# Is LMGTFY unacceptable snark? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [December 8, 2009, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-lmgtfy-unacceptable-snark/520509 "2009-12-08T21:10:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 21
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2009, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-lmgtfy-unacceptable-snark/520509/21 "2009-12-14T11:51:39Z")
I personally find Google often very difficult – out of 2,981,437 hits, how do I know which are reliable? And there are (believe it or not) newcomers to the internet who really don’t know how to use Google, or Wikipedia, etc. I have a cousin, she’s 70, she uses email just fine (pretty much) but she gets confused by some other interenet activities. When I answer Cecil’s mail, you’d be amazed how many emails come in that ask a question that can be found by searching the Straight Dope Archives. I just respond by saying, “Cecil already answered that, here’s a link… and by the way, you can find this and many other interesting things yourself by searching our Archives.” So, I don’t think it’s necessarily snarky to tell people where to find an answer. Sometimes, I think it’s satisfactory to say, “You can look that up in any reasonable dictionary” thus telling people how to find an answer. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-lmgtfy-unacceptable-snark/520509)._