Ask Lemmy

People have been throwing that kind of disclaimer on online comments so long that they came up with the abbreviation "IANAL" back in the 80s or 90s, back when the World Wide Web was either not even a thing yet or brand-spanking-new and Usenet was king.

There are, frankly, a whole lot of absolute morons out in the world.

Sometimes those people are the ones asking for advice, sometimes they're the ones trying to give it.

Some people who will take anything you say at face value, won't verify any information for themselves, won't do any research, etc. and if they follow your advice and screw up they sometimes like to lug litigious about it.

And when they're the ones giving advice, they'll confidently state stuff that is just flat out not true and sometimes dangerous.

Hopefully you can see at least some of the ways those could be a bad combination.

Personally when I make those kinds of disclaimers, it's because I'm

1. Looking out for myself, I don't want to get sued, I dont want some asshole to harass me or dox me or ruin my reputation or anything because they followed advice I gave because they thought I "sounded like I knew what I was talking about"

2. I'm looking out for the other person. I'm not a professional and I know it, I'm warning them that they should only take my thoughts or advice for what they're worth which may not be much, and there's a real chance the person I'm talking to is an idiot.

I also feel like it kind of invites someone who does actually know better to come in and correct or add on to what I've said, and I always welcome that sort of learning opportunity.

And it can sometimes be a way to slip in a little humor if you slip in something like "I'm no octopus psychologist" or something when you're discussing the behavior of an octopus. (To the best of my knowledge, "octopus psychologist is not a real job, and that's why it's humorous, at least to someone with the same kind of dry humor as me)

I blame sealioning, and bad-faith follow up comments asking about your expertise in an effort to embarrass you. Plenty of minor disagreements are amplified by petty, obnoxious assholes.

Excessive disclaimers may be an effort to avoid this.

The stupid is so strong, we have to fight it at every turn.

"I don't wanna fuck up your life if it doesn't work out, but here's something that worked for me or someone I know"

Those are just Americans who were seeing the "disclaimers" during their whole life. Cultural nuance.

There’s definitely a bit of IANAL but most of the time I’m just trying to avoid someone’s pedantic response, which is never welcome. No one likes a know-it-all.

It does feel like an Americanism, like someone else said. Perhaps they're afraid of thinking and of standing behind their conclusions so they need a million disclaimers. But I always knew you were a person, which means you're fallible! And your thesis will stand by itself or not, regardless of your titles and accolades.

Started with IANAL - I Am Not A Lawyer.

Dude you should really [Insert Terrible Advice Here]

But don't you fucking dare blame me if things go wrong 🤭

(Btw, rob a bank. Its fun. Don't sue me 😉)

If you don’t anticipate literally every possible negative counter to what you say, as well as intricately carve every sentence into a laser focused, concise, and yet somehow comprehensive statement, people will endlessly needle you.

There is a tendency for people to seek out The least charitable interpretation of your statements and unfortunately it’s on you to anticipate and fend them off or the conversation becomes completely derailed because you used one specific word (or didn’t) or some other nonsense.

The moment somebody starts arguing with you, they will take every single word incredibly literally and refuse to infer anything. Your intention means nothing, the word you chose and how they can twist it means everything

There's actually several overlapping societal issues at play.

First, a distrust of experts. Especially doctors unless it's doctors giving away medical advice or confirming biases like "sure, you like butter? Im a doctor, butter makes you healthy. Eat more butter."

Next, both the availability of research and experiences online does mean it IS actually easier to find, validate for yourself, and share knowledge. But thats also mixed up in people that feel close enough to knowledgeable experts after dabbling in something 2 or 3 times.

Both of these things are also in the context of, for lack of a better term, the overall entitlement of people online to seek and deserve to find easy solutions that make them feel good. So when experts chime in with technical, rational, or sophisticated options that truly are better, they might expect to get blasted as "gate keeping" and be disincentivized from being post of a community, leaving the sophomoric "I'm no expert" crowd as the loudest group that's barely competent enough to impress newbies and no one else.

Avoidance of liability in case anything goes wrong. I’m guessing it began with advertisements offline and made its way to the internet.

That's been the internet since at least the mid-2000s.