The Hater: Must I google EVERYTHING for you?

by CARIN MOONIN

My Garmin died recently. I’m one of those runners who needs a device to tell her how far and how fast—or in my case, how slow—she’s going. (I have a whole column planned on how I feel about the whole range of fitness devices in general, but that’s another story for another day.)

So it died. No response. Just…blank screen.

It wasn’t the battery. It wasn’t the charger. I hadn’t dunked it in water. I wondered if I was moving so slowly that my Garmin was like, “WTF is the point?”

Luckily, I’d bought it from REI. When I brought to them, they, too, tried to resuscitate it. No luck. But even with their new return policy, they accepted it as a return and gave me a new one.

A week later, it died.

Same thing. Blank screen. No response. Didn’t charge, didn’t transfer any run data onto my computer.

Nothing.

But this time, I decided to google “Unresponsive Garmin.”

And I found a solution: Hold the “light” button for 15-20 seconds, then plug in to charger.

It worked.

I’m a fucking idiot.

I write about technology, right? I rail against dumb-asses who don’t google things first—who call a store to find out when it closes, who post a question on a foodie message board to find out a restaurant’s menu, who call one store to find out something about its competitor, who expect a blog post to substitute for medical advice—and I can’t even do it myself.  

We went from going to the library for our research to googling for it. You think googling is lazy? Not googling is even lazier. Granted, you can’t believe everything you find on the Internet. But sometimes? Sometimes you can. You just have to check first.

And yet, some of us are too slothful to even do that.

For those people (okay, me included), I bring you this gift: Let Me Google That For You.

(I’m shocked—shocked!—I didn’t know about it earlier, but maybe that’s because I’ve been too busy googling things for idiots.)

Tired of questions you get at work that can be solved with an Internet connection and a finger on a touch screen? Don’t feel like giving someone instructions about how to hard boil an egg or learn the best way to shell fava beans? Now you can type in the idiot’s question, copy the link provided, and email or text that link to said moron.

Just like the site says: Was that so hard?

Are we doing too much googling? I disagree. I don’t think we’re doing enough.Some message boards even have a “google first”’ policy. I can get behind that, because life should have a google first policy.

Googling is nice. Googling is friendly. Google doesn’t judge. Your employer googles you. Your potential dates google you. So get on board, people: Think your question is dumb? Don’t worry! it’s never too dumb for the Internet!

This week I also came across what these mad successful people have in common. They all get up at the ass-crack of dawn.

You can’t tell me that some of that time isn’t spent looking shit up on the Internet.  

Carin Moonin is a writer living in Portland, Ore. Sometimes she’ll even tweet about things she hates at @carinwrites.

Photo by scobleizer/Flickr