RTFM is an initialism for the direction "Read The Fucking Manual". This instruction is sometimes given in response to a question when the person being asked believes that the question could be easily answered by reading the relevant user's manual or instructions. In expurgated texts, substitutions such as "read the flaming manual" or "read the friendly manual" are used[1] (or similar variants). Initialisms similar to the one above include GIYF ("Google is your friend") and LMGTFY ("let me google that for you"). These indicate that the item under question can easily be researched on the Internet.
Many alternative expansions for "RTFM" exist (particularly expurgated ones), as do many similarly themed alternative initialisms.
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The phrase RTFM may have first appeared in print in 1979 on the Table of Contents page of the LINPACK Users' Guide[2] in the form: "R.T.F.M." -- Anonymous. Apocryphally, some of the authors heard it from a Tektronix salesman.
The phrase RTFM was in common use in the early 1950s by radio and radar technicians in the US Air Force. Operators frequently did not check simple faults, for example checking whether a fuse had blown or a power plug had become disconnected.
The appropriateness or inappropriateness of an RTFM or GIYF response depends on the context and the people involved.
In contexts where the people involved are peers in a harsh (or at least competitive) environment—one where everyone is equal, there is work to be done, and each ought to pull his own weight—it can be inappropriate to ask beginner-level questions of one's peers without having "done one's homework first". The asker shows a degree of either incompetence or rudeness, which harder-working colleagues do not wish to reward. The implicit subtext in the responder's mind is, "We all have to work hard, and to learn the hard way, in this environment. If I had to work my way up to where I am, why should I reward your laziness or ineptitude with free concierge service?" This kind of situation is analogous to that of The Ant and the Grasshopper, in which the ant's refusal to suffer the foolishness of the grasshopper is understandable. This principle can be found among peers in workplaces, schools, and some online communities. For example:
The ant-versus-grasshopper argument only applies to the types of cases discussed earlier. It does not apply in cases where the asker's naïveté is excusable (and often may be entirely appropriate). For example, technical support staff for consumer software or devices would be fired for giving RTFM or GIYF responses, because it is their job to help novices. To expect minimum background knowledge on the part of the user is not always well-founded; there is a spectrum of appropriateness for different products or services. For example, with radiographic equipment such as a CT scanner, one would reasonably require the operator to have competence in radiological safety; but for consumer electronics, the goal (distant as it often may be) is to shield the user from having to possess any arbitrary threshold of skill. In fact, when it comes to software for general-population users, the evolving standard in usability is that software be engineered (often at great pains) to be usable without a manual at all, since users don't often actually read them, and in many contexts, perhaps should not even be expected to.[4] For example, some of the "great pains" that engineers now go to in order to shield users from complexity "under the hood" are the "contextual help" paradigm; automation (as with engine control units, anti-lock braking systems, and traction control systems that make car operation closer to foolproof than it used to be); weak artificial intelligence (AI) (such as today's expert systems); and the ongoing quest for strong AI (to build tomorrow's expert systems).
Whenever the target market is the consumer among the general public, to assume any degree of competence is to ask for trouble, even for products that incompetents have no legitimate excuse to be operating (e.g., motor vehicles, firearms, construction equipment). Even for the latter products, every effort is made in their engineering to make them as negligence-resistant and fail-safe as possible within the bounds of physics and of breaking even.
There are contexts and participants for which a gradient of RTFM (in)appropriateness exists. These are the gray areas between black and white. Some examples are given in the following sections.
An internet forum where users should read the FAQ before posting their questions is more likely to have a better signal-to-noise ratio than one that is filled with repetitive postings, and hence is more useful and more likely to attract continued participation. When evaluating whether it is acceptable to express sentiments like RTFM, one must consider the trade-off between maintaining the usability of a forum for its existing users, and making a forum welcoming to newcomers. The balance point for a particular forum depends on how general the audience is intended to be; but, as with the motor vehicle and firearm examples earlier, one must allow for the inevitability that people will find their way into the user population who do not meet the expectations. And unlike with motor vehicles and firearms (where unqualified users are committing an infraction by the very act of participating), there is nothing inappropriate about novices learning, for example, to play games or to use office software suites. In these cases, as in the technical support example, there is no reasonable expectation of minimum skill requirements. In such environments, frequent users of RTFM or GIYF responses are simply expressing elitism, stroking a personality flaw such as a need to tear others down to seek self-esteem. Their time could better be spent adding the question and answer to an FAQ, pointing the user to a helpful website, or simply not responding.[5] This is especially true when, for example, it is not even clear which "manual" the receiver of the RTFM response should be reading.[6] One of the most frequent criticisms of the open source community is lack of friendly support for newcomers. The Ubuntu Forums and LinuxQuestions.org, for instance, have instituted "no RTFM" policies to promote a welcoming atmosphere.[7][8]
RTFM [and] "Go look on google" are two inappropriate responses to a question. If you don't know the answer or don't wish to help, please say nothing instead of brushing off someone's question. Politely showing someone how you searched or obtained the answer to a question is acceptable, even encouraged....
If you wish to remind a user to use search tools or other resources when they have asked a question you feel is basic or common, please be very polite. Any replies for help that contain language disrespectful towards the user asking the question, i.e. "STFU" or "RTFM" are unacceptable and will not be tolerated.—Ubuntu Forums
Unlike with feedback between peers in workplaces or schools (where the ant-and-grasshopper model may often clearly apply), feedback from superiors to subordinates involves a degree of forbearance regarding incompetence. Not all incompetence is permanent, and not all infractions are grave. Managers and teachers have to walk a line and find the right balance. Laziness and incompetence are themselves teachable faults to some degree, which means that a superior has a responsibility "to help the asker to learn to help himself", even if it takes time and various attempts; but at some point, a line may be crossed, where fairness to others (and duty to other obligations) precludes any further "hand holding" or "training wheels". In the workplace, the worker might have to be fired; in the school, the student may have to be disciplined (if able but unwilling) or (more likely) referred for special help or shifted into a different group of students. The school environment is more complex than the workplace, with greater responsibility on the part of the superior, because a schoolteacher always has a responsibility to recognize possible attention deficit or learning disability, and to refer the student for help in those areas (without which help, the student's inability to help himself is, to an important degree, not his own fault). In the business world, however, where the very employment itself is conditional on competence, the manager does not shoulder that responsibility beyond a basic degree of "giving a fair shake". Although there exists such a thing as improper termination, an RTFM/GIYF response from a manager tends to be more justified than one from a teacher. Even a teacher, though, is usually justified in saying, "If you didn't want to fail the quiz, then you should have done your homework instead of skateboarding/watching TV/etc."
The rapid advance of technology has caught many workers off guard, and they find that "the bar was raised and I didn't see it coming." Competencies that formerly were optional have become minimum requirements; certain knowledge, which they were formerly not responsible for having, has become a sine qua non, either in general culture or at least in the culture of a particular occupation. Common examples are digital literacy and initialism literacy in the workplace. Many workers today might agree that someone who doesn't know what the initialisms "FYI" or "OS" stand for is probably not competent to continue holding a white-collar job, because such jobs require a minimum degree of general knowledge, and initialisms such as those are no longer just slang for comp-sci geeks but rather have become common vocabulary in the general knowledge of all but IT illiterates. In other words, at some point in history, terms that used to be slang shift into basic vocabulary, and this principle applies to decades-old internet slang just as it has always applied to many other kinds of slang. If, on top of that, the asker also doesn't know that they should search its expansion before asking someone, then once again, there may be legitimate resentment in his subordinates that they must "manage upward" to such a mollycoddling degree, because the very GIYF principle itself has been shifting into the area of "general knowledge that is lacked only by incompetents." The degree of mollycoddling needed also indicates that the executives further up the line are themselves failing to do their jobs, because they have not provided adequate training or retraining (beyond mere on-the-job scrambling). Other example pieces of knowledge that used to be optional but have become a minimum requirement in the business world include basic file management. The grayer areas are ones where incompetence is currently stretching past annoyance toward negligence. The shade of gray for any particular skill (or lack thereof) depends on the occupation.