My favorite is when someone tells me that they are too old to learn about new technology, or that they can’t use a device because they aren’t very tech-y. No, you just refuse to learn.
Clicking OK without reading the box.
It won’t work, I get an error.
What’s the error say?
Let me try again. Ok it says enter a time.
Did you enter a time?
No.
You’ve met my mother in law, I see. And my dad. Why do they do that? It must be an age thing.
That transcends all ages, it has to be related to the irresistibility of big red buttons.
“XYZ company already has all my data so I don’t care that they’re spying on me and selling my data to advertisers”
Fucking makes my blood boil. These people have absolutely zero critical thinking skills, or self respect
blood boil
I’m the same, but I try to explain the errors of their ways in the most relaxed manner.
Most times it doesn’t make a difference but once in a while someone is receptive and makes a change. and it’s really rewarding.It has been theorized once 25% of the population accepts an opinion the rest tends to follow, so I try to be optimistic and take it one step at a time. Lately I’ve had the impression I’m seeing progress.
The thing is though, that most people don’t know why that’s a problem, and privacy advocates seem to think that ‘you’ve got a door on your bathroom’ is a gotcha.
If someone is giving Google their home address and work address, and planning the route to get traffic data, they’re not going to be concerned when Google Maps suggests their work address as a destination through the week. Same for their shopping data. ‘Of course Amazon knows what I like, I do my shopping there!’
We need better ways to explain it to people who don’t understand it, and who are not interested in it or the tech behind it. We have a big problem on Lemmy where we tend to assume that everyone understands the same issues as us, just not as well.
Totally. There’s old duffers at work that struggle to open a word doc, but are strangely adept at Navigating Facebook…
People with no technical background insisting that “AI” is taking over and is sentient, even when I try to explain how it actually works. They refuse to believe that maybe all of those breathless “news” articles are clickbait hype-mongering.
“You just don’t like it because it’s gonna take your job!” Keep believing that, imbeciles.
deleted by creator
The AGI thing has definitely started already - I saw a video yesterday from some AI tech bro talking about how their AGI is going to disrupt something or other. Your vibe coded Claude app is not an AGI lol
My sister works in tech and it’s concerning to me how much she believes all the hype from tech startups. Sometimes i wonder if she is serious and sometimes it is painfully obvious she is.
I remember one time she urging me to use this app that ‘translated cat meows.’ the concept sounded just silly to me but I induldged her by recording and “translating” the meows of her cat that i had been taking care of for a couple of years. The interpreted cat meows according to the app revealed that the cat supposedly loves me, and i’ m her favorite and she is sad when i am not around. (which is standard cat behavior if you treat them well and especially for this cat that is very caring and social.
My sister reacted like she was jealous, not only believing everything the app translated but also feeling like i displaced her as her cat’s favorite human. The whole experience was surreal.
Linux nerds screeching about how Linux desktop works perfectly out of the box and with less time and effort then Windows/OsX.
It’s entirely counterproductive to adoption.
“I got my 107 year-old great grandmother running Arch from the command line in 20 minutes! Now she browses with Lynx and hosts a Matrix server.”
Yeah, I tell people Linux is like driving a custom built car. You can make it do anything you want and have absolute control and freedom, and often do things other cars can’t, faster and more efficiently and cheaply. But sometimes it’s going to break and you need to get in there and wrench. If you don’t enjoy learning, or work 80 hour weeks and have no time to tinker, don’t use Linux desktop.
I got my SO to change because they like to customize, and I’m there if if breaks.
A lot of tech evolves and changes quickly, and a whole lot of people just dont like change, especially as they get older. It is also harder to learn new things as you get older. While it doesn’t apply across the board, the “can’t teach an old dog” addage generally holds true. This is not something that will go away. If you dont want to become that person, continue to exercise your brain as you age, and learning new tricks will be easier.
The problem is that you often can’t learn because the app’s instructions are a year behind.
Or, for my pet hate with FOSS, the instructions assume that you understand the underlying technology.
‘Hey, we’ve made this fantastic new program for Linux newbs, it’s so easy that even your grandma can use it! To install it, clone the repo and pipe the results of awk through sed using grep. You can add flags in the usual way!’
That any website outside of corpo net is the Evil Dark Web. I can’t stand my tech illiterate friends that refuse to use the fediverse or any non tracking YouTube links. If a site is HTML only they shit their pants.
When did people get so dumb about computers ? Man.
Something I absolutely hate is when people say shit like “do you sell an apple charger?” The complete ignorance of what port your device uses or even what it’s called is infuriating. Look, you either have a usb-c or lightning port, and you only have a lightning port if your phone is from like a decade ago or something. You should know by now to look for usb-c cables. It’s especially frustrating when they get angry at me when they don’t understand what I’m talking about.
I’m a sales supervisor in an office supply store, and I get this ALL THE TIME! I once had someone argue with me over the name of the cable connectors and wondered why I didn’t know what they were talking about. Then they said, and I quote, “Well, to me that’s what I call them, so I’m going to just keep calling them that.”
I think we’re coming to the end of a 50 year cycle of rapid technological improvement that’s been a parasitic host for capitalistic predilections. Shareholders ride tech companies hard and put them away wet, fucking over workers and squeezing consumers in the process. Innovative and awesome companies end up getting subsumed into a shit whirlpool where the product gets worse, more expensive, and steals your data. So I guess the people in my example are the tech investors and MBAs feeding them, and their abuse of tech is what needs to die.
I’m old and tech-y, and my contemporaries still use the “I’m too old to learn” line on me - and then ask me to sort out their issue. Deeply annoying.
Me too, and I really think we need to be less accepting of it in general. I’ve known lots of people whose job involves using computers, and they can’t use them and refuse to learn and expect others to help them constantly. I don’t mind showing someone how to do something if it’s a new thing that they don’t know, but I’ve known people who get someone else to do the same simple task for them whenever it comes up, sometimes for years. And I don’t mean learning everything there is to know about computers, but like basic shit necessary for your job like where files go when you save them, or how to format text in a Word doc.
Like… if your job is being a delivery driver and you don’t know how to drive and you refuse to learn, people won’t accept it. But for some reason it’s fine with computers. I get that you may not like computers, but again, it’s your job. Learn it.
I’m legit scared of that. Im only in my 30s and my capacity for learning has diminished greatly since I was a child. What if that trajectory continues?
I dont wanna be “too old to learn these newfangled thingamabobs” when we get the next big thing.
I’m at that point but between you and me, it’s pure laziness.
I’m 73 and I reckon I’m learning more now than when I was in my 20s. I have a few things I’m interested in and I have a real thirst to know more about them. Not like in school where I was forced to remember a load of names and dates.
I might have hit a wall as far as tech goes though - I see people here on Lemmy talking about servers and I’m interested, but struggle to understand the basics.
If you’re entering or exiting the tram, heads the fuck up.
Paying for everything, especially things you can be getting for free.
The idea that if you’re not paying for something then you’re the product is rhetoric for suckers so they don’t recognize how they’re being fleeced.
Some stuff is indeed free, although, some other stuff seems free because you’re paying with something else that is not money.
The way some people think everything needs to look fancy and gimmicky.
Like, I get it, stuff would be better blending in with their surrounding fashion, but if we need to get thru more than three layers of menu to get to something we frequently use, it’s wasteful, and if it’s for something critical like in a car, it’s straight up dangerous.
