Does anyone else feel like they’re looking for something specific online and can’t find it?

encourage yourself to make a comment/interact with things you like so you can find them through your profile history. Try to see interaction as a process of remembering.
use a link tree system such as logseq, obsidian, siyuan or org mode to save interesting links within a resilient context. Bookmark tools are so useless our brains often just try to retain context in our working memory, a metaphorical and often literal state of a million open tabs that we try to hold on to leading inveitably to a state of suspension at what feels like the event horizon of forgetting.

Thus why I made a Beehaw account I suppose. Interaction helps. But it’s spooky though! What if I say the wrong thing! Luckily bookmarking or open tabs is less of an issue nowadays personally.
- save everything you find to be useful, because next time you want to look it up, it will be deleted.
I have exactly one browser bookmark I use: the zoom link for my therapist.
Sums up my online world. Chaos and therapy!
Whereas, offline I have a neat bullet journal and I collect my thoughts and tasks in a way that feels natural.
Now I think about it, the difference between online and offline for me is stark. So I'll be looking into the link tree systems you suggested - thanks!
- Yes, org mode is the standard to compare to but all of them are great.
  The thing about org mode is everything is a heading composed of some text and subheadings. It is self similar across scales (as many subheadings deep as you want) which leads to a playful and easy compossibility. Org mode is an elegant thinking tool as much as it is anything else and it is the only digital tool that gives me that mental boost like a pen and paper do.
  You can use Logseq in a similar way and its automatic daily journal entry is great for getting information into your system quick but org mode makes my brain buzz...
  Don't get hung up on the "limitations" of hierarchies/trees, yes this is artificial in that in nature information isn't necessarily hierarchical, but our memory and thinking work by chunking, by joining the chaos of a rainstorm into tributaries, streams and eventually one unified flow at the delta of our life. In otherwords seeing it as a branching series of growths is backwards, it is meant to be a progessively intertwining series of flows.

If it's a search for something that can't be readily described, I'd say it's because we're starved for useful/actionable/interesting information sometimes.

Oh no that’s insightful! We have lots of access to information but really not a lot we can do about it. What do I do with this newfound realization? 😅

Ahh… addiction. Delicious, isn’t it?

Recently I’ve been going to the library a lot more. Like, I kind of want to tear my head off looking for books about certain topics online, like nothing but irrelevant but popular stuff, or stuff I’ve already read. I go to the library, go to a relevant section of shelf, boom, lots of relevant books. And if I need something more, the librarians are always happy to help look for something more specific in the system.

Compare that to corporate websites that seem like they are optimizing to waste my time at this point.

I miss libraries from home so much!! I’ve pretty much given up on Google since it’s almost never helpful

Other than love in all the wrong places?

I kid, slightly. I go days without using a search engine. I've given up on searching for anything on Amazon.

Oh! Good suggestion. I look way too much up.
- I think it’s better to go straight to Wikipedia if you’re looking something up at this point.

Like work-appropriate pants for an athletic build that aren't low rise and have more than five belt loops?

Low rise work pants are the worst
- The day when the laundry doesn't along and you don't have the waist-height pants or the extra tall shirt... oof.