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I call it "the IRC smugness pit". The asker knows that providing the full A-X context would be an utter waste of time, and really does want an answer to Y only
by jonahx 7y ago
I call it "the IRC smugness pit".
The asker knows that providing the full A-X context would be an utter waste of time, and really does want an answer to Y only.
Certain IRC regs will flat out refuse to answer Y. Often this is because they don't know the answer to Y, but instead of saying so would prefer to wear the mantle of wise interrogator of "things you did not think of"™.
Ofc, sometimes they're talking to a newb and this is appropriate, but jumping to "this is an XY problem" seems to be a knee-jerk reaction for some people.
- jacobolus 7y agoOne of the more effective albeit mildly dishonest to get around this on IRC is to troll the channel. “I asked my buddy who claims to be a language C expert and he told me that it is completely impossible to accomplish Y using language C, because «invalid reason Q that makes language C sound bad». Then all of the smug jerks who would usually start by asking what kind of idiot would ever want to do Y will instead fall over themselves to prove that Y is possible and really quite simple to accomplish, and explaining that my expert friend who said it was impossible had no idea what he was talking about. Make sure to use a pseudonym for this one though if you want to come back to the channel and not have people still mad at you.