One of the fun things about emojis (well, words too I guess) is that they mean different things in different communities and cultures. In our community, one of the most dreaded emojis is the spoon. The spoon emoji represents someone unreasonably asking to be spoon fed the answer to a question – whether it be glaringly obvious, a closely guarded secret, or otherwise.
Getting hit with spoon emojis is a scarlet letter on your question, indicating you’ve committed a faux pas. Sometimes the spoon is very much warranted, others it may not be, and that range is generally related to how much effort you’ve put into finding the answer before sourcing it from the community.
Ultimately, this self-moderation is a natural consequence of the community moving away from public forums like /r/churning and Flyertalk and into private communities during the shift from niche interest to somewhat mainstream.
Let’s face it – times have changed in the world of churning and MS. Gone are the days of the pudding guy hitting lifetime AA gold. Instead, Brian Kelly is a frequent guest on network morning shows talking about booking with points. It was already trending that way towards the end of the 2010s, but the pandemic exponentially increased interest when everyone was stuck at home and looking for a side hustle to hedge against economic uncertainty.
Some of the aforementioned private communities are just smaller groups without any financial consideration, but most of the good ones have a monthly or annual fee necessary to join. There’s a vocal minority that thinks paying that fee entitles them to instant gratification on any MS questions they have.
I understand the viewpoint to a degree, because in some cases, the price of admission is quite high. However, you’re not paying for the answers – you’re paying for the ability to learn and absorb through discussion and past context to ask the right questions that will be answered.
Zooming back out – anyone that was booking award flights a decade ago can tell you how different things are. Sweet spots are becoming an endangered species, in favor of dynamic charts that are tied to inflated cash prices. Gone are the days where groups could fly together on LH F, snail mail for your houseplants led to readily available CX and QR J, and many more.
There are blogs all over the place telling you exactly when to look to book all of the world’s most popular products, as well as a myriad of tools that will automatically monitor award space for you. Competition is just getting more and more difficult.
At the same time, this large increase in popularity of churning has led to many other arbitration opportunities. Between crypto, legal sportsbooks, and the proliferation of fintechs, there’s been plenty of opportunities for hawkeyed MSers to make cash, even in a more crowded environment.
In my opinion, the relative increase of calling out spoonfeeding is warranted. As great as plentiful award space is, the potentially life changing MS profits that have been available the last 5 years was more consequential. Not only does a new person hitting a play put additional strain on the play, but it increases the likelihood of someone ignoring the cardinal rule of churning – don’t call the bank.
That being said, I do remember being inexperienced myself, and I’ve been lucky to have a network of smart people who have helped me get to where I am today.
My advice for folks that are still learning – do your best to answer your own questions via reading old posts and questions before asking. If you can show that you did your best before running into the inevitable quirks present on some of our favorite platforms, many people will have no issue helping you cross the finish line.
As for the more experienced folks, don’t encourage spoonfeeding, but remember where you came from, too. Unless you have been around for a very long time, you probably got spooned a play or two here and there. This game runs on relationships and helping someone out with a complicated problem they’ve tried to solve already can easily become a win-win.