What are people looking for when they ask what a dream means?

It seems like we get at least one of these questions every day:

I had a dream about a boy I like/my dead relative/ponies! What does it mean!?

What are these askers looking for? Do they actually believe that dreams represent some kind of communication device, and there’s an embedded message in the dream? If so, why would we strangers be able to interpret it?

Does it seriously not occur to these people that these dreams, just like those weird dreams where you’re running away from pacman and then all of a sudden the sidewalk turns into lava but it’s kind of like jello pudding… are just nonsense?

What are they looking for? And can we please make them stop?