Today’s frustration: people who, on encountering something they don’t understand, don’t make an effort to learn about it themselves but instead ask for help immediately.

I’m talking about simple things that you could find through an obvious route. Example: someone joined a forum I read, and in their first post asked “So, what sort of things do people discuss here?” That could be OK as a conversation opener, but they continued to ask questions about it even when people linked to the FAQ. They asked for clarification about the title of one of the subforums: a ten second glance inside the subforum would have solved that.

Why do people do this? It’s not quicker, as people take time to respond. It’s not easier, as any fool can read a list of thread titles and get an idea of what sorts of things people discuss.

Many people have posted similar complaints about people asking for computer-related help. I’ve seen speculation that some people go into a tech-related panic, where they convince themselves that they don’t understand computers and thus any effort would be futile. That’s possible in some cases, but the issue goes wider than that. It’s not just computers, some people approach all their life with this attitude.

What I don’t get is, don’t they care? If I’m encountering a new concept or situation, the first thing I do is see what information I can gather about it. It wouldn’t occur to me to do anything else. If someone doesn’t care about something enough to do even basic research, then why are they bothering with it at all?