We have a guy at work; early 60s, doesn’t have an email address. He literally does not have an email address. The one he gave when he started with us is his wife’s. He has a phone, but he keeps it turned off in his bag. Not asleep, off.

When you ask him to do anything involving a computer he gives you all that “oh I don’t do computers” bullshit, and at this point all I can think about is how much household admin and labour he’s off loaded to his wife. How much of the irritating day-to-day shit we have to do by email, or by logging in to a website; all tasks that his wife has to carry out because he “doesn’t do computers”.

He’s not brain damaged, he just doesn’t see the value in learning.

I set him up with some online training he needed to do the other day. Nothing overly complicated, just watch an online slideshow, then click on a QR code to go to a form to answer questions. He clicked on the link, but because it was already open in another tab it didn’t open again. And instead of spending a few seconds investigating the issue, he just walked upstairs to my office to tell me it wasn’t working.

I can’t wrap my head around being so completely incurious about things. About not having the desire to work out why something isn’t working and attempting to fix it. It’s such an alien way of being to me.

While it’s fun to mock the boomers, new gens aren’t particularly tech literate either. At my job, at one point, we recruited someone younger than me. I’m not particularly old but the industry is dominated by older people, ex-military, etc. Dude was on the tech side like me, but he had no awareness or ability to learn what certain buttons were or how to troubleshoot any issues. I learn things just by testing stuff out, but apparently no one else outside of specific demographics does the same.

I have a theory. When I was interning with a volunteer group, there was this lovely older lady I was working with; like many groups we used computers for a lot of our tasks and (I think) Windows 7 had just come out. This lady was very much not the type to make her problems everyone else’s but I remember her excitedly telling about how she was learning the new process of things on 7, in contrast to Vista. She showed me the step-by-step notes she’d taken to open particular app.s, detailing opening the start menu and where to clickbto find them. Having recently discovered Linux (and desperate to share the good news), I thought she might find my setup somewhat similar and wanted to get her opinion. I figured it’d be pretty similar (open menu; I figured simply searching for the app.'s name would be easier for her than the many steps she was taking) but, right as I typed the first character of the app.'s name, she exclaimed, “Nope! This is too much!” She said it jovially, clearly as in, “Thanks for trying but I’m overwhelmed, already,” but I was struck by how much she was clearly going about this as concrete, manual steps rather than putting together a sense of a general UI.

And, for whatever reason, reading through this thread made me think of appliances.

They’re always different. Even similar devices, like a microwave, can have a differing UI that can provide unexpected results with little explanation because, well, lack of available physical space (as an example, quick microwaving; that threw me for a loop the first time I used one and pressing 2 immediately kicked off microwaving for 2 minutes). If I was using someone else’s microwave, no one would begrudge me asking how it works.

Of course, many of these devices come with manuals. I’m not certain how my husband’s coffee maker works but I could figure it out, if need be. I’m definitely not saying that the reactions of some older people aren’t beyond the pale.

But I think, for some, they’re thinking of it like another person’s microwave (this more applies to those who generally don’t use smart phones, etc. themselves); except a phone or computer is much more complicated so they never quite fully learn it. And, despite their attempts to avoid it, they’re becoming exceedingly more integral to our ways of operating because of how easy they make doing things. No one would bat an eye at someone who reheats everything on the stove because they don’t like microwaves (or no one gives me a side eye because I prefer to cook rice in a pot on the stove, like my mother taught me to do it, rather than use a rice cooker).

But we’re all extremely cognizant when Ethel doesn’t want to E-mail the forms because she likes writing by hand.

I dunno; I definitely think there’s a lot of malicious learned ignorance that a lot of people here have clearly encountered but I suspect that the reason “this is the way it’s been for 3 decades, now” isn’t effective is they’re still thinking it’s yet another someone’s microwave; and every appliance has a different UI (they think even though that’s very much less true with smart phones and computers); they don’t want to learn it for the (supposedly) only 5 minutes they need to use it. And the frustration that it’s not more intuitive builds (unlike with a particular microwave) because (for some bizarre reason~) they keep running into scenarios where they’re expected to use it.

What gets me is that it isn’t universally an age thing.

My grandmother isn’t perfect by any means, but she is able to manage email, whatsapp (surprised me with leaving voice messages through it recently when her arthritis made her not want to type), texting, facebook (including chat), amazon, browsing the internet, video calls, and ordering from non-amazon sites. She’s in her early fucking 90s.

She had something she wanted to do and decided to learn about it. She didn’t make it everyone else’s problem. She has people, including me, who she will lean on for support sometimes, but when she does she takes notes. She wants to know how to do these things and puts in the effort.

Meanwhile her daughter, my mother, has this attitude that “Everything is supposed to be easier with a computer, so if it’s not easy it’s the computer’s fault not mine.” If she can’t figure out how to do something in two clicks, or if the menu option isn’t exactly where it makes intuitive sense to her, my mother effectively throws her hands up and gives up. Combine that with this intense fear of somehow cratering the whole machine if she clicks the wrong thing and she’s fucking useless.

She literally couldn’t manage getting music off of CDs onto an iPod. You know, the horribly complex set of steps of: plug the iPod into your computer using the charging cable, iTunes will open automatically, put the disc in the drive, it will automatically ask you if you want to rip/import the disc into iTunes, click yes, wait for it to complete, click sync on the iPod in the iTunes menu, wait until it’s done, then click eject.

Something that’s only going to make this worse over time is the constant attempts to make all of this more simple. Android and iPhones have built in password managers, which can be great (especially linking a Mac laptop’s keychain with the person’s phone) but if something fucks up all hell breaks lose because it wasn’t something they ever had to think about.

I think it’s because there was a time when technology actually required things like reading manuals or typing something specific. Like, VCRs and universal remotes and DOS weren’t super intuitive so they just decided it was someone else’s thing and turned their brains off for anything requiring electricity. Four decades later they’ve still left them off.

My mother-in-law stayed over and was having trouble understanding how to use the Brita water filter on the kitchen sink faucet.

In frustration she told my wife that the filter should just always be on. My wife tried explaining to her that you wouldn’t want to filter water that you were using to wash a dish because the filters cost money…and she saw her mother just stop listening. As it was described to me, she just walked away and clearly didn’t want to understand.

That’s a faucet-mounted water filter with three settings: filtered, normal unfiltered, and spray unfiltered. However, the complexities of it frustrated my MIL to the point of ignoring her daughter.

She’s also the most tech-literate of the parents.

I love getting the questions (not necessarily from old people) like “how do I do X in Y app?”.

I watch them stare and click random things then give up.

I’ve never used Y app so google “how to do X in Y app”. Click first result “how to do X in Y app”

me: I googled it. here’s how to do X.

them: amazed at my tech skills

My MIL ends up in so many fucked up places because she absolutely refuses to give anyone her email. I don’t mean like, signing up on forums or whatever, I mean like her fucking doctors and insurance agent.

Whike trying to deal with being in a car accident.

I remember an incident from 20 years ago when my dad insisted he couldn’t figure out how to set up his new DVD player and needed me to do it. And I was just like, how the fuck do you no longer understand how to connect the same color coded RCA plugs your VHS player or stereo has used for decades?

Here’s the proper response to a technologically challenged Boomer requesting tech support:

“Fuck you, pay me.”

Then list your hourly rate, I suggest starting at around $50, at least.

With a gaggle of associated fees/charges for various levels of things and research you have to do.

No mercy, no quarter, fuck your idiot family members, stop enabling them.

Maybe these idiots can realize they’ve been getting free assistance that for decades has literally been a business model that many people have worked and lived off of.

That they don’t know something and that makes them wrong and stupid, not literally everything other than them.

Think of it like tipping culture in reverse, or just an entire category of unpaid labor, if that helps.

20 years ago the helplessness was quaint, almost cute. Going to visit my grandparents when I was in middle school was almost like traveling back in time. No Internet, no videogame consoles. It was perfectly fine because they were in their 70’s and the Internet was still either a novelty or a convenience. They never bothered to learn because they thought they would be dead before they would need to.

Well, now they’re in their early 90’s. All their friends have been dead for at least a decade and my grandpa is almost completely blind. I would love to set him up with some lovely accessible devices to let him listen to music and audiobooks, maybe get him into podcasts. But it would be an incredible hurdle just to get him to agree to it. Not to mention all of their medical appointments where my mom has to help them with their online profiles. So many things you used to buy at the store you now have to go online for.

They managed to adapt just fine to telephones and television working out. At a certain point they just said “eh whatever, I’ll be dead before I need to learn this” and then went ahead and lived too long. I hope I never get like that, but at the same time I actively refuse to use new technologies that I’m opposed to. I don’t use AI, I don’t keep my credit cards on my phone, I don’t have a smart lock or thermostat in my home.

I enjoyed this rant a great deal.

My uncle is early gen X I think and didn’t have a laptop, smartphone, or home internet for years. He got his first smartphone in like 2019. He lives alone and I hardly see or talk to him, yet over the years since he got a phone he has always wanted to be the one to take family photos with it, show me what he’s learned or the research he’s done. He’s planned vacations and managed his retirement all on his own through his new laptop and phone now. It’s clearly not an age thing, just a willingness to learn, which he has always had an aptitude for.

My dad.

I’m not technical!

Yes but… it is an electronic device. You need to plug it in, turn it on at the wall and press the power button. It’s been like this for decades now. How the hell have you managed to use a toaster or a TV at this stage?

‘I cant seem to get my head around this newfangled “computer” thingamajig’ bitch you lived your life in the kafkaesque abstractions of the financial system. You taught my ass the foundations of information theory. And you can’t manage to type in openoffice on god damn linux mint? (C. Early 2010s, might’ve been ubuntu)

‘NERD! you’ll never get laid knowing that shit and bossing people around. It’s 2008, not 1978, nobody needs to know this wierdo nerd shit. I bet you don’t even have a facebook account.’ (Was teaching him how to download and open a torrent file. On windows.)

‘Tell me how to use this’ ‘no like in one message. For all of unix. No i cannot check a wiki or read a book. It must be personal 1-1 communication.’ (Basic rundowns of how shit works and how to use basic functions) ‘Sorry, that was over 140 characters, feels like you’re bullying me. Also im not using that ux, im using gnome which you specifically said would be harder for my use case.’

The flavor is generational. My desire to fry them in a slop machine data center’s exhaust heat is not.