it’s crazy how those comments are aging like milk precisely because google/web search is going to shit (in addition to being dickhead comments ofc)
just weird to look back and think about how we thought it would never change
To give google 1(one) droplet of credit, the enshittification didn’t come from them alone. In fact I’m fairly sure that if they could get their way, the page would still return useful results, only, JUST below all the paid ads. SEO Spam doesn’t help THEM either.
The problem is… A lot of the “good” results on google came from like. Enthusiast websites. Webforums. And… Reddit.
Enthusiast Websites are much rarer now. They got consolidated into media conglomerates and then closed down. Only a few remain.
Webforums are in a similar zombified state, most got vored by “social media” and Discord (P.S.: if you are a dev or artist or whatever and use a Discord server as the main helpline/download source for a project you’re doing, fuck you very much, you are the ACTUAL worst <3), which aren’t indexed by search engines.
Then Reddit got Spez’d, so THAT avenue is fucked too.
Fedi isn’t indexed by search engines either (AFAIK), so you can’t do the old “<Search terms> reddit” trick replacing reddit with lemmy. It won’t work.
linux mint forums
YouTube searches are also truly awful, and have been for around a year.
a friend of mine discovered the tip to add “before:2025” (or, the current year+1) to your yt search to improve it. i have no clue why that does anything but it reverts it to pre-enshittified functionality
I FOUND A STACK OVERFLOW QUESTIONS RECENTLY THAT WAS LITERALLY THIS!
Nr. 1 accepted answer (lots of years ago): something something plenty of information available on Google, no need for this thread
Nr. 2 answer (way fewer years ago): seeing as this is now the first Google result for anything relating to this, here’s how you do it.
(shame I can’t remember what exactly the question was. Please still me? 🥺)
(shame I can’t remember what exactly the question was. Please still me? 🥺)
I think about half the threads on stackoverflow fit this criteria
It may be pronounced goople.fart, but it’s spelled goople.farht.
I’ll see myself aus.
“Why are you trying to do [x]? Have you tried doing [y] instead?”
“But why do you want that?” should be an automatic time-out on most Q&A sites. Especially anything technical.
I don’t need to convince you to make my decisions.
A lot of the time, the fundamental issue is the lack of information provided by the poster. I’ve seen so many threads where the provided information just isn’t enough, and they don’t react to any of the questions at all.
“You shouldn’t do [y] either, you idiot, you absolute fucking buffoon. You should instead do [z, which costs a fortune and/or requires you to restructure your entire life]”
Thread closed [x] already answered please go to link: completly unrelated topic actually about [a]
And the link points to a solution from 2006 using a method that’s been outdated and unsupported for a decade.
But it will be slighly more efficient
“Just install Linux”
Here is a comprehensive Guide how to do [x]:
{20 paragraphs of Background Story}
[x] is Impossible to do, you dumbfuck
Oh god you reminded me of this gem
https://serverfault.com/questions/780150/how-to-cache-contents-in-haproxy#780155
Someone asks how to do http caching in HAproxy.
The one answer:
don’t use the wrong tool
haproxy is a wonderful tool. It does not provide caching. A quick scan of the fine docs can verify this. Unless you want to patch
haproxyyou need to use a tool that does what you’re looking to do.don’t create impossible problems
By asking for haproxy to do something that it doesn’t and excluding the tool that seems to do what you want to do you’ve create an impossible situation. There is no technical solution for this. Don’t make choices that box you into a corner.
try varnish or anything that actually caches
If you get over that you might find this tutorial on using varnish with haproxy useful or try varnish by itself. Maybe squid or memcached would be more your speed.
In the comments to this ludicrous tirade we get this simple comment:
This was true and valid back then. Nowadays HAProxy does this.
And just in case someone found this looking for an answer, here’s the example from that link
backend bck1 mode http http-request cache-use foobar http-response cache-store foobar server srv1 127.0.0.1:80 cache foobar total-max-size 4 max-age 240
goes to goople
searches ‘1980 cx500 only runs on one cylinder’
comment from 2007: “replace this module right here:”
[broken Photobucket link]So much was lost with PhotoBucket. A mind boggling amount of information is just gone.
Common issue with most image hosters. I think a lot of the time the issue is the users deleting their images, rather than the hoster going down.
I remember someone once made a meme about that:
Ow
i love this
And when you finally find some helpful forum with content from 15 years ago, you’ll have someone be like “GUYS I FIGURED IT OUT! Here’s a [broken] link to someone else who solved it” with a dozen or so “Thanks, that solved the issue immediately for me!” Comments after it.
Amount of broken links is crazy. I always try checking internet archive, but they often don’t have stuff like that.
Nevermind, have figured it out.
<thread closed with NO FUCKING ASWER kthxbye>
Why do I always click on these even though I know exactly what it will be?
xkcd is so good I don’t mind reading it over and over
Described: Why whenever I figure something out myself after posting a help thread, I’ll write a whole report on what I did before it got fixed (because often I’m just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, and I never know what exactly moved the needle)
Those threads with “fixed it!” and no instructions? If they’re on reddit, I’m posting “I deleted system32 and the problem went away!”
If it’s Linux related say “open a terminal and do
sudo rm -rf /” for similar life-ruining effects.sudo rm -rf /
Ok, so I retroactively removed the realm of France and now a bunch of Spanish people are pissed about living too close to Luxembourg and the number of great cheeses in the world has decreased by 80%!
What now?
Now you remove Britain as well, and the healing can begin.
Like I said in a previous thread that ended up on this topic. There’s a special place in hell, with Satan from Little Nicky, a few pineapples and some lobsters to hang off these asshole’s nipples…
Me scrolling through 150 stackoverflow pages and ‘helpful’ third party websites that don’t answer my question
See also: The less hostile but equally useless advice to “Search online”
Literally happens all the damn time anymore
Whole first page is ads and threads of people saying, ‘Just Google it,’ ‘There’s a search function here for a reason,’ ‘thread locked due to frequently asked question,’ etc, etc.
I miss the earlier days of the Internet where people were more helpful. Or hell when Google wasn’t just ads and SEO crap.
…GoOgLe is YoUr fRiENd…
springs to mind
Anybody remember this site? Google used to be so good that anybody with half a brain could find a good result if they would just type a basic phrase into it.
My sweet summer child, issues with google search existed in 2008, things just accelerated at a massive rate once it became the de facto standard and people figured out how to manipulate search results.
“My sweet summer child” is a very weird way to start a comment response. It sounds condescending.
It’s supposed to
“Have you tried rtfm?”
I hate that shit. People answer with “check page 72 of your car manual” and it’s like … you clearly pulled out the manual to pull that page number, I’m under my car right now, just copy the damned sentence.
It was even wrose when there was a site by the name “let me google it for you”, which insulted you while made an animation about how to use this “not evil” website google. You google “how to do [X]” find a nice looking forum, and people either are angry that OP didn’t google it, or they deceptively linked to a lmgify page.
After a month of suffering, I instead reinstalled Windows XP, which I had a lot of trouble with (fugly UI, stability issues, performance issues, etc), but not as much as with the “king of stability”, Linux.
Lol
I always used to use “Let me bing it for you” at least then it was probably something they hadn’t tried, and it was proper trolling instead of just being passive aggressive
