alt text
An edit of xkcd 2501, “Average Familiarity”:
[Ponytail and Cueball are talking. Ponytail has her hand raised, palm up, towards Cueball.]
Ponytail: Open-source alternatives are second nature to us foss nerds, so it’s easy to forget that the average person probably only knows Linux and one or two degoogled Android ROMs.
Cueball: And Firefox, of course.
Ponytail: Of course.
[Caption below the panel]
Even when they’re trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person’s familiarity with their field.
partly inspired by the replies to this post but i see this kind of thing all the time (shoutout to the person who once genuinely asked “who still uses google these days?”)
made with this neat tool
The “Dunning-Kruger” effect directly contradicts this. It states that experts will overestimate the lay-person’s knowledge. (it’s the second, and often forgotten result)I’m not saying either is correct, there are plenty of reasons to doubt Dunning-Kruger including that it’s results are among the “reproduceability crisis” in Psychological research.
edit: yea I misunderstood that.
That’s exactly what the meme is saying.
tbh, i realize that me using “condescending” in the title kinda implies that experts would underestimate, that’s usually what that word means
is there a better word for this? i meant it in the sense of foss nerds being all “if you still use google chrome in 2026 you’re an idiot and deserve what happens to you” to people
Some days I’m one of those people and most of all I am tired.
Is this not what the comic is saying?