help, then it's their fault for sure.

Without knowing the context - that's key both questions, the one you asked then and the one you're asking now - we can't be sure what happened. And I'm not going to jump to conclusions about how much context you started with in your actual question because that is no help to you.

I say point us to the question -- and accept we're going to answer honestly.

I assume the motivation for a lot of people to go online and answer people's technical questions is to puff up their ego

Why do you think they went into a profession where they communicate primarily with a machine?

I'm sorry this happened to you. Just know that there are assholes everywhere, and they often tend to be the most vocal, especially when they can hide behind anonymity. Try not to let them discourage you.

Which forum lol?

This is why I do actually use AI - teach and troubleshoot. Infinite patience is something technicians do not possess. Rather the opposite. Claude will happily spend hours explaining things or asking me background questions, or letting me ask questions I would be afraid to ask otherwise. I hated having to spend an hour or two simply researching for the QUESTION I wanted to ask so that people wouldn't accuse me of being an idiot, because I used the wrong terminology or something. I still encounter this from other sysadmins at work, so I often ask Claude if my question makes sense or if there's chance for confusion. As a result I actually learn a lot more, a LOT faster, and get the rough touch so much less.

RTFM

~(but seriously, best attempt is to post wrong code and claim it's the best solution for a problem - you will be instantly corrected)~

Frankly, this has been quite a significant barrier to my Linux adoption previously. Its really unfortunate that people are like this. I wish there were set tags or communities for noob problems so people could post questions safely. Anyone who doesn't want to engage with noobs can then stay away.

Still?? The elitist culture threw me off programming over twenty years ago. I really thought and hoped it had changed

Most of them are retarded. (the programmers)