Oh well. I'm going to anyway...
There is a thing that happens on facebook that makes me think that some people just don't quite get it the same way I do.
A few different times I have posed questions in my status update looking for recommendations or suggestions for finding such-and-such in a certain city. My intention is to capitalize on the knowledge of facebook friends who have lived or visited extensively in those cities and thus have more intimate knowledge of them than I do.
Frequently, I've gotten some useful advice or recommendations (like where to take my mom to eat next week for her birthday!) from people who live or lived there.
What's weird is that almost every time, other people have left comments suggesting ways I could do internet searches to find the things I'm looking for. As if I couldn't have figured that out for myself. At least once, someone who'd never been in the city in question actually looked some things up and listed them for me. Do these people not understand that when I was asking, I was particularly trying to tap into the personal knowledge and judgment of experienced people I know and trust, as opposed to trusting the ratings of random strangers responding from who-knows-what sort of perspective?
I find it very weird that people think that would be helpful.
Or maybe it's just me. I've never been fond of using reference materials if there was someone around I could just ask. And with facebook, there's always someone around you can ask, usually even someone who knows what you want to know. I think there's part of me that likes to have things pre-screened. I don't like having to take chances on unknowns I might hate, so if people I trust to like what I like prefer something, I'd just as soon know about it as choose blind.
I thought about mentioning this in my status update, but you don't want to hurt people's feelings when they're just trying to be helpful. And I do realize they were trying to be helpful. It's just that if I'm on facebook, chances are high I'm aware of how to do an internet search. The whole point of facebook is that it's a PERSONAL network of FRIENDS from AROUND the country. Shouldn't that be what it's used for?
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1 comment:
Hee hee. I guess you could preface such questions with "personally familiar," though it seems contextually implied. I agree no sense hurting people's feelings if they're trying (without avail) to be helpful.
I remember one friend asked for restaurants in his own city. He hadn't lived there for that long. Several people wrote in to rhetorically ask "Don't you live there?" My unwritten response to that is, um, dingbats, he's trying to learn about his new city, using the inherent information sharing possibilities of Facebook! Then I would cite Creme Anglaise for reference.
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