I get a stream of requests from people to do things for them that they can easily do for themselves via a Google search, such as links to videos, books and essays.
These requests are the most innocuous things in the world in themselves, but they always presage more requests to come. I’ve never found that they are one-off. Instead, in my experience, anyone who once asks you to do something for them that they can do for themselves, will keep coming back to the well.
When I call people out for asking me to do for them what they can do for themselves, I don’t recall one time when the other party has said in effect good point. Instead, they’re always put out.
The conversation always goes like this:
Requester: “Luke, can you direct me to that Richard Spencer freakout post-Cville audio you played onstream the other day, but the version where somebody synced the rhythm of his words precisely to crazy piano notes/chords?”
I put into Youtube’s search engine, “richard spencer as a piano piece”, and the video is the first result.
Luke: “Here. You could’ve found it yourself on YT without asking me.”
Requester: “Well, no, I tried and failed. Before asking you. Was it much of an inconvenience? Some of us are out here raising children and such, sorry for the inconvenience, lol.”
So, there’s no point it seems in trying to educate people to stand on their own two feet. One just has to accept that as soon as one is asked to do this once, if you give in and help them out, there will be no end of requests. People will take from you as much as they can with no consideration as to their own dignity and yours.
It’s an interesting dynamic. I don’t know what to do with it. One time means nothing, but hundreds of people do this to me in the course of a typical year. Whenever anyone once asks me to do something I think they could do themselves, it never ends there. It goes on and on and these importuners never turn out to be princes among men. It’s exhausting. I’m not looking at things in the best way. There’s got to be a better way of handling this. So far, the best thing I’ve found is to refuse from request one to be a patsy unless I’m sleeping with the requester, G-d forbid.
