If you are dissatisfied with the free thing I gave you, then I am happy to send you a refund of your purchase price. 🤷‍♂️

That's my preferred strategy.

UPDATE: Before any angry cards and letters, let me clarify. When I reply this way, I learn a lot about the person I'm talking to, including whether they are prepared to have a reasonable conversation about this complex matter. The response I'm hoping for is "Well played.", because that tells me that they recognize how ridiculous we are both being. I can work with them.

If they are merely having a tough time and needed to vent, then they'll notice that and we can move forward.

If they are truly that entitled, then I don't mind what happens next, because they would probably never have accepted any help I could offer them, anyway.

Not only is it normalized, but it's being weaponized. See, for example, the recent XZ backdoor which was equal parts hacking and a psi-op against the maintainer.

This has to be a troll. They use Tails and do not know how to format an USB drive?

It was always normalized, but recently there seems to be more backlash from maintainers.

I don't think I'd ever complain directly to the maintainer. I often do find instructions that are essentially The Rest of the Fucking Owl but you go to the community for help and then give up when 90% of them act like you are an idiot for even asking.

I am indeed seeing this with increasing frequency. Just take a look at threads about the Lemmy devs for examples. An increasing number of people seem to feel entitled to be treated not just like customers but as also as stakeholders/PMs for software that was gifted to the community.

As for how to try to change this direction, I think ELI5 on what FLOSS is and how it is governed, as well as how to be a good member of the community, whether as a contributor or otherwise, is probably the way to go.

Who is this little shit who can't Google how to format a USB drive securely? If dd isn't enough, there's plenty of methods documented online.

Fuck such people. Off to the maintainers blacklist they should go

Just ignore them?

Dealing with unhinged people has been around since as long as the internet. There was a period of time before the general population got online when it was mostly academics and military people, the level of discourse was higher. But useNet still had the crazies.

I think the federated systems and GitHub allow people to participate more, so the barrier to entry is lower, so we get to see more of this emotional labor then we used to historically.

People feeling entitled on the internet were always a thing.

Is that you Jia Tan?

Your complaints should be in the donation message.

There are excessively clear instructions for tails on how to do exactly what they are asking. You can't help people like that.

I think the proper response is to simply ignore someone that ignorant