I’m not really a fan of Linus Tech Tips, I normally just click on a couple of the short Clips when they show up in my recommendation box and seem relevant, but I am fond of Linux

The clip was interesting enough that I hopped over to the full podcast, and had a very fun moment of them pointing out a social dynamic I’ve never had a big enough audience to experience in real time. The “Genuinely Helpful Fans” and the “Toxic GIT GUD hecklers” in large enough numbers in the same chat to immediately prove the point of why the podcast speaker was reluctant to be honest about their issues as a Linux Newbie.

There’s a point early in the Linux segment where somebody in the chat mentions “Don’t worry, we like to help newbies get in. Let us know what you’re having trouble with.” Linus sees this and acknowledges this, but points out that people like the person saying that are not the loudest ones or the fastest people to step in.

about 15 minutes later when he’s explaining a genuine issue trying to download and run a shell script from Github. When he tried to download it, he kept getting an HTML file and was confused and frustrated about why there isn’t a one-click solution to just make it run properly.

The “Don’t worry I’m a dev I have that issue too, here’s how to fix that” guy gets acknowledged again in voice, but sure enough the “RTFM” and “that’s a browser problem not a github problem” and “NO YOU DID IT WRONG [w/o tips for fixing the issue]” all start screeching.

Not really sure what ones to combat that kind of scenario, since being overly aggressive with trying to help can come off as pushy and unpleasant too, and nobody wants to be stuck spending 3 hours in a chat with a stranger when what they were trying to do is just use their computer.