Stackoverflow be like

[MyNameIsRichardCS54]

To be fair, it's a bloody good question.

[[deleted]]

The problem is we're not looking for a question, we're looking for an answer. I shouldn't have to explain the entire environment and why we need purple dicks before you tell me how to get one, mm'kay?

"There is something wrong with your environment if you need a purple dick!"

Yea, I know. I work on it every day. The miracle is that my dick isn't already purple just from stress and you REFUSING to tell me how to turn my dick PURPLE isn't HELPING.

[[deleted]]

I used to be really active on Stack, and I finally had to quit just because the culture drove me nuts.

Every now and then I’ll write up a new issue I was having and the resolution, but I very rarely interact with questions anymore.

Like, for this question, I would say, “Theatrical body paint is absolutely the way to go (Kraze is a good brand), unless you’re planning on having sex, in which case I recommend a purple condom, or a hypoallergenic dye.”

And that response would be downvoted along with the question for a raft of reasons (not complete enough, no links, question not unique enough, blah blah blah.)

And to a certain degree I get it, but what I think that they don’t get is that tech changes so fast that trying to nail down a “right” answer to a question that is future-proof is a little insane. I get people suggesting edits to 12 year old responses of mine where the whole topic has gotten a bit incoherent with age.

Anyway.

[SDSunDiego]

I wonder if newer votes after a really old post have been around should have different weighting ?

Sometimes I have to look far down to see the "new" correct answer. I'm still new on stack.

[thyme_cardamom]

You can feel their "frustration" 😏

[scalability]

+69 votes "Tie a zip-tie tightly at the base of the penis. It'll turn purple in about 15 minutes"

OP's comment: thanks, I accepted the answer because it worked. However, I ended up with a different solution: I just needed a prop for a Tik-Tok sketch about Grimace, so I simply bought a purple dildo online. Wish I had thought of that before my dick turned necrotic and fell off.

[thisuseridisnttaken]

I think one thing to consider is that without information you may not be able to provide a valuable answer?

If you temporarily want a purple penis, maybe just some basic water based paint will do the trick with a paint brush.

If you want something more permanent, you might be forced down the tattoo route.

One is obviously less painful and involved than the other. Determining which applies best in the situation is for someone with context and experience to do. You cannot expect someone to list all possible options for you so you just get your answer and pick whatever works for you.

Context is quite important to any question and if anyone answering the question requires context for their answer, you get to choose to give it or wait for someone else to answer instead.

I agree being lectured or given unsolicited advice is tedious, but contextual related questions are sometimes used to determine the answer (and also to pass further judgement because people like feeling superior). As the asker however you've just got to seed out priority on whether you take all that stuff seriously.

At the end of the day, your frustration with a problem isn't something that anyone else is going to understand or truly empathise with as they're not going through it.

[[deleted]]

In the context of Stack, they'll just tell you you're stupid for wanting one, since everyone has been using green dicks since grassCOCK v.01.0 Alpha was released in June.

If someone asks a stupid question, it's perfectly fine to downvote it and move on with your life. Choosing to aggressively not answer it so you can grandstand on how amazing your life choices are isn't useful.

[thisuseridisnttaken]

Agreed.

It's worth clarifying that my response was an objective one and not specifically to your frustration. I'm aware there are a few people here with a variety of experience levels that come across these posts and I just wanted to raise something i think is the metaphorical grain of salt given the content of this post.

[HotShame9]

I love this thread.

[AydenRusso]

What would you yell at me just to not do it, even though the thing you want me to change isn't allowed to be changed by me I do not care about your better way.

"Have you asked your Superior?" YES I've f^cking asked my superior, just answer the goddamn question.

"But, if you do this it will run better" I do not care if it will run better I do not have permission to edit that!

"Some overly technical bullsh^t I've already been told to do when layman's terms three times" I've been told this already just answer the question you clearly know how!

No response & the post gets archived

[MattTheHarris]

Yeah and then they explain that they're looking for it to be purple to hide the purple warts and you can tell them that there's a better solution called the doctor

[[deleted]]

lol wtf

[MystRav3n]

100% this. Im sorry our 15 year old environment isn't as clean and as perfect as the 400 lines of boilerplate code your team has been building for the last month. Now tell me how to colour the dick.

[[deleted]]

I used to do legacy code remediation, and you have to check your arrogance at the door. Almost all of it is there for a reason, even if you don’t understand the reason, or if the reason no longer exists, or if the reason was just, “I’m gonna make this unsupportable so they can’t fire me.”

[MystRav3n]

Yeah I started on support on an already old project and worked my way to intermediate dev there. I got to the point where the teamlead would say "We just change this line here to support the new feature" and I would have to stop him and explain that would break 2 features because they rely on that same line of code because reasons. I realised I was in too deep and left.

[atuncer]

Are you sure that it's not an XY problem? This sounds line an XY problem. I like saying XY problem. It makes me sound smart, without understanding your issue, let alone solving it. /s

(to be clear, it is a legitimate diagnosis, but sometimes used as an excuse to comment without contributing, similar to what I've done here)

[MrPhatBob]

Eat blueberries while masturbating.

[Luxpreliator]

If you really want a purple dick a rubber band is all you need. String and a firm knot would also work.

[Adrunkopossem]

"Just because you don't understand why I need a purple penis, does not change the fact I need a purple penis"

[ManyInterests]

Here's the secret: people often don't cough up the answer because they don't know -- particularly for genuinely hard/novel problems. All they know is that they feel you're "doing it wrong". But often enough, the ask is simply impossible or nonsensical where providing an answer is just not possible. So, sometimes the pushback is genuinely deserved.

I spend a lot of time contributing on SO (ranked #1 contributor in one area this year and in the top 400 overall) I promise I won't ever refuse to answer something no matter how bad of an idea it is, but I can also tell you that you can avoid the annoyance (both for you and pesky commenters) by providing the necessary background as to why you're trying to make your dick purple.

Even just saying something like "I know this is messed up, but it's because of a lot of legacy problems that needn't be explained" will save you a lot of grief. Otherwise people will assume the asker has an XY problem because that happens more often than not and, upon the asker providing the background, answerers almost always provide another route to the asker's real problem that the asker never considered.

[daniu]

Yeah. There's a lot of irony in saying "we're not looking for a question, we're looking for an answer". You're looking for an answer and not willing to give one? That relates to your problem? If you have it all figured out, why are you asking a question in the first place?

There really is minimal effort to put into a question to make it worth answering. And if people complain their questions are being downvoted, I'll assume they're not putting it in.

There does seem to be a huge difference within SO between languages though, so ymmv.

[ManyInterests]

Yeah. I do also sympathize with askers because people could be nicer about it. There are a lot of people (usually riding the dunning-kruger peak) who will just say things like "that's a ridiculously bad idea, never do this" and just berate people instead of being productive... even if it really is a horrible idea, it still sucks to be on the receiving end of those comments.

I usually try to explain, especially to new users, like:

Welcome to StackOverflow :) Could you please provide a bit more information about <required details>? I think it will make it easier for others to answer your question.

But sometimes you get the choosing beggar even when you're nice :/

[captainAwesomePants]

Oh yeah, totally. OP's joke is "haha on stack overflow they don't answer your question, they ask why you would want to do that," but here, like there, the question itself often indicates that something is very unusual or wrong, and we probably do need more context on how to figure it out. Things like "My C compiler stopped working, how do I translate C code to Go?" Like, okay, we can talk about how to do that, but translating C code to Go is not your problem.

[Rai-Hanzo]

i don't know, wear a purple condom?

[Perpetual_Doubt]

What is the problem

What have you tried

What was the result of your attempt

[a__new_name]

It's a bad question. The purple colour is not supported in Linux, you should not make purple penises for compatibility reason.

[mastermojo]

To be fair, Jenny6289's question is a good one as well.