The "just google it" mantra has probably held back quite a lot of interesting conversations and debate
I've always been a "lurker" on all platforms and communities because when I do have a question or would like to contribute my first thought has become:
Actually, let me google it first
In which case I'll usually have some answer. Usually it isn't a complete answer but enough for me to not want to share my question anymore.
There are lots of benefits to lurking. Nobody jumps on you with pedantic bull crap. Nobody tells you to just Google it. Nobody picks at every god damn little picky thing you say. Nobody bothers you. It's a wonder anybody bothers to post or comment at all. Life is more peaceful for lurkers.
Just go against all that and comment. The world needs your voice too.
If he truly thought that he wouldn't have posted it.
Googling something is probably the most efficient way to find an answer, in the same way that flavorless nutrient shakes are probably the most efficient way to fuel your body. Asking questions and conversing about the answers is fun. It's madness to abandon an entire genre of human conversation just because some search engine exists.
If every time a person has a question, it has to be re-answered, it's vastly less efficient than having it be answered once and then have people just Google for it. When I answer a question, I want it to benefit not just one random person but all the future people who can find it via searching.
I understand the people who object to people being rude about it, but not with the people saying that they should not be expected to at least search -- a small expenditure of their time -- before asking other people to spend their time fixing the first person's problem.
It takes you seconds to hit Google. If you broadcast that question to a forum, maybe thousands or tens of thousands or even millions of people read your question. Then they donate their time to try to solve your issue, and multiple people may spend time on it. It almost certainly takes more time per individual to craft a good answer than it takes the asker to perform a search. That is asking for a big chunk of time from people who are trying to donate their time to help others. Their time is much more limited than Google search cycles.
Common courtesy is to search first. If that doesn't solve it, then ask.
It depends. I get your point but there are a lot of questions to which answers change over time and a restatement of the question can lead to a discussion about new and better ways to answer them. Plus if I'm new to something I often simply ask the wrong question. Something a knowledgable human recognizes, but google does not. So a better answer to basic questions often is 'google this not that' making it way easier for the new person to find the answers.
You're making the assumption that everyone is capable of using Google to the extent needed to find an answer. Being able to fully utilize and understand exactly what it is you're searching for is a skill in and of itself and not everyone knows how or what to search for. Of course this is dependent on the question/issue but I still think that too many people take for granted that Google-Fu is an actual skill that some can lack
If plugging the text of the question that you're asking into the Google Search bar turns up pages with the answer, then that isn't the situation. And that's generally what I think people get upset about.
There’s also the benefit of discussion. You can find perspective on information which is arguably just as valuable as the information itself. Wisdom isn’t just knowing the facts but understanding them in practice and in proximity to other facts.
I’ve been in situations where someone on the table asks a question nobody knows the answer to and the conversation just dies then and there. For example, someone might say: “…and then I saw wallaby from my hotel window, so I started wondering if they would eat those nice flowers I saw the day before”. Well, nobody on the table knows what wallabies eat, so nobody said anything and the conversation just died.
Instead of anyone saying “let me google that”, there’s a long silence and then someone just takes the conversation in a completely different direction by saying something like: “oh, BTW I’ve been thinking of getting a new car and that’s when…”
Is it possible they eat cars and that was part of their answer?
Well, the Australian wildlife is known for being “out there to get you”, so I wouldn’t rule it out. Sticking to the spirit of the conversation, I’m definitely not going to check any facts related to wallabies.
Googling niche topics usually takes me to reddit/quora where someone has already asked the same question and someone has already answered. But sometimes (rarely) it takes to threads where the first comment says "google it" 😑.
Did you mean recursion?
The problem with this mantra for me is that in a discussion, I don't want to know what website x thinks the definition or answer is, I want to know what you think it is. If the term/issue is uncontroversial then googling is fine, but if it's vague, confusing or has different interpretations, Google could make things worse.
E.g. someone complains that cultural marxism is bringing down western civilization. I could Google this and find out it's an antisemitic conspiracy theory espoused by the Nazis and now the American right. But will this definition help me understand the person I'm talking to and what they mean? Will it help the conversation? Absolutely not.
But if I asked, "what do you mean by that" nd the person responded, e.g. "how the left is pushing diversity in society against the will of ordinary people" (or whatever), then we can have an actual conversation about what is bothering this person.
And another problem with it is it prevents talking.
Some anthropologists liken human speech to chimpanzee grooming. To bond, a chimpanzee will sit there and pick through another chimpanzee’s back hair. Time spent doing this builds a bond between them.
Conversation works that way for humans. It’s just an instinctual emotional need: to put energy into activities that create bonds with other people.
I’m autistic, and learning the above was a sort of breakthrough moment for me in terms of respecting small talk, respecting the real value of a conversation even when there’s no practical need for knowledge transfer.
Of course, I’d rather bond by snuggling because it low-key hurts to talk, but our culture really only permits that with animals, lovers, and family.
Incidentally, that connects with another interesting fact about the Dunbar number.
As some may know that’s the number of people who can live in a tribe or community where everyone’s brain still has the capacity to remember (a) how they feel about each other person and (b) how each other person feels about each other person.
It’s about 120 individuals, for humans. Once it gets beyond 120 people, you start encountering “strangers”. People you might have seen, but you don’t know who they’re tight with, what they’re up to.
For chimps it’s 40 individuals. Chimps can’t keep track of more than 40 nodes in an interrelationship graph of relationships.
So 120 and 40. It’s a ratio of three. Some speculate this ratio is because chimps’ bonding behavior permits bonding with one other individual at a time, and humans’ bonding behavior permits bonding with three individuals at a time.
For chimps, that’s grooming. You can groom one other chimp’s back at a time, allowing you to bond with one other chimp.
With humans it’s talking. So why three people? (This is where it gets really interesting, at least for me.) It’s three people because when one person is speaking to three or fewer people, it’s intimate enough to be a bonding experience. And when a person is speaking to four or more people, it doesn’t feel intimate enough to be a bonding experience.
The really fun part is you can see this happening at social gatherings. Because one speaker can engage three listeners while maintaining intimacy, this means conversations can be two to four people. As soon as a fifth person walks up, beer in hand, to join the conversation, it will split into two conversations. You’ll have a 2 and a 3, instead of one big 5.
Or, if the conversation does stay stable at 5 people, it morphs into more of a “presentation” that separates the group into speakers and audience, and that’s not a bonding experience.
At most social gatherings, people want to connect, so instead of that switch to audience mode the conversation will split when it reaches 5, into separate 2- and 3-person conversations.
So the other problem with the google mantra is it removes an excuse to talk from society, and we need excuses to verbalize at each other so we don’t feel alienated. Asking for directions, bumming a cigarette, talking about the weather or sports, saying good morning and how-are-you-im-fine and hello, these are all cultural scaffolds that make excuses to hear each other’s voices.
And asking for basic info is part of that. In conversations, we get more things to say if we normalize asking for and providing basic background info. It helps people get their voices warmed up, to say things that aren’t that deep, to present easily-found knowledge, just warm up the vocal chords with the basic stuff.
great post
I feel like a similar thing happens because of social media like Instagram. people constantly lose the opportunity to tell others all about the things they do because they already did that in batch. what could easily become dozens of small conversations with different people, where one could add their own flavour to the story and improve it, making it ever more interesting each time it is told, ends up not happening at all. silent scrolling and tapping instead
on top of that, multimedia usually translates real moments badly - for the better or worse: that giant hill becomes tiny and boring or that perfect angle hides the ugly part of the scene and looks beautiful. not to mention the fact that they are taking away part of enjoying real moments for the sake of creating online content
I, myself, don't do this. but I often travel with people who do and I lost track of the times I meet someone afterwards and start talking about it, only to be stopped with a "oh I saw it all already". and I really can't blame anyone, since it's a very easy trap to fall into and it's even expected of you in some social circles
Yes! Each person has a unique perspective and it’s enriching to hear people tell their own stories about things, because each person contains an entire world.
Very insightful and not something I'd have thought of. A large part of me feels as though many of the issues of today can be blamed on the fact that nobody actually talks to eachother anymore. Socializing has been replaced with social media, where you see curated snapshots of your "friend's" lives which only show the good, and get invested in the curated snapshots of the lives of celebrities. You look at your friends and random celebrities doing things instead of doing them yourself or with your friends. And in turn, you post your own curated snapshots to make yourself look good and feel like you're participating, thus continuing the cycle.
This state of knowing only about the cool and fun things other people are doing while simultaneously never actually speaking to them causes you to feel left out because your life isn't anywhere near as fun as their lives look, and the fact that people tend to only post good looking pictures of themselves online makes you feel bad about your own appearance, because you don't look anywhere near as good as they make themselves look.
With how pervasive the atomization caused by the internet is, I should've known that even its greatest strength, its ability to deliver information, might have harmful side effects. Indeed, I wonder how many conversations I've not had the opportunity to partake in because I found what I wanted out of them on Google. Or books I haven't read because I got what I wanted out of them on Google. Convenient, for sure, but perhaps it takes a little bit of the joy out of finding new information, whether that joy comes from the other stuff you learn along the way or the human interaction which occurs in the process.
Well... If you know where someone is getting their information, it actually does say a lot about a person.
When I run across an argument like that, I know to back out of it and reassess if it's worth it in the first place.
Why I started to ask those questions here. And I have gotten back way better responses than I ever gotten from a Google search.
Don't ask a question, post a wrong answer to the question you have.
That'll give you many answers.
Of course you can always start by RTFM you lazy sod.
IF your post doesn't get deletet for being obviously wrong. You need a little bit of knowlege in the field your asking in for this method in my experience.
True, that's what the manual reading is for.
>google question >reddit thread with exact question as title >one comment >”just google it”
Maybe. It does bother me when I see people complain about posts where the person asks a really basic question and someone gives a few words in snide response like, "Google much?" and don't actually answer the question. At the same time, some questions being asked could honestly be answered with a simple Google search, I just don't know what the cutoff is. Sometimes you can get better responses in the comments than you would with a Google search, or the Google searches themselves will just turn up Reddit comments where somebody else asked the same question once upon a time. I think it does help to refresh the information sometimes, rather than just relying on Google Searches for information, sometimes you get actual real-world experts chiming in like, "Yeah, everybody thinks it's A, but actually it's B because of X, Y, and Z, it's a common mistake that alot of people make." So I'll usually err on the side of just let ask whatever they want to, no matter how basic a question.
Many times Google has led me on a wild goose chase, sending me to thread after thread where the only answers are "just Google it durrr". Google results are not stable. If you have time to post a snarky comment and it's so easy to Google, then why not Google it and include a link with your snark?
Also, Google (and web search in general) has generally gone down the crapper over the last 5-10 years. SEO is practically a solved problem, but it's mostly bad actors who benefit from it. Google doesn't seem to care to play the cat-and-mouse game anymore.
Yeah! when I begun my journey in linux I remember asking how to permanently mount a drive. Being the Google answer to just crontab -> mount, then just to confirm I went to the linux forum in steam and getting to know about fstab. Wich in turn brought me to encryption, and that to foss and gnu, etc, etc, etc.
And all that wouldn't even begun if it wasn't for that guy in steam whom was just answering a noob question.
and sometimes it’s not about the answer …
I always thought this was blindlingly obvious. Why the fuck else do you ask a question instead of like... going to the library (before internet anyway)? It's always been for human contact. That's why questions exist.
i hate how accurate this is
True, but sometimes it's about harassing and arguing in bad faith, so I totally understand why sometimes the default answer is "google it"
At my work we usually debate ad nauseam until one, both, or all of us suddenly remember that we have all the wealth of mankind's knowledge at our finger tips and then we Google.
...then we inevitably complain about the lack of internet in our office, agree to disagree and then forget what we were discussing as we move onto another debatable topic.
I came out of lurking because you took the words out of my mouth. You have technical leads saying the words "best practice", yet when you ask for a documented reference, suddenly there's no time to go into the detail and we move on to the next issue resolving nothing.
The worst is when you KNOW something is the best practice, but no one bothered to write it down
Now we don't have to discuss facts because we can look them up but rather discuss whether things are good or bad or certain aspects of them. We don't have to discuss "is there climate change?" But we can discuss what to do
The real irony is that, for a number of questions, the "answer" was either in StackOverflow or one of its similar sites, or in Reddit
Or more infuriating is when I AM searching Google and the results bring me to some asshat saying "Just google it bruh."
Why would you even take the time out of your day to go on a Q&A forum and respond like this to someone asking a question? Do these people not have hobbies? That kind of response is more insulting than just not getting a response.
Yeah, if you're going to respond you should make the response useful. You can politely tell them to make use of Google and answer the question.
U too?! Bro, i tough it was something wich could happened but just in really weird instances, but it seem like isn't really strange at all.
I remember pulling my hair the first time it happened, I was absolutely baffled!
I do google a lot of stuff before bringing it up in a conversation, just to be sure I'm not making stuff up, even if it's something I've looked up 100 times
Same but mostly because I've had conversations with people who will Google something to tell me I'm wrong when the whole point was the conversation, not being right.
I always try to answer even though I know the answer is on Google.
Either because it may be a more up-to-date version or because you simply never know when other websites will stop being available and therefore that source of information will be lost. Also because many times no matter how hard one searches before asking, sometimes we do not know the concepts we want to reach and our search is limited.
Imagine if everyone responded with "Just Google It", we would never find an answer to anything.
I really hate that mantra and it should be part of "If you don't have anything to contribute, don't comment."
this is how it should be dealt with!
thank you 🧡
My favorite is when I would use a google search for something, and several of the top results would be posts detailing the exact question I have, with the only responses being "just google it" and the post locked/closed to further responses.
Interesting, I've never seen that. The opposite happens quite often, though; the question is the same as mine and there's 5 other people in the comments also not finding an answer.
Maybe I'm just Googling for too many obscure missing .dll files and such.
same for me, google filter sucks sometimes.. or those sites who had the answers is down 🫠
i always search before askin' in a forum.. maybe i just didn't know how to search it? let it be because my native language doesn't have the answers on google?
so how am i supposed to know what i should search for as a non native english speaker on english? and a few more reasons ofc 😅 (applies if u still learn english)
so it is quite disappointing if i get a answer and realize.. oh it is just a.. "google has the answer" answer.. well how about f u self? it's even better if u try to explain that u already did and how u did it.. and get another reply like, "uninstall your browser, the web isn't for you" or some type of shi*.. yes that's something that happened 🤐
is it that hard to take those few seconds you had to comment for and help me to answer the question if you seem to know "everything"???
I feel "just fucking google it" culture is toxic and driver away new users on a lot of discussion boards.
Dumb questions that could be easily answered with a search engine or AI are not my idea of ideal discussion and I don't see a point to retaining it. "Noob questions" are fine, using a discussion board as a first resource for a basic question is not.
It really really depends.
"What time does ASDA shut?" - well the answer involves someone in the comment section googling it, I can see the "just Google it" frustration.
But
"Why is the bottom of my 3D print really messy?" - anyone who could claim to be intermediate at 3D printing would know that it is either a support material issue, or maybe they haven't got "bridging" settings turned on. Replying with "a simple Google would find it was an issue with bridging" but the person asking the question may not even know that phrase to use.
Edit: I like to do the old "this is what i think it is, but here are some terms you could use to better understand in case my solution doesn't work"
That second scenario you've described is why I loathe this "just fucking google it" mantra.
Searching for stuff needs some amount of information to begin with. You need to know what search terms to use, which means you have to know something about the problem you're trying to solve. And a lot of times, that is precisely the problem: not knowing what even to include in the search query. With a human on the other side of the tube, it's something that could easily be remedied with a few follow-up questions, but a search engine can't do that--nor do you want for it to do that.
EDIT: Clarified things.
Changed "And a lot of times, that is precisely the problem: not knowing how to formulate the search query" to "And a lot of times, that is precisely the problem: not knowing what even to include in the search query."
I agree to an extent. I feel discussions have lost depth online. Since most of the time online users don't have the same caliber as one may be more used to in the 2010 and prior era of the internet. I feel, on sites like Reddit, i leave discussions feeling more confused and/or exhausted rather than enlightened.
Just chatgpt it
Plus it's not even that useful of a statement in this day and age. Google isn't what it used to be, and even if it was, a lot of time it struggled with very specific and detailed problems. It would often just point you to the community where you were told to "google it"
yep, SEO has ruined google search. Now a days a lot of people add "reddit" to the search term because its more efective, only issue is when the subreddit is closed and internet archive only has one snapshot that was the moment the thread was created and no answers are there haha.
Tangential but I’m curious, when was it that you noticed every search engine was broken by SEO? I started to see signs 6 years ago, but they became undeniably unusable about 3 years ago for me.
Maybe "just Google it" will take you to a stackoverflow post where the mods have also decided nah this is a duplicate have closed the conversation 😆
Or you are taken to a thread where someone says "Just Google it"...
This is so true, I haven't asked question on stack overflow for a long time because often I find the answer by myself or by googling it. On rare occasions I asked it gets closed as duplicate of barely related question that doesn't answer my question or I get no answers.
Also because people are just really fucking rude about it when you ask any question on that site.
Or the only person that answers your question gets heavily downvoted.
I would like a hard rule that there's no stupid question. If you don't want to help someone, just ignore it.
No need to add a negative comment town discussion.
Even with ready access to Google, I still try to ask questions about people's beliefs/lifestyles/hobbies/etc. It's a mixed bag with the responses I get. Some folks are very passionate and ready to explain the subject. Others just tell you to Google it. I obviously know I can Google it, but was hoping for human interaction with someone who clearly has an interest in the topic. Maybe some bonding, maybe some learning, maybe give that person a second to nerd out.
Then there's me , too shy to ask UNTIL I google it so I can feign some sort of knowledge to not seem like a dunce haha
You're not alone. I'm guilty as well lol.
The trouble with google search these days is...
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you have a question that you need answered, but don't know the answer to? Everyone runs into this issue from time to time, but fortunately there is a simple solution. By using google search to find your answer, you will be both satisfied and educated by the result! People across the world use this simple tool every day to find answers to a wide variety of questions.
Then after 2+ paragraphs of that you're lucky if there's an answer at all, not to mention a correct one.
The worst outcome is when the first google result is a thread that only has an answer of "just google it"
When that happens, I register on whatever forum it was where someone said that just to say (necropost if needed) that I had the same question, searched it, and the search results brought me here where an asshole is saying to search it.
At which point you get yelled at for reviving a dead thread
Whenever I debate for fun with some friends we kinda have this unspoken agreement of googling is cheating.
Not "google it", but when people who seem to be trolls keep asking nonsense questions that make it clear they haven't read past the subreddit name, I have no problem with them just being linked to the FAQ (I hate when people don't link it: it's not people's fault reddit, especially official app, make finding such impossible) or told to search their question and read the other 1000 times that question has been asked on said subreddit (and ideally link to one of them that people have actual answers to but not necessary imo).
Yeah it's kind if strange behaviour to be on a discussion board and only contribute by killing the discussions by pointing to Google.
I get that people get annoyed by low effort posts and people's general inabilty to find information independently. But there are better ways...
Especially since that discussion might be found later via Google as well. It's more helpful to say that you looked it up via a specific search and give a couple of the results. That way it's not a dead end and the person hopefully learns how to help themselves in the future by example.
I don't think so. People who answer with "Just Google it" wouldn't have contributed to any meaningful or interesting, to begin with. At most, they would have ignored the question. People who would answer the question usually aren't discouraged by others saying "Just Google It" either.
The only instance would be if a person actually does google their own question and then doesn't check the conversation again. But I would also argue that these people would have at most responded with a "thank you" to any explanation either. As even if they found the answer themselves if they were interested in a discussion about it, they would and could still do so.
There was a guy on Reddit (remember that place?) recently who used an acronym in a post and then refused to explain it, kept saying "just Google it" but it was stupid because no-one could Google it and get the result that he was meaning. And the results varied depending on where you were in the world, I think I got a football team in France, other people were getting organisations in Mexico, etc. He never did explain it. Such a douche.
God, that's the type of thing they do on DRCJ
Grrrrrrrr
Sorry, not familiar. Is that the Greater Rotherham Railway Racing Reenactment Register?
I rarely tell people to just Google something, and when I do it's usually in addition to me giving an explanation, telling them exactly what to google and which results to look for, and it's to provide additional examples or visual references of the thing I just explained after I have vetted those google results myself.
I'd generally rather participate in the conversation and help make someone into one of today's "lucky 10,000" (I'm gonna be an asshole and tell you to google that and click the link to XKCD if you don't get the reference)
But some of the things that people will turn to reddit (and now probably now Lemmy,) yahoo answers (is that still a thing?) Facebook, etc. instead of just googling does baffle me sometimes. One example that bugs me whenever there's an election coming up, is people on Facebook asking about voting - where their polling place is, how to register, when the deadline for mail-in ballots is, etc. It's all pretty straightforward information that shouldn't need a whole lot of explaining, and is very easily Google-able. Half the time you don't even need to click a link and the information is right there on the Google result page. And don't get me wrong, I'm glad they're showing interest and wanting to participate in democracy, but it does worry me a little because if they can't even research that much themselves, how much research are they going to put into the candidates and issues to make an informed decision?
Personally I like to google things, I like going on my own personal little journey of discovery and falling down a rabbit hole clicking links and learning more about everything. I love having so much information at my fingertips and my first instinct when I encounter something I don't know, or am curious about, etc. is to start googling it. It's wild to me that not everyone has that same little spark of curiosity driving them to learn more as quickly as possible and would rather ask a question and have to wait for an answer. I also like sharing that knowledge, there have been times I've seen someone ask a question online, thought it was a good question so I googled it myself and shared what I came up with, but it still kind of burned at the back of my mind "why didn't they Google it themselves?"
True. And just as true is that there sure have been a lot of long, time-consuming, non-productive, non-entertaining, maybe even destructive discussions that could have been completely avoided or diverted into a completely different direction if someone would have said "google it" right at the beginning.
Yeah, I know what you mean. Its a hard habit to break out of though - I always feel like I should exhaust other resources before asking questions.
When I ask things without looking it up first, it feels like I'm not doing my best to solve my own problem before "bothering" others
I really hate the "just google it" responses to questions online. Not only are they rude, they also actively damage the internet as a growing document. Even if you DO want to be an arrogant prick and say "you are a moron and google has the answer", you can do that AND post the answer. Whatever you post online is not a discussion in the moment but rather instantly becomes a part of the internet that will age with it.
Comments will sit forever unchanged, but google results will change. Oftentimes the thread being written in that very moment will become the top google result down the line.
The correct response to a question to which you know the answer, no matter how stupid it is, is:
(this applies to matters of fact; opinions you usually don't need to cite etc)
If the link isn't to a self-archiving site like wikipedia, and you want to be really thorough, go to https://web.archive.org/ and plug the link into the "save page now" module on the bottom right -- that way if the page goes down or changes in the future, someone who finds the thread in the future can go to the wayback machine and see your link as it was when you made the post
In a similar way, proper etiquette if you post a question and it gets answered in the thread, especially if it gets answered in pieces in multiple replies, OR if you find the solution outside the thread (especially in this case), is to edit your post with a summary of what you found.
I love this. It's so idealistic and hopeful. But I really do wish more people did it.
In a similar vein have ever ready portal to all of human knowledge constantly in our pocket it has killed some avenue of debate in face to face social situations, like out at a bar. In the before time you could spend an entire evening debating which came first or who wrote some film, or which song sold most albums and the argument would not be settled by some whipping out a phone, googling and done.
I kinda get where you're coming from, but at the same time, I think there are just as many people these days coming up with absolute rubbish which too many people have the misfortune of falling for.
And as much as we would like to believe that we can search up facts about any topic in the world, there is just so much rubbish on the internet that even when you do look it up, the search results are far from helpful (depending on what you're looking for).
Personally I like asking people stuff that I could have looked up, just to hear their take on it.
yeah, I think that almost builds on my post not contradicts it. Someone may whip out a phone, go to the first result in google and say "there proves my point" without assessing the validity of the source.
Something I've noticed as I've shifted more of my conversations from Reddit to Discord (even before the garbage fire over at the site) is that I'm not looking up stuff as much during instant, short-form communication. Just casual conversation really is okay sometimes. I'll be trying to keep that in mind as I spend more time on Reddit alternatives.
I also have a theory that message board conversations spend as much time on opinion as they do because all the little shit has been solved now that we have esoteric information at our fingertips. Some people don't even know what it was like to be sitting around with friends all trying to figure out what 80's film you saw Robert Loggia in because you couldn't just look it up on-demand.
There are some things you cannot simply "google". As a straight man, define "queer" to me about 5 to 10 years ago. I was on a dating sight and decent amount of women were putting this in their profile. I asked politely. Let me tell ya, it wasn't a polite response.
Why are questions all of a sudden insults when the person may actually be ignorant and trying to educate themselves?
It's because there are a great deal of people who will waste others' time by trolling. There are many communities who have to endure people constantly asking folks to validate why they deserve to exist. Then to those folks there could be a few who may actually be open to conversation but it's like mining the spam folder for honest messages. If at 10k ft it looks like it could be trolling it's best for their mental health to just let the folder do what the folder does.
Oh absolutely. But there should be some sort of filter with people. If someone asks "is that a chow in your pic?" it's not intentionally offensive. They included a picture. A question is harmless if it's just pure inquisition.
Or, you know, maybe some people are assholes and we should not always look for excuses for them?
You put it on your profile on a dating site, so you should be OK with this as a conversation starter.
For example, I do not wear a Nirvana t-shirt in public because I don't want some teenagers asking me if I know this great song "Smells Like Teen Spirit".