Do you google everything, or trust what people tell you?

[ShawnFuzz]

I am a young Gen X, and I feel kind of lucky to have experienced the transition from old and new technology. I know what its like to search the library cards to find books that I need for a school paper (hand written ). I also learned a lot of knowledge from other people passed on from one generation to the next.

I also really love the fact that I can Google anything and get a mostly reliable answer, depending on the topic... instantly.

I am quick to search the internet for little trivia because I cant stop trying to learn new things. I may be wrong, but I think millennials are the same way? At least thats how I feel from personal experience.

I have noticed that the Gen Z coworkers of mine have taken on the old school art of discussing things they have learned, but not immediately confirming the truth of it with the internet. I really love that. I feel like they (the people I know personally) enjoy the the art of conversation, rather than just being right as fast as possible.

I guess I am curious what your go to resource is? It's been nice discussing innocent topics at work that dont immediately bring out the phones to fact check with literally everything.

What do you think?

Post automatically merged: Today at 4:46 AM

P.S. this thread idea spawned after I googled if anyone else puts crunchy cheeto's on their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

So dont think too hard

 

[LambdaDelta]

I hardly use google for information gathering

moreso after their whole ai currated results ****

as for trusting people, there's far too many variables at play there to be a consistent or even hard yes/no, from person to person and the content and context of the things in question within

 

[-Blue-]

Anymore Google (and most other search engines) are garbage with how much AI has taken over the internet. I can't even find any information or sources made by humans unless I dig deep. And how much they try to push the AI agenda on everything is so annoying. Devices already coming with stuff preinstalled instead of asking if you want it and there's no way to disable or completely remove the AI features. Nothing I ever really looked up online was that deep, but even that isn't safe from AI. It's really ruined the internet. And honestly offline to for certain things, but I really don't feel like getting into it.

The internet used to be a great place to find information as long as you didn't just take everything you read. And I used to do a quick search on Reddit to find something since after some time it was the quickest way to find something that was almost always the surefire answer. Now Reddit is full of bots pushing their agendas.

I know that might not want what you wanted me to talk about, but really nowadays you can't even go that far without AI being obnoxiously in your face. It really depends on what it is in question that I am needing information on. I would say I used to do both.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I mix of the two. I google things that someone tells me that I’m not sure if it’s true or not. Either that or I google info someone tells me if it’s a news story.

 

[Chris]

Millennial and throw questions at Google multiple times a day. I make a point of looking for credible sources as the AI response at the top is unreliable.

 

[Suguri]

To answer the OP's question, I usually look up information online after hearing about it from someone else. I need to know if it's true or false or whatever. But these days, it's almost impossible to talk about the Google search engine itself without bringing up the ridiculous AI results you see first thing at the top.

However there is a trick I learned not too long ago specifically with Google, where when you search up something, there is an option called "Web" where you can see the results without the AI slop. But having to look up something and then click on "Web" every time is tedious, so by tacking the following onto the end of the search address: &udm=14, you'll automatically get taken to the search results under "Web." There are extensions and sites out there that can additionally help with that, and I have one set as my default search engine. It's worth looking into.

I never liked Google's handling of their AI, but I wouldn't be surprised if they removed the "Web" feature in the future, since they'll be more than willing to put their crap everywhere.

 

[BakaRina]

I prefer to look up information myself. People will make things up to get likes and whatnot on other websites and it's annoying. I only trust those that have proven credible to me.