Again within the 2010s, a web site known as Let Me Google That For You gained a notable quantity of recognition for serving a single goal: snark.
The positioning helps you to generate a customized hyperlink which you could ship someone who asks you a query. Once they click on the hyperlink, it performs an animation of the method of typing a query into Google. The concept is to point out the individual asking the query how simple it might have been for them to simply lookup the reply themselves.
It is an insult, mainly. It is humorous and impolite.
Now, there’s nothing improper with a little bit rudeness in the proper context. If an overtly hostile individual is losing your time on social media by asking simply researched questions, I feel it’s best to go forward and revel in a little bit passive aggression (as a deal with).
In additional private contexts, although, utilizing Let Me Google That For You states clearly that you do not respect the individual you gave the hyperlink to, and that their query is a waste of your time. If somebody out of your office or your private life is asking you a query, it is as a result of they need your particular enter, so it is higher to simply give the reply—ideally with context solely you possibly can present—than it’s to ship a hyperlink to a Google search outcomes web page.
Now, this being 2025, the individuals behind Let Me Google That For You additionally provide Let Me ChatGPT That For You, which works precisely the best way you assume it does. And its existence factors to one thing new: how impolite it’s to, in response to a query, reply with AI output—particularly in a extra skilled context.
Losing Time
Telling somebody to Google one thing will be humorous and satisfying, however it’s not useful. I would put copy-pasting or screenshotting a dialog with ChatGPT, Claude, or another AI agent in the identical class: not useful and type of impolite.
Developer Alex Martsinovich touched on this some time in the past in a weblog submit known as it is impolite to point out AI output to individuals: “Be well mannered, and do not ship people AI textual content,” he writes. “My very own tackle AI etiquette is that AI output can solely be relayed if it is both adopted as your individual or there may be express consent from the receiving celebration.” I feel this can be a fairly good framework for AI etiquette.
If somebody asks you a query, once they might have requested the machine as an alternative, it is as a result of they wished your perspective. The web exists, no less than in principle, in order that people can join with one another, and in order that we will profit from one another’s information. Responding to a query with AI output ignores this dynamic, particularly for those who do not say that is what you are doing.
