I had a question about
Blogger, so I went to the “Contact Us” section at Google and endeavored to slip
through the maze of extraneous FAQs, examples, topics, etc., until I found the place
where I could actually submit a question. But wouldn’t you know it: there is
nowhere to submit a question. As far as I could tell, it’s just a list of
topics, and if yours isn’t on it, tough. (Mine isn’t.)
Oh, but I did find
something else in this list of stuff that seemed odd at first, but then made
perfect sense: a contact number for a suicide prevention hotline. You wouldn’t
think that a blogger seeking to ask a question would need to call a suicide
hotline, but after endlessly, fruitlessly looking through this limitless labyrinth of text lists for a way to contact Google and finding that apparently there’s no way at all despite
the “Contact Us” section, this potentially infinite Kafkaesque experience made
it all too clear why it might be an appropriate place to put a suicide
prevention hotline: they may have had people frustrated by this experience to
the point of abject nihilism.
But if you call the suicide prevention hotline, do they make you go through an infinite list of FAQs and potential issues involved in the suicidal ideation* to specify your problem before they will talk to you, and then just present a prerecorded list of possible suggestions? At least that would be consistent.
Here’s a link to the
page I’m referring to (One of these things is not like the others… And yet it
feels appropriate to have it there, somehow.):
* Naturally leaving off the list the frustration of trying to use their “Contact Us” section.
(Just kidding, Google! But it might be nice to be able to submit a question sometimes.)
