When You Have a Very Specific Question on Social Media...

 ...like say you have a very specific question about a certain sort of widget, so you go to the widgets sub on Reddit cause you figure at least some of the world's leading widget experts must hang out there, and you search first to see if someone else has already asked, but no, so you post with a very specific question, make it clear as day that you came there because you wondered about this very specific thing...

And -- of course -- someone leaves a very long comment about important things about widgets, all of which you already knew, and says nothing about what you asked. So you thank them, but repeat that why you came there was because of the question you already stated very clearly.

So of course they leave an even longer reply full of important things in the history of widgets, still haven't said a thing you didn't already know, still haven't answered your question -- OH! but at the end of this long comment they say something you already suspected: they've never heard of the kind of widget you asked about.

So you express a little mild annoyance. And so then a couple of his friends and admirers chime in, saying things like, "Oh, so you're saying you don't care about all these important things this important man has taken his important time to tell you, you ungrateful worm [...]"

When all you actually said was that Mr Important didn't answer your very specific question, the very specific reason you came to that sub, and no-one else has answered it either, even though you've repeated it four or five times by now and emphasized as clearly as you know how to that it -- your specific question -- is why you came there in the first place.

When you clearly have a specific question, people who don't know the answer DON'T NEED TO COMMENT. 

But they do, don't they. Sure as rain in Oregon. And now it seems very likely that no-one in the sub will ever answer your question, and you're going to be perma-banned from the sub.

Grad school can be like that, unfortunately. That's why I finally dropped out.