get closed as a duplicate of the similar post

I’ve definitely had this happen to be before. It’s annoying.

What I do in that case is proactively say:

I’m facing problem X. I’ve tried searching for solutions. I found post X2 and X3 that are similar, but my problem is actually different because of Y.

Sometimes it helps.

Also, if you see people being assholes you can report them. There’s a flag for “unfriendly or unkind”. I’ve definitely used that before.