Why Don't You Google It?

Why don't you Google it?

They have become the five most dismissive words in our modern language.  The new most devastating thing you can say to somebody (not including racial or personal slurs, obviously).

Why don't you Google it?

It's difficult for me to start conversations with people.  Sometimes I ask questions about stuff just to get things started.  Has this actor ever done anything before?  How does that really work?  Why do Baptists go to church twice on Sunday?  I'm trying to engage, people! Instead, I'll be abruptly and gruffly cut off with....why don't you Google it?

It didn't used to be that way.  Finding answers would require much more discussion and research.  In college, I and my roommate had a disagreement over who starred in the fifties classic, War of the Worlds....I thought it was Gregory Peck; he thought it was somebody else.  So we settled it in the best way we could at that time.  We wrote a letter to the Detroit Free Press movie/TV columnist, and waited for an answer.  Two weeks later, she responded in the newspaper, and we got our answer.  Yes, now all of metro Detroit and Ann Arbor now knew that I was wrong.  It starred Gene Barry, not Gregory Peck.  I owed somebody a lot of pizza.

Now, things are entirely different.  I can find out about who was in any movie or show at the drop of a hat.  Well, at the touch of a smart phone, looking it up within seconds on IMDb (Internet Movie Database) or a similar app (application).  Of course, all that knowledge at our fingertips, and so many of us use it to look up cat videos.

I wonder how a roommate would react now to that question.  If he was curious, you or he may look up the answer in an instant.  If he wasn't, he would just look up from his phone or tablet or laptop for a second, and say, "Why don't you Google it?" and then go back to ignoring you.

What a world.