The paper considers the use of online technical discussions by software developers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, drawing on the results of a 5 month interview study. In the course of their daily work, Brazilian software developers routinely rely on online resources, which include as a key component foreign forums dedicated to technical questions. In rare cases, they actively participate in those forums; somewhat more often they “lurk." Even more often, however, forum posts are simply found while searching for a specific topic. Forums are thus experienced not as intertwining threads of conversations, but rather as a searchable collection of questions and answers free from conversational context, which is appreciated in a detached, asocial way. The paper thus looks at the use of persis...