The Butt Ugly Weblog

Unhelpfully, he said

One thing that greatly bugs me is the tendency of some people to suggest switching operating systems or platforms whenever you have a problem. For example, if you have a problem related to an Android device, some dork will inevitably come and suggest that you should buy an iPhone. Or if you have a problem with your Mac, some other dork will come over and proclaim that if you just switched to Linux, you wouldn't have these problems. (And I'm not going to even start with the kind of comments you get if you happen to have a problem with one Linux distro - ever tried debating Debian vs Gentoo or Red Hat vs Ubuntu?)

And I do understand that people do try to be helpful. But in this case, it comes across as smug and mean, and to me it sounds like "well, it's your own problem for being so stupid you chose the wrong platform." I mean, if I choose something, it's usually the result of some thinking and balancing of benefits and disadvantages - so when someone just suggests, without understanding the context, that I should've chosen something else... well, to me it sounds like what an utterly contemptuous, stupid person would say.

But the biggest thing that irates me that the advice is always, always completely useless. If I have an 81 cent software problem, what kind of a solution it is to buy a €599 phone to solve it? In exactly which kind of an universe is that a reasonable solution? It's the rich bully kid solution, if anything - it's just like asking advice on money problems and someone telling you "well, you should've chosen to get a job that pays more", or complaining about something your spouse did and getting the extremely helpful "get a better wife" -response. Mean, prejudiced, stupid, and completely and utterly useless, and nobody in their right mind does that to people. Except that it seems fully okay when it comes to computing issues, apparently. Which is probably one of the reasons why people think geeks are dorks.

So henceforth I'll be treating any such suggestions with extreme prejudice. I've listened to this shit for 30 years. Enough is enough.