Medical Advice and the Internet
I recently spent like two days going through my AskMe answers on Metafilter to find a particular reply of mine. In the process, I tripped across a number of things I liked or whatever and made note of some of the links.
If it seems like I'm on a Metafilter trend, that's why, but this post is absolutely NOT intended to merely be me bitching about Metafilter. This post has a serious purpose broader than just Metafilter because this is an issue I've seen elsewhere, including some subreddits, and it's an issue I've tried in earnest to talk about many times on various blogs, to varying degrees of personal satisfaction.
I'm quoting the Ask in question and some of the replies because link rot is a thing and it's entirely possible the mods could remove the post or Metafilter could go belly up and stop existing and this is a serious, serious issue in part because people with limited funds or inadequate medical insurance routinely post questions online hoping to figure out the best answer for a specific issue, often basically under duress because time is of the essence or because they really cannot afford to be wrong -- both financially and health wise -- regardless of what they decide to do.
November 12, 2014 12:04 PMA friend successfully put out a fire on his balcony last night (from someone tossing lit cigarettes) but not before losing a couch and curtains and getting a fair face full of smoke, he feels fine now but is coughing up black phlegm.Doctor time? Or no big deal?
The first NINE replies boil down to "Yes, he should go, if only to have peace of mind." The tenth reply is MINE and I more strongly suggested he really needed to be seen because this was a very serious health issue and not merely to be checked "for peace of mind."
The reply immediately after mine quoted the "he feels fine" part and says If this were happening to me, I wouldn't go, unless I started experiencing some symptoms (aside from the phlegm).
I was homeless at the time and when I first joined I was open about having a serious medical condition and people acted like I was a deluded nutter making shit up, so you could bet dollars to donuts SOMEONE was going to shoot me down if I posted ANYTHING medical.
So the next reply is me quoting online sources and linking to them to back up my assertion that this was serious and not merely "oh, he should get checked for peace of mind."
That reply of mine was marked best answer and the very next reply was the OP saying Thanks and stating the friend was at the doctor as they typed this.
The next reply a few hours AFTER OP said their friend was at the doctor as they typed is from an ER doctor (treehorn+bunny) with mommy issues stating
Definitely not overreacting. (IANYD/IANYFD/TINMA)
The gibberish at the end means "I am not your doctor. I am not your friend's doctor. This is not medical advice." because she routinely bullied people into taking her medical advice on Metafilter based on "I'm a doctor" then covered her ass with "IANYD. TINMA." while pissing on anyone who disagreed with her and fighting with people, determined to "win" the Ask by having everyone defer to her vaunted opinion.
She also was one of the people enthusiastically following moderator policy to bully me, the token homeless person in this upper class social cesspit. Notice how she in no way indicates she "agrees with me" or that I had the best info or anything.
I cited my sources to back up my claim that this was serious because I took the welfare of the person's friend very seriously and felt responsible for the outcome if the friend got reassurance that "It's no big deal. No need to go." because of me being homeless and this social GARBAGE on Metafilter mattering far, far more to most mefites than the welfare of people asking questions on the site AND not only do I have a serious medical condition that makes me read a lot about medical topics, but I paid insurance claims for five years -- which involved reading medical records several hours a day, five days a week -- and have an insurance related technical certification, the equivalent of a year in college.
Citing your sources to adequately prove your claim on the Internet to people who NEED good information is a best practice that SHOULD be followed on the Internet but usually isn't.
Instead, MOST forums default to honoring internal social CRAPOLA, like social status within the community, over best practices that safeguard the people asking for help.
Treehorn+bunny did not in any way contribute to helping this person. Her comment showed up HOURS after the person left to get checked.
She was there to stake out her turf as "I am a doctor, I am not YOUR doctor, this is not medical advice but no medical questions on Metafilter can happen without me trying to hog the limelight while using vacuous phrases to cover my ass legally." And most likely felt compelled to say SOMETHING long after the shooting was over to signal to everyone else that "We will absolutely NOT have ANY respect for the homeless woman I routinely piss all over just because she got best answered here. We will NOT act like she has in any way proven herself, so she had best not get uppity and you had best not be nice or respectful to her."
Final follow up from OP:
Thanks all, turns out he has some smoke damage to his lungs and what looks like an infection, glad we scared him into going.
So it was serious, he largely went to a doctor on the strength of two comments by a homeless woman everyone openly pissed all over and no one was allowed to acknowledge that I knew my stuff.
The ER doctor got her wish and, no, my social status on the site did NOT improve as a consequence of being obviously knowledgeable and talented.
I'm not going to look it up, but this is far from the only medical Ask on the site where social BS mattered more than the health and welfare of the person needing medical feedback from Internet strangers. One ended up in MeTa (a space for discussing site issues) because someone felt bullied into getting medical treatment by the histrionic reactions of mefites offended at the idea that the OP would make their own damn decision rather than do as they were told.
The Internet is a space where people with too little money, too little medical knowledge, living too remotely to easily see a doctor etc. can and do ask questions hoping to improve their lives and make an informed decision, which is entirely reasonable.
And it rarely becomes a case that Internet strangers use best practices for helping them decide. It is vastly more often the case that some kind of social BULLSHIT involving pissing on certain people or whatever is far more important to the process of answering the question than actually being reasonably helpful given the constraints of not being there in person, not being their actual doctor, not knowing their full medical history etc etc etc.