I Miss Experts

There was a period in human history when, if you wanted to know something, you asked someone who actually knew.

If your washing machine was making a noise that sounded like an angry walrus, you called an appliance repairman.

If trying to start your car sounded like two skeletons tap dancing in a coffee can, you called a mechanic.

If you woke up with a mysterious rash resembling a topographical map of the Rocky Mountains, you called a doctor.

Today, however, the accepted response is: “Just Google it.”

I AM PERFECTLY CAPABLE OF GOOGLING THINGS. I know how Google works.

Now, Google is a great tool in certain circumstances. If I already own a set of wrenches and have used them before, I might refer to google if I forget which oil filter i need to buy for my truck. I might want to get a refresher on the torque specs on the drain bolt. That’s wonderful. I don’t need to dig through 1500 pages of a Chilton manual. I know that if a Reddit post says: “Save money by wrapping the old filter in duct tape and reusing it indefinitely” i’m probably reading bad information.

Google works when I can separate useful information from complete nonsense. The problem comes when you know absolutely nothing.

Imagine you’ve just discovered literally ten minutes ago that cars need oil changes. Congratulations. You are now entering the Internet with all the confidence of a Labrador retriever entering a chemistry lab.

You type: “How change oil lol”

One website tells you to look on the engine block for the type of oil to use.
You then read a Reddit post insisting that modern oil is “Self-Cleaning.”
Some other guy on YouTube recommends adding two bananas “for lubrication.”
There are seventeen people arguing in the comments about whether bananas should be organic.

IF you’re completely new to a subject, you have absolutely no way of knowing who’s insane, because every answer sounds plausible. What’s worse, sometimes the silly sounding answers are the right ones.

That’s why experts matter. An expert doesn’t just give you the answer. They quietly prevent you from believing all the wrong answers.

So, yeah, someone tells me to “Just Google It” and I try not to lose my shit.

So I do. I eventually get responses from Reddit.

Ah, Reddit, where someone claiming to be an electrical engineer explains the answer to a problem about GFCI outlets. Unfortunately another person then explains how “GFCI Outlets are a Conspiracy by Big Outlet (and the Jews, somehow) to get you to replace all the sockets in your bathroom.” This person is twenty-four years old, identifies as “nonbinary masc lesbian,” is in their seventh year pursuing an undergraduate degree in Feminist Basket Weaving and Medieval Fan Fiction, and has never attempted to repair anything more mechanically complicated than breakfast.

They receive 14,000 upvotes.

The electrical engineer deletes his account.

This is considered progress.

Sometimes, I don’t want to harvest facts. I want to meet the people who grew them. I want to sit around the campfire with the tribe that has been rebuilding carburetors since the Nixon administration. I want to hear the stories. I want to learn the songs. I want to know the unwritten rules that never make it into repair manuals.

I want to hear from the old mechanic who’s rebuilt three thousand transmissions and can diagnose an engine noise from fifty yards away. “That squeal sounds like the bottom left bolt on the alternator housing is exactly 15 ft-lbs loose.”

I want to hear from the plumber who takes one look under your sink, sighs heavily, and says, “Well... somebody’s been here before.” That somebody, as it turns out, was you. Last week. After reading a Reddit thread.

I want to hear from the electrician who spent thirty years learning all the ways electricity can kill you, and responds to “I already turned the breaker off” with the exact expression your father reserved for “I already brushed my teeth.”

Google can’t reproduce ANY of that. Google knows the seventeen websites that copied the same article from each other in 2019. The Internet has somehow convinced us that expertise is elitist. Experience is gatekeeping.

Of course, there is one upside to this system. If civilization collapses, historians will know exactly why. They won’t have to search very hard. They’ll just Google it, where they’ll find a Reddit thread explaining that Rome actually fell because Julius Caesar forgot to clear his browser cache.

If that’s true, then next time I need heart surgery I’d like the procedure performed by the moderator of r/CardiologyMemes.

After all, He got a lot of upvotes.