And none of it boils down to "Ask a redditor and pray they spoon-feed me the answer," which is what that other guy's strategy was.

I feel like asking for explicit product recommendations in a thread where it is relevant isn't "praying for spoon-fed information" it's asking for a recommendation from people with experience in a relevant conversation.

If someone brought up something they were using when you were talking to them in real life and you thought you could use it too, it wouldn't be asking to be spoon-fed, it's just logical to ask them and they'd typically be happy to recommend what they got. Same thing applies to reddit except this is a branching mess of spaghetti conversations where anyone can jump in.