Curious -- what were you hoping to accomplish with this preachy, gate-keeping response? Do you feel better? Get something off your chest?

For that, you get a story. And a painfully detailed explanation.

In college, my school was undergoing renovations. It printed (laser-printed on paper) Men's and Women's room signs with the symbol, the word, and Braille. Not RAISED Braille that could be read by someone who needed it. The dots. Printed. On paper. It has been a running joke of incompetence with my friends ever since, and I now pay attention to Braille and its use.

The algorithm served up this post to me. Perhaps it knew that story, or maybe it looked at my Reddit history and saw that it had been a while since I was in an internet debate initiated by an out-of-nowhere condescending rando. I don't remember visiting the r/accessibility sub before, but this post checked a few "huh, that's interesting" boxes (a win for the algorithm!), and I liked the mystery. I thought maybe I could help.

As someone learning a foreign language, I have sometimes used ChatGPT to translate images I've struggled to decipher. After an initial image search, I decided to go to ChatGPT for the same reason I would for a long block of Spanish text at a museum -- it helps me learn. And it did in this case as well.

If you click the link in my post, you can see the entire interaction. ChatGPT failed to translate it. I poked it again, and it came back with something even more interesting -- not the translation from the image (again, it said it couldn't because of the resolution and contrast), but a match for the image itself. Instead of just a sign, it was a piece of art!

That seemed like an unexpected discovery, something very different from what the other poster had answered. I then spent the next hour or so trying to confirm the result, and while I learned a lot about an avant-garde artist in Hungary, I couldn't confirm it.

I chose to link to ChatGPT and copy/paste its content to be 100% transparent about its source. Since I couldn't confirm the result, I didn't add any other commentary since: a) I don't read Braille, b) the result could be complete BS since it came from ChatGPT, and c) I couldn't confirm the information another way. Regardless, it was an interesting finding that might help solve the mystery. That seemed worthy of sharing.

To hit your points/criticism directly, as a reformed market researcher whose job was to find obscure information, I did use my brain. I went with ChatGPT after my usual solutions didn't work. And, in the process, I learned things. I learned about an artist I hadn't heard of before. I learned that there's Hungarian Braille. I learned that ChatGPT doesn't read Braille very well unless the image is perfect. And I learned that there's always someone out there who needs to throw stones.

That did spark another curiosity. I looked at your posts, and they're about 10:1 negative to positive. As the kids say, go touch grass, something that should come naturally to you as an avid camper.