Step 1: Ask ChatGPT. You can throw at it literally whatever poorly framed question you have and it will come up with a reply right away. The more basic and well udnerstood the subject matter is, the more accurate its responses will be.

ChatGPT is invaluable at this stage because it will correctly guess what you are talking about even if you don't know how to formulate your questions. The typical problem beginners face is that they don't know how to describe things with the correct technical terminology. This makes it hard to find results by just Googling stuff, because that stuff is (hopefully) written by people who are experts and experts use the right terminology. You don't.

Step 2: once you are familiar with the basic terminology, verify ChatGPT responses against wikipedia or any other expert resources. Mind you that at this stage you are still doing your own research.

Step 3: once you are able to productively frame your questions, refine your knowledge by asking in expert forums.

Step 4: repeat

In step 1 you obviously can replace ChatGPT with actual human tutors. My point is, don't go to expert forums unless you know how to frame your questions.

Besides chatgpt, you’re expected to do your own research before asking. Stable communities may be unwelcoming to this because newbie questions are repetitive and tedious to answer thoroughly, even assuming no diligence issues. For example, if you google your cycling question as is, there’s a whole results page on that matter. There’s a lot of detailed youtube videos for the same query. It’s hard to even imagine a question today that could be low-informed and at the same time unanswered. And personally I always hated waiting and also the mockery you described. The latter is a bad manner, but the ones who respond first also tend to be the “less busy”, so adjust your expectations here.

Basically before chatgpt the answer was “web search”.

Honestly ChatGPT is really good for this. You can ask stupid questions all day and the more basic they are, the more likely it is to know the answers. I use it all the time to get a basic understanding of topics that I know nothing about.

ChatGPT has infinite patience for the most basic questions, I'd probably start there. Yeah it makes things up and doesn't have personal experience, but you could probably get a decent answer (or at least a direction for further inquiry) after a few back and forth questions.

I thought its answer to the biking question was reasonable, give it a try.

Outside of that, you probably need some people that you know personally -- that should cut down on the unwanted pushback.

If your questions already exist, search for those.

Look up your local public library's online catalog. Some even provide free access to Udemy, Libby, and Overdrive. Some of those have content (free) from Great Courses, for example.

Try free online textbooks. Make small experiments on your own. Write up your experiences.

Who knows; maybe someone had the same question.

Part of it may be that since wikipedia etc exists; you're "supposed to do your homework" before even asking. The idea that people might discuss things from and in a state of ignorance as a means of learning or even just social interaction, rather than from laziness ... that's not something most people think of. "Sophomoric discussion" is an insult now, somehow.

It's fun how often things that "everybody knows" are, once you get someone talking about them, not actually as well known and universally agreed as everyone seems to take for granted.

ChatGPT is your friend :)