"Look it Up"

Why I Have (Mostly) Stopped Telling People to Do Their Own Research

It has become a bit of a trope for me, but it is the truth. Many people who have the ability to read this post have a supercomputer in their pockets. It does everything for you. It can help you do your job, get a job, connect with far away family, order food, figure out who won the 1942 Sugar Bowl…you get the point.

As a result, when we are having a disagreement or perhaps are just fed up with someone asking a litany of tedious questions, our response is to just tell that person, “Look it up”. 

I fully admit, I am prone to doing this, especially if I think the person I may be engaging with is being disingenuous in their curiosity. However, with more time to think about it, I am trying my best to NOT be the person who just tells someone to look something up on their phone or computer. 

Why? Well, for one it cuts down on human interaction, and Lord knows that even for those of us who have incredibly introverted tendencies, we need more human interaction than less. Furthermore, it is a great brain exercise to teach someone something, and perhaps learn a little more yourself. I wrote about healthy brain activity when it comes to language learning, and I think the same logic applies here. Telling someone to look something up may seem like less of a hassle, but at the same time it may be forfeiting the opportunity for your brain to engage in myriad healthy activities by helping someone else learn. 

Now I want to be perfectly clear here. One has to be very intuitive when it comes to “helping” someone when they continue to pepper you with questions. This becomes exponentially more difficult when dealing with online discourse. Trolls will ask questions to try and back you into a corner until they have “won”. Sometimes it’s hard to spot, but the way I discern if someone is worth my time is with a few simple rules. I wrote about them here. Basically, with a little research, you can usually tell if someone wants to learn, or just annoy you. If it’s the latter, they either told on themselves in their profile, or they’ll do so the more you let them talk. 

The point is to be discerning with who you give your time to. Don’t feed the trolls. 

Besides having to be on the lookout for bad faith actors, I would say having the opportunity to help someone learn is a genuine gift. If they are asking you about a subject, they’re likely curious enough to learn more, and appreciate your potential expertise. Furthermore, it allows you to not only reinforce the information you know, but possibly learn more, and learn a new perspective. You can’t get that interaction if you coldly just tell someone “Look it up”. 

So, the next time someone asks you about something, tell them what you know! If it’s from someone online, do a little research before engaging, but absolutely lean into it. I know when it comes to plenty of subjects, including college football, the reason I know as much as I do is because someone came to me and asked, and if I didn’t know, I looked it up to be able to tell them. I think in scenarios like that, everyone comes out a winner.