like, no joke, as bad as taking someones ideas and calling them your own is a problem, half remembered conversations and fuzzy memories of journal paper titles and paper abstracts you heard at the coffee maker are how so much innovation, science (and writing, video, etc). and no one remembers the authors very well because, the thinking goes, you can just find it again, right?
you cannot find it again. because the piece that gives you your breakthrough was you quarter remembering a methodology section and even the Eldest Librarian cannot find it in elsevier's firey depths.
and that's like, fine. it's expected.
a related thing is the demand for citations every time someone says a thing offhandedly. I get being curious and will always be happy to find things for people who ask like that, but most are people who reflexively demand them. I'm sorry but I'm going to do the same thing as you do when I mention the specifics, Google it and hope I find what I'm remembering it from.
I do this often anyway, to make sure I'm not talking out my ass, and often drop the link after. but like. something happened with education at the HS/early undergrad level and now people think cites are required for what amounts to pub conservation with colleagues, or talking about things to a club that invited you.
if I'm not linking or at least mentioning it, usually it's because I've lost the source.
and maybe it's just people assuming everyone is malicious but it really does feel like there's a massive theory of mind blindspot here, especially with the people who think they're best at that sort of thing.
there's also the thing where like, not every post needs to start with "in my opinion", unless stated otherwise that's the default. but that's harder to fix because people already have adapted to assuming you're telling them things that are well written and researched and edited, somehow
