--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltabl...@...> wrote: > > You just think you can evaluate things because you have Google. > You mistake information for context and it makes you feel smart > when you are clueless.
Excellent point. Google is like the curtain that the "wizard" hides behind in The Wizard Of Oz. And the person behind the curtain *likes* the curtain and *hates* "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" because the curtain hides the fact that there was never ary reason why anyone *should* have paid attention to him in the first place. The only thing he's *ever* done is sit behind a curtain and Google shit. :-) There are whole generations of people now who don't feel that there is any difference between "Live" and "Memorex." When it comes to searching for information to bolster their rants, prejudices, and to help them "win" their petty tyrant battles, Google is *enough* for them to consider themselves an expert, someone who *should* be paid attention to. Such people really, really, really don't like it when someone pulls back the curtain and points out that the person being so "authoritative" about a subject *knows nothing about it but what they read on Google*. What these kinds of people *DO* with the information they mistake for context and real knowledge is another matter. Some use it -- as you suggest -- to make themselves look smart. A person who *in person* would be literally speechless on a subject *because they know nothing about it* can on the Internet spend a couple of minutes Googling and then come roaring back into a cyberdiscussion *pretending* to know something about it. It's like the early Hermione in the Harry Potter books, except that Hermione actually *did* know all the answers. The Google versions of Hermione, because they're not functioning in "real time" in a real conversation, are like "Hermione with a cheat sheet," pushing the Pause button on a conversation and running for Google to find something to say. And, as you say, some do this in an attempt o make themselves look smarter or more knowledgeable than they really are. However, there is another form of intent that one sees often in the Google addicts of the Internet. *Their* intent in "going to Google" in the first place is not *just* to "make themselves look smarter." There is a deeper intent that involves *making someone less look dumb*. THAT is what was going on in this whole discussion, Curtis. The entire *intent* of the person trotting out information from Google as if it were real knowledge was *to make you look stupid*. You know it, she knows it, and everyone else on this forum knows it. *Without* having to Google it. :-) And one of the reasons is that you have successfully "pulled back the curtain" on many of her pronounce- ments and pointed out what they really are -- facts gained not from real experience and real study but from a few seconds on Google, but then presented as if they *were* the result of real experience and real knowledge. Pay no attention to that fat woman behind the curtain. The more she tries to convince you that she knows more than you do, the more likely it is that she needed Google to do it.
