Gen X - who, let’s face it, wrote most of this stuff - gets forgotten again.
Fine with me. Leave us the hell alone.
Oh it’s a printer? I, uh, yeah, no I don’t know anything about printers sorry.
That’s cool. We’re used to being forgotten and this way nobody will ask us to fix their computer.
By that logic, Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak were Boomers so Boomers all know how to fix computers.
Let’s face it, “generational” assumptions are all too coarse to be valuable - and are probably just another way to separate and divide us all so we stop thinking about how to take down the ruling classes.
My dad is close to 80. He’s been PC savvy since the super early 1980s and he still is, although he is stuck in Windows because he’s a monster in the astrophotography world and most of his software isn’t supported in Linux etc. I dated a girl in college whose dad was one of the founding creators of the internet. Unlike Al Gore lol.
I taught my younger brother how to program in basic and pascal in the 80s. He’s now a super successful programmer. I’m pretty poor but I like to build fix and upgrade people’s computers as a hobby. I am gen x.
I dated a girl in college whose dad was one of the founding creators of the internet. Unlike Al Gore lol.
Bullshit. If her dad was one of the founders of the Internet, you’d know that the Al Gore meme was a Republican smear campaign.
I worked for Vint Cerf in the early 90’s. This is what he wrote to defend Al Gore against the Republican smear campaign:
He was a hell of a lot more of a founder than Al Gore was. Gore was a marketer at best.
Edit: you all are downvoting without even knowing who he was. Drink piss assholes.
Al Gore never claimed to have been the founder of the Internet. Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn both defended Al Gore against idiots like you.
Rush Limbaugh was on the radio daily in the early 90’s calling Al Gore’s information superhighway a Democratic Boondoggle. Republicans were fighting to kill the Internet. Al Gore was fighting since the 80’s to fund it so it could grow into something bigger than a research network.
If Eisenhower can get credit for the US Interstate Highway system despite not pouring a drop of concrete, then Al Gore gets credit for the Internet.
You really love that piece of shit don’t you?
I worked for Vint Cerf. I later started my own ISP. I know the history of the Internet because I lived it.
I quoted Vint Cerf. What do you have to support your claim?
To my fellow Gen X’ers…
Shhh!
Let someone else deal with the inept on the other end of the phone. Be happy we’re being ignored again.
The meh generation
so middle of the road that they are left out of every discussion about generations. Boomers may suck, but at least they’re memorable lol
And again, generation X completely forgotten about.
I know enough Millennials who don’t know shit. “My email address is www…”
There are some parts of Gen Z that can actually tear stuff apart and actually fix systems, but those are the nerds (which also includes me) that care enough to actually learn stuff. The majority is quite tech illiterate
Millenial here, its actually the same for us. Most millenials dont actually know how to fix a computer, either.
Ok but what about Gen X?
We could fix it too, but we don’t wanna.
We’re burned out. It’s time to pass the soldering iron.
I’m actually, genuinely shocked by the ageism in such debates every single time. There’s no such thing as age-based incompetence, TBH. There are sound people for every field available everywhere. Why do we have to assume this? Every generation has at least a few people who are competent in their field, even in computing. It’s more important that the literate of us unite to end illiteracy and stop injustice being done in the name of technology. This, honestly, is just making fun of each other, for apparently no sound reason. And I’m talking about the comments, not the meme. I might, or not, get some sour disagreements, or straight-up very bitter replies for arguing even this, …and again, I ask: Do we reeaaally have to do this?
Technology too has a supposed duty of bringing people together…!
For gen X and older, computers were more niche. They were more difficult to use and mostly reserved to enthusiasts. For gen Z and younger, computers were always just there, and they’d become a lot simpler, a lot more plug n play, and resources to fix them became cheaper and more accessible. Millennials were in just the right environment where computer use became mainstream, but computer software was less developed and user friendly and they frequently had to learn to fix problems themselves.
Every individual will clearly have their own unique experience and not everyone will fall into these buckets, but it’s these factors that lead to millennials likely having higher tech skills than average compared to those older and younger than them.
That’s it. It’s not ageism. It is absolutely generalizing, but mostly, it’s social commentary in the form of a joke.
What in the utter fuck is this dog shit take??? lol. Dude, Boomers INVENTED fucking computers. GenX, grow up along side them. We pretty all had a vic 20, Commadore 64, or Spectrum 48k/128k, or Amstrad CPC464. And later on an amiga, or an ST. The list is fucking endless, and thats before you get to to the Apple II, the trs80 and Commadore PET and later 386 PCs.
We grew up with ham radios, VCRs, TVs that only played games on one channel. We had Nintendo and Sega battling it out in the 80s, then Sony, nintendo, panasonic, Sega, NEC, SNK, Philips, Atari, Casio(who created a console exclusively for girls for some reason), Bandi, apple, and fuck knows how many others battling in the 90s. The idea that all these things were invented by/or used by boomer and genx, and you can sit there thinking we dont know how to use shit… We’re the fucking figure it out generation, son. If something broke, we had to learn to fix it ourselves. And without youtube videos and FAQs to hold our hands.
Millennials, absolute kings of the terrible takes and pulling information out of their arse.
You’re clearly an enthusiast and are one of the exceptions I spoke of. Calm down and think critically, please… Most people did not have Spectrums, Commodores, ham radios, etc. Enthusiasts like you absolutely did, and yes, you knew your shit if you did.
These days everyone has advanced electronic devices. Eveeeeryone.
You really came out swinging for no reason there, eh?
Not an enthusiast. Im the average. And you calm down, or send you to bed without any supper!!!
And as for “coming out swinging”, youre god damn right. Cos you people are either ignoring us, or just making up dog shit about us. And now youre giving the shocked Pikachu face, cos someone got sick of the bullshit lies? Dude… I guess that another thing your generation love to do. Make it look like the bullied person standing up for themself is the asshole. Fuck, how you lot love to do that.
I’m not at all giving a shocked Pikachu face in reaction to your comment, if you believe otherwise, you’re misreading my intent. I’m also not talking down towards you as a person, doubting your skills, or bullying you. Based on your responses here, I believe you to be a very tech inclined person and are probably highly skilled. A lot of us here on Lemmy fall into that category regardless of age.
What I am saying is that you came into this conversation unnecessarily hot and that your view is likely skewed because you yourself are a tech enthusiast. You come from and are a product of tech, and as such may not realize the lack of tech abilities of those outside of your bubble.
I’m also not saying that Boomers/Gen X have to be bad with tech, or even that all Millennials are. My main point is to highlight median household exposure over different generations leading to memes such as this. For example, in the U.S., only ~8% of households had a computer in 1984 and ~15% in 1989; the UK was ~9% in 1984 and ~17% by 1988 (Source on Census.gov, page 6). PCs didn’t become mainstream at home until the mid to late '90s. By then, late Gen X/Millennials were the teens/20-somethings doing the hands-on fixes, which is why the “Millennial IT support” meme resonates. Skip to kids nowadays growing up on iPhones and tablets and other out of the box easy to use devices that Just WorkTM, they didn’t get the same experience learning to fix shit themselves like the older or middle generations had.
To reiterate, none of this says older folks, nor younger, can’t be great at tech, just that cohort exposure and the kind of tech we grew up with differ and has had it’s influences on the whole of generational groups, while not defining every individual within those groups.
If you still feel attacked at this point, that’s 100% on you and I don’t know what else to say.
“Im not talking down to you” then proceeds to talk down to me… What a prick.
Im not in any “bubble”, cunty chops. But you might be. Once again, not an enthusiast. Is there another language I can say that in? And my experiences, the ones I was talking to you about, were from the 80s and 90s. EVERYONE had some form of computer, like I said. If theres GenX around today that dont know about them so much that they need to annoy their genz kids, they are the fucking minority.
As for feeling attacked, no. You misunderstood. Im utterly fucking sick of wee dicks, spouting generational war bullshit. You know, like you dweeby little millennials pricks that cant even get a fucking girl to touch you without an app.
Ok boomer!
LOL thanks.
Also FYI I’m 19.Funniest bit is that I am 42 hehe
lol. My dad’s a retired engineer and my mom was a computer programmer. Literal actual baby boomers.
I work in IT. Gen-X. Which you forgot because you’re bad.
My daughter just got her degree in Cybersecurity. Millennial.
tl;dr: STFU with this stupid inter-generational tribalism, it’s wrong and stupid.
This is an older story, but I installed Xubuntu on an ssd in my boomer parents Vista era computer to keep it running. They really didnt know the difference, my mom only played solitaire while Thunderbird was managable for my dad. My millenial neice and nephews had no idea either, I’d find exe files they would download, but noone ever said anything about why they didnt work anymore. They have no idea about how computers work.
I’m not very technical, but I had to move a jumper on my old 386 when I upgraded my modem.
I’m not very technical, but I had to move a jumper on my old 386 when I upgraded my modem
I spent 25 years without remembering that, you sonuvabitch! :-D. Sorry, the PTSD takes over sometimes. Goddamned supra winmodems and hot-glued ISA cards in overpriced junk RadioShack/FutureShop computers…
Right?
How about jumpers on hard drives while figuring out interrupts and hard drive/controller card matching (I forget what it was called, but there was something about figuring out the interleave, etc).
I’m about to have some awful flashbacks, dammit.
IDE master/slave jumpers. Wow am I glad we ditched that.
4Mb Ram sharing 1mb with the ghetto cirrus video card, and somehow you need to run winsock and Netscape Communicator on it.
The whole time I’m configuring a customer’s machine and grinding my teeth, they’re saying how great the salesman was who sold this boat-anchor. I’m proud of holding my tongue for the 90 min it took to complete the courtesy job and go back to the shop.
I may need to start drinking.
Oh, master/slave was simple compared to the interleaving thing. Honestly, that was so much a pain I’ve forgotten what it was/how to do it.
I’ll raise a glass for you next time I’m mixing up a drink.
And we GenX are happily left out of this one.
It’s OK - whenever we’re not left out we opt out anyway…
