I’m an old guy and not too internet savvy, and when I’ve asked for help several of these on-line “helpers” have made snide comments like they are superior beings and treat me like I’m just a dumb idiot. My wife has a similar problem in hardware stores, like she’s just a woman what does she know about tools and stuff. Well, she does know about hardware and is sick and tired of guys discounting her abilities.
The irrational part was pretty obvious, but here it is.
“Since I’m the only one with access to this computer I’m not sure how the F you’d explain that - other than YouTube or MicroSucks dicking around with my computer. Which is not beyond possibility.”
Yeah. What’s the deal with that? I often have something I’d like to look up on the web but all the answers are YouTube videos It’s as if no one can read anymore. If people could figure out timing and how to edit it might not be so bad but… nope.
It’s not that I’m down on videos it’s just you have to sit through whatever they don’t have the sense to cut out just to finally get the answer after 20 minutes where you can read it in 1.
I there a way I can search Google and not have video tutorials come up?
Yes you make a good point, but at present others (with far more expertise than I) are watching for these signs. I will watch for it more though. Thanks for the heads up.
I understand and agree. I try to remember this and just let it go, but sometimes when trying to get medical information that I need to know (did the Doc change meds? etc.) it gets tiresome when I can’t keep the conversation on point. My example above was meant to be a humorous vignette, but I have to keep circling back repeatedly to cover vital information. I wonder sometimes if, when you’re elderly, you think of something you want to say and are afraid you’ll forget it before the conversation ends – so you just say it then. I’m not saying that’s it for sure, but it seems like a good explanation.
Used to be you could add “-video” to the end of your search string and it would exclude them but apparently that doesn’t work anymore - it makes it think you’re asking for videos now. At least on Google.
Yeah, it seems Google gave up on Boolean searches a couple of years ago. "searchterm-unwantedword" now means “Oh, sure we’ll feature unwantedword in your results, no trouble! Look, here are 999,000 results… happy wading!”
And they’re ignoring quote marks… especially frustrating with people’s names. “Bob Passelle” returns so many irrelevant results. Like a page where, in a footnote, someone says and there you go, Bob’s your uncle!..
This was a huge pain in my butt back when I was working. I worked with professional home automation products. Frequently we would need to “clear” a piece of equipment, restoring it to factory defaults. Occasionally, even a new piece of equipment right out of the box would not respond properly until it was cleared.
The “restore default” procedures were complex by design, because it was important that the homeowner not accidentally default their equipment by pressing the wrong button.
The procedure was usually like “ hold down buttons 1 and 3 for 6 seconds until the LED on button #5 begins to flash, then press button #5 3 times consecutively then hold down buttons 2 and 4 until the unit beeps 3 times”. (These elaborate resets needed to be performed in a very short time window and even if you knew the sequence, it sometimes took several tries - but that’s a rant for another day).
The point is that unlike most of our technical procedures, these were not something a skilled and experienced tech could figure out on their own.
There were dozen of products, each with their own unique reset procedure. You’d think there would be a master document somewhere showing all the reset procedures for the product line, but you’d be wrong. The reset procedure for each product was buried in the tutorial for that product. Which were, by the time I retired, available via YouTube videos only.
It was absolutely maddening. I developed my own documentation for the most common products out of necessity but if we had to reset a less common product, we’d lose hours of time.
Not true at all. I use the “-site:” operator all the time to filter out Pinterest content . In fact, you can even type -site:pinterest.* to filter out not only pinterest.com, but all of the other variant TLDs that Pinterest uses in other countries. For me this still works very well indeed.
To filter out videos, a better modification is probably -site:youtube.com. Typing “-video” won’t filter out YouTube content, because it’s a rare description that says it’s a video.
I agree on the YouTube video tutorials. Why would I want to hunt for headphones, plug in, and listen to a twelve-minute spiel when it would be so much easier to read a set of instructions?
Sure, but they were football players, so my ability to hold them accountable was limited.
Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus, thanks for the googling hints. Can’t wait to NOT get a screen full of Pinterest hits.
Agreed! Pinterest might not be so bad if the images were of good quality, but they almost never are. I hate when somebody uploads a blurry scan of an old magazine ad to one of my mid-century interest groups on Facebook. When you see that, you know the uploader probably got it from Pinterest.
Also super-frustrating when you’re searching for a rare item (especially if you’re trying to buy it)…
“Hey, there’s a shot of the potrzebie that I need to restore my vintage hybrid pencil!” Nope, just a pin… with zero information where the photo, let alone the original potrzebie came from.
That’s the problem, IMHO.
I don’t mind video tutorials, but please don’t post a video on resetting my thermostat that is 20 minutes long. The procedure has a couple of steps and the YouTuber should theoretically be able to GET TO THE POINT in just a minute or two.
But no, the video must include “Don’t forget to subscribe and ring the bell” and “Smash that like button” and then ramble on about stuff I don’t want to hear about for five to ten minutes before getting even close to the core of why I am there.
Another peeve is folks that post “how-to” videos that have stock music playing in the background and no voice-over, with occasional text to help, but usually poorly organized. These often happen with quite technical topics that really need voice over.
My kids (who turn to YouTube for “help” more than I do) HATE this.
My advice: if you’re looking for help with working on a car engine, and the video doesn’t start with a car with its hood open, but instead on a kid in his bedroom, skip the whole thing.
If the video opens with any variant of “Hey, howzit goin’/how you doin’/hope you’re having a great day!”… skip ahead at least a minute. If they open with making comments on their previous videos right away, skip ahead two minutes. Oh, almost forgot, if they open with reading other people’s comments on their previous videos, just scrub through and see if you catch a glimpse of a car…
People only extend their videos for this long to get to 10 minutes, because if a video is 10+ minutes, the creator can place ad spots in the video to make money. It sucks that they don’t really care to help you that much and only care to make money most of the time, but I guess that’s what you get into when you look for help on YouTube. 
There are several YouTube channels I follow that have ad spots in them, but I put up with it because, first of all, those folks go to some effort to make quality videos, use coherent scripts instead of a rambling all over, and put out a quality product I don’t mind supporting by sitting through a minute of ads.
Some other people, though - if you’re sitting on your rumpled bed in a messy room trying to chat with your viewers before getting to the damned point… no, that’s not quality and I’m not inclined to support it.
YouTube is another example of Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of everything is bullshit.
Online recipe templates, all with the same plastic, breathless tone that is also used for clickbait “news”:
*Here’s a recipe for X that you’ll just love! My [relative] can’t get enough of my [adjective, adjective] X! It’s the most [adjective] X you’ll ever see!
*[Food porn photo of X at an angle]
*"
*"
*[Paragraph-long anecdote about the cook’s childhood and/or current family.]
*[Food porn photo of X at an angle]
*"
*"
*[Disquisition on why the cook substitutes celery for cilantro.]
*[Food porn photo of ingredients for X at an angle, with measuring device or wooden spoon that has not ever been used.]
*"
*"
*[A general narrative about the dish with cooking tips, rendered useless by a) the cook not yet having provided either a recipe list or cooking instructions; and b) its lack of proximity to the recipe.]
*[Food porn photo of X at an angle, often one that has already been used]
*"
*"
*Ingredients, cluttered with links to buy the items. No, I’m not going to buy butter from Amazon.
*[Melange of food porn photos and links off-site. If you’re lucky, a tab to scale the recipe or convert to metric.]
*[Product ads and disclaimer that the cook benefits if you buy the glorp ganosher via the link.]
*[The recipe. It often contains an error or uses ingredients that were not listed.]
*[Editorial “yummy!” remark. The hope that you will enjoy the cook’s other recipes.]
*[Link to cook’s blog.]
*[Slew of ads from host site.]
Preach it!
I hate those kinds of recipes. And more recently, Food Network recipes that are links to sign up for their service that costs like $50 a year or something.
There is in fact nothing irrational about that statement. Just because a statement contains emotion does not mean it is logically unsound. It would indeed be possible that updates to Microsoft’s software could have messed something up on her computer.
I would say you were acting irrationally, but I’m pretty sure your goal here is to anger others. You see a thread about things that angers people and see it as ripe pickings for being able to nudge that anger to be towards you.
Do I understand that goal? I can make educated guesses (e.g. no one pays attention to you and negative attention makes you feel better than none or you feel powerless in life so making people angry gives you a feeling of power over them), but the fact is you are behaving in a reasonable way to achieve your goals.
No one tells an angry person who is letting out their anger that they need to be rational other than to try and make them angrier. You don’t even have the possible good intentions of saying “take a breath.”
While your actions are technically rational, they are not good long term goals. You would be better off without acting in this way.
Also, the predictable hateful responses will not accomplish anything, and will be irrational. I’m not going to point out blatant trolling and then not put that poster on ignore.
Often I know, and in many other cases suspect, that the makers of those videos don’t have enough English skills to do a voice over. It happens that the only useful technical YT video about subject matter X is done by a skilled specialist from Croatia or whatever. I’m glad people make YT videos even when their language repertoire doesn’t match mine.