Do You Have a Source?
“It’s a lot of details and complicated information. I’m not going to hold your hand and explain it to you.”
– This fuckin’ guy
You know how some kids get really annoyed when their teachers ask them to show their work, but they complain, “Who cares how I got the answer? I got an answer, didn’t I?” completely ignoring that the teacher doesn’t care that you have an answer, but more that you’re able to show how you got to that answer? I feel like a lot of internet folk have that same attitude towards citing sources for their assertions.
Like, the whole point of providing a source is to support your claims and show everyone that you didn’t just pull your reasoning out of your ass, but I’ve seen so many people act like being asked for a source is being assigned useless busywork or that it’s some antiquated formality whose original purpose has been lost to time. Then, they just google their own argument and provide some random page that shares some of the words they used and assume it probably agrees with them!
And you know what makes it worse? Sometimes, the original guy who asked for the source, just says, “Thanks!” and moves on! They didn’t even fucking read it! THEY don’t even know why they were asking for a source in the first place! They just do it cus they learned that’s what you’re supposed to do on the internet! “Source?” is just a fucking meme you leave in the comments, it doesn’t mean anything!
Then I just fume at the screen for a moment and stomp around my room, muttering, “Oh boy, I’d better make a hilarious comic eviscerating these guys! Then they’ll see!” And then I do. And everyone laughs. And everyone claps.
– James
