My buddy Prince Watercress had a bit of an issue a few nights ago. After updating his PC to Windows 10 build 1903 his system would start up in the middle of the night which, as you could imagine, was a bit of an annoyance to him.
Now, Watercress decided to ask on Reddit, namely in the Windows 10 subreddit, about this problem and hope someone had a solution for him. This makes sense – that’s the kind of thing Reddit is around for, it would seem. A simple question with a hopefully simple answer.
This would not be the case.
The original post text is gone, but Watercress made his request under the title “Computer turning itself on on its own; not sure what is causing it.” I recall the body of the question describing that he would put his system into hibernation at night and that it would power back on in the middle of the night for no reason — a problem which only started after updating to 1903, but one that I used to have with my system (and had since forgotten how I fixed.) It was simply a request for help, advice, what have you. Nothing crazy.
The comments started decently enough, with one person commenting linking to another Reddit post where their laptop was doing similar. It was a decent link, but one which didn’t provide much help in Watercress’ case, namely for the fact his system is a desktop, so the laptop-centric focus of the thread were irrelevant. In retrospect however, the talk about network settings was close, as the issue is network related.
The next comment, however, is where things get stupid. Someone who we will call “Captain Shutdown” decides to pull out their PC Elitism card and rather than focus on the problem they instead chose to nitpick the circumstances surrounding the scenario; namely Hibernation in and of itself.
“Why do you even use hibernation, just shutdown your pc.“
Why would he use it instead of shutting down? Probably because the hibernate function allows one to get right back to where they were on projects with no need to re-open programs, web pages, etc like a full shutdown and restart would normally require. It’s all just sitting there, waiting. It simply helps with the workflow he (and I) have — it’s what we wish to do.
Instead, though, buddy boy up above just has to question this, rather than try to assist with the problem being present in the system Watercress has as it exists.
Watercress didn’t skip a beat here, either — he knew where the person was going, and replied simply with: “I don’t have an SSD, so I don’t even know why you responded with this.”
He isn’t stupid. Watercress knows the benefits of Solid State Drives, the improved loading speeds of most everything (which mitigates some problems with the whole “shut down, restart, get everything in your workspace loaded then begin working” problem, but not all of it) and the like. That still doesn’t change the fact that the response questioning why he chooses to use it (which, it must be stressed, is his choice for his workflow) has nothing directly to do with the problem being presented and was phrased in quite the hostile way, as opposed to something more friendly such as “curious, why do you hibernate instead of just shut down fully?”
Captain Shutdown responded to Watercress:
“Ssd or not hibernation doesn’t significantly speed up your bootup process and can cause various issues unless you’re talking about sleep.”
As if he is some kind of expert on systems in general, let alone Watercress’ particular machine. Some people’s systems do take a while to start up, and hibernation can be a quicker option for just getting from powered down to up and running. The more critical aspect, as I mentioned before and clearly is something this person can’t comprehend, is the fact that this, like putting a system to “sleep” allows one to resume working on things from right where they were, an aspect which many enjoy.
Also of comedic note is how the guys seems to imply Watercress doesn’t know what he’s talking about with the “unless you’re talking about sleep” line. I assure you, he does know what he’s talking about and he described the situation in his original post very well.
That was the end of that reply thread, but not the conversation – not by a long shot. Another person (who’s account was made about the same time as this thread happened and we will refer to as “Mr. Class) chimes in with this gem:
“The original poster made a thread in the “reddit sucks” subreddit because you offered him this advice. The original poster might not appreciate your advice, but I certainly do. Thank you.”
Advice? What fucking advice? None of what was presented in the reply “Why do you even use hibernation, just shutdown your pc” constitutes actual advice to rectifying the presented problem. It’s just a way to avoid it, like avoiding a road with potholes. That doesn’t fix the holes in the road, you just don’t have to drive over them. Honestly that reeks of someones friend coming in to try to “save the day” and act like “captain shutdown” up there just gave the ultimate “solve all your problems” tech advice, something I see being done far too often these days.
The reply from Captain Shutdown to this more than anything shows the grade of elitism we’re dealing with here:
“The original poster doesn’t seem to realise that there’s no easy solution to his problem and refuses to believe hibernation isn’t worth it despite having first hand experience of one of the many problems associated with it. Some people just insist on doing things the hard way and get pissy when someone points that out to them.“
I’m going to tackle this reply in reverse order. Watercress has clearly not had an issue with hibernation in the many years he’s used it. If there are other problems with the feature (which there can be, usually with regard to 3rd party drivers) he hasn’t experienced them, and you didn’t say what those problems were or were not here… or really say anything other than “der shut down your system.” Still not seeing how any of that is an answer to the problem being presented, which clearly was not an issue prior to him updating Windows.
That leads to what he opened this final reply with — the statement that ” [Watercress] doesn’t realise [sic, note the poor spelling] there is no easy solution to his problem” when in fact, there was.
Watercress would go on to find a working solution to his problem. His machine now stays off when in hibernation, and he continues to experience no other issues when resuming from hibernate.
So, what was the point of all this? No, really, I’m asking you, what was the point? The guy contributed nothing, his friend even less, and virtually every assertion made by them was inherently wrong, up to and including the idea that there was “no easy solution” when the thread had only been up for a few hours before he chimed in like the typical elitist asshole that he seems to be.
Now, if you’ve read this far, you may have some questions, such as why doesn’t Watercress just upgrade to an SSD, or what went on in that other thread? Why does his text and account say “deleted?”
These questions, and more, will be discussed in Part 2 which can be found right here!