this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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Generalizing entire groups of people usually isn't recommended. I know boomers who would code circles around any of the kids who think that configuring wifi is the height of tech literacy.
Cool, tell those boomers to tell their boomer peers we are literally on a dying planet and they need to vote for politicians that want to stop the end of the world.
I understand it's fun to blame boomers for climate change, but this was something that started before their generation existed and it will continue to be a problem after they're gone. You can also blame them for inaction in addressing it, but given that the only real solution is an extreme degree of collective austerity across multiple civilizations, which is something innately at conflict with the expansionist nature of capitalism as an economic system (something which also predated boomers and which will continue to be a problem after they're gone), then I would say that if you expect the problem to start being solved as soon as that generation is dead and buried, you're going to be sorely disappointed.
Statistically speaking it's young people who don't vote much.
We're too late to prevent climate change. Our efforts should instead be going towards mitigating the damage that consumerism is doing to our environment.
At this point we need drastic geoengineering and carbon capture solutions.
Oh no! A statement which applies to the vast majority has some exceptions! Better break out the um-actually and technically-incorrect stamps.
As someone who has worked in IT, age has a strong negative correlation with tech literacy. Is every boomer tech illiterate? Of course not. Some boomers built the tech we use today. But most boomers are worse with tech than most ten year olds.
My generation will have tech illiteracy problems worse than the boomers. Yours will be even worse than mine. It's because most people reach a point where they stop trying to keep up with everything and fall behind.
You'll start to see it after you pass 40 or so. Then when you're in your 60s it'll be your generation's turn to be mocked as the bumbling idiots who ruined the world.
So have fun with that.
Uhhh… no. Gen z has had to deal with and understand changing technology since birth. I have faith in them.
The only thing boomers have proved is they’re able to do is ruin the economy and fuck over their children.
Gen z doesn't have to understand shit about tech. They've been given apps that work flawlessly since birth. The only people "forced" to understand tech were the late Xers/early millenials where you got some cool new program or hardware and it almost never worked out of the box so you'd have to troubleshoot the shit out of everything before you could even google for answers.
After that plug and play started to work better and after that we got apps.
Exactly this, our first computer came with msdos, if you didn't wanted to type commands in a terminal, you couldn't play games. If you didn't wanted to learn how to setup your soundcard for every game, the game had no (or super crappy) sound.
It's not about understanding tech at all. I work in a software development team and have a pretty deep understanding of how a lot of tech works. But I never owned an Apple device, so I can't tell you basic shit about a how use iOS.
Gen X had to learn learn how a computer works at a pretty basic level just to be able to use one. I took basic computer skills and programming for the TI 994a in elementary school. Then another hardware/software class around 5th grade. It was pretty easy to troubleshoot anything hardware or software until the mid 2000s.
Somewhat agree but hopefully we do a good job passing on the torch to help the next generation
Gen z is notoriously tech illiterate for anything but the bare minimum. The amount that have never touched a PC or anything other than an iPhone is incredibly disturbing.
Worked in a library. Many of the kids were smarter than the adults!
....But I still had to step-by-step walk them through printing their homework... :(
Hah! Old age will have surprises for you.
This is the equivalent of "don't worry you'll get more conservative when you get older."
Yeah nah, I'm sure every generation will cop flack for something, it's just that since WW2, and the cold war, problems like plastic, lead paint etc let alone the environment weren't really on the agenda. People just didn't have a list of big bad world problems besides war.
On one hand I agree that technology is changing at a rapid pace, and ageism is a thing, especially more so now with climate change, but I think the issue is how quickly can the "wall of education" be broken down so that a critical mass of the human population can be enabled to learn how to calculate complex integrals, produce a computer software and program, to make a pipe bomb lol, or fix their car etc, you get my point.
Information freedom is becoming a big deal for people these days but at the same time individuals are no longer expected to be so rigidly self reliant. First it was paper, then books in libraries, nowadays we have the internet. YouTube, torrents and search engines definitely help a lot, but I haven't seen a top ten problems for humanity video on YouTube yet lol. We're almost coming full circle, however, I still think we should pay homage to the idea that being self reliant and learning how to do something for yourself is essentially a good thing, not necessarily only valuable to prevent loss of information but for further collaboration opportunities. It's not necessarily Nazism to argue that if every person's mind was a library, idiocracy and risk of displacement would become less likely to occur on every level. Think of Hal from A Space Odyssey
Your mechanic can fix his own car the same way your locksmith can unlock his own van, and your tech support guy will probably learn to fix his own computer. If you can do all of those things, even if you don't become a valuable person in society, at least you'll be better at taking care of yourself and less likely to be a burden to your group.
In saying that, if I was an old 60-70yr old man, I would consider re-educating myself in a field not so hot for the younglings, you know, the usual work like the trades, engineering, computing, and big data are big money for many young people these days, so it makes sense, if you're older to get into something less physical like painting, gardening, landscaping, digger operator, software UI development, accounting, systems engineering, matchmaking, etc, something that is either boring or niche enough that many avoid it while simultaneously needing it. Remember boredom is the weakness of the younglings lol
Damn, you know one guy who doesn't fit the mold? Crazy to think there are outliers. Who would have thunk? I am absolutely flabbergasted. Shocking, to say the least.
I always find it funny: the internet is a lot softer and more inclusive than it ever used to be. Explicit sexism, racism, homophobia/transphobia, etc. are treated with zero tolerance most places. But straight up ageism? That's the last truly accepted form of bigotry. Because getting pissed at a group of people who will be dead soon for not fixing all the world's problems is easy when you're young. When Gen Z gets to be 40 and there are no more Boomers but nothing is still being done to address the world's myriad problems, I like to think there will be some self-reflection on the nature of the world in which they live and the innate difficulty of addressing complex problems driven by societal inertia. But we both know there won't be and they'll probably pivot to hating Gen X and Millennials. Or maybe they'll go the other direction and blame young people.
When I'm 80 and the world still isn't fixed, I'll be blaming the billionaires, just like I am right now.
Yes, this was always the correct course of action.
Misandry seems to fly pretty often on the internet too.
Most specifically towards CIS white men. Even though I'm not that specific subset, I feel bad for them. Racism, bigotry and etc are tolerated when it's directed at them and they can't even defend themselves. Anytime they try to, they get met with whataboutism. Most of them are just flipping burgers. Just very tiny portion of CIS white men are iconic powerful people.
I'm pretty sure most powerful people are straight white men. That being said, most straight white men aren't powerful.
That's what I said.
You misworded your last sentence though. You should rephrase it so it actually says what you mean.
I've edited it for clarity.
I can answer your question: When the Boomers are gone the Millenials will be called "Boomers" and blamed instead.
I dropped into a European Discord server a while back and got called a Boomer when I mentioned my age (40). I'm a Millennial. Apparently the server was full of 16-19yr old kids so I wasn't made to feel very welcome. Not been back since.
But Millenials will most likely take the hit when Boomers are gone except the term "Boomer" is now just a generic insult against people in middle age+.
Seems likely. I've seen plenty of people say "Oh, this old-ass Boomer thinks [whatever shitty opinion here]." And this is in direct reference to people in their late forties/early fifties. And if you correct them and say "that person is Gen X - they're the child of Baby Boomers," they'll pivot to "well, Boomer is a mindset, not age group." But it does seem more likely to be an insult for old people or people who appear to be out of touch in some capacity.
As a representative of Gen X, I can honestly say that I'm glad you think they'll pick on your generation, and leave mine alone.
Gen X is the new Silent Generation because everyone forgot they even fucking existed. I remember when you guys were supposed to burn down cities and bring about full anarchy in the United States because you enjoyed grunge music and flannel. Turns out all of you were just chewed up and spit out by capitalism like the rest of us.
Gen Z is probably as illiterate at least.
That's primarily because boomer politicians replaced effective literacy programs with programs that allow those with learning disabilities and other intellectual impairments to navigate the world. This means that many gen Z and younger millennials were robbed of quality education that enables self-directed study and critical analysis of text. Primarily so that connected education product companies could make a profit.
But the meme was about tech illiterate people dude
The two are inextricably linked. Deep computer literacy requires regular literacy as well as the ability to learn and analyze independently. Both of the latter, when dealing with computers, rely on the former. There's a literacy crisis in the US with significant downstream impacts that's largely been ignored because the cause is profitable.
That's a bit farfetched.
Following that argument every single skill in life is dependant on literacy and I'm pretty sure illiterate people are still able to learn and analyze.
Even if not, technically illiterate people can actually read a button or menu item.
I'm not sure that we're on the same page or set of definitions. Of course not every skill depends on linguistic literacy.
Take skateboarding, for example. Yes, there could be some theory, potentially (I'm clearly not a skater) but much of the skill is in learning how to physically operate the board as an extension of one's body. This is a "natural" sort of skill that meshes well with our evolved neurobiology (ie perception, motor function, physical coordination, etc.)
Now, let's look at written language. It is NOT a "natural" sort of skill. It MUST be taught and learned with effort because our neurobiology has not evolved to account for the sorts of tasks involved. Writing is an abstract thing that requires abstract thinking to really understand - the word "lion" is not literally a lion, which is not a simple task to grasp for an untrained brain.
Next, computing. A computer and what it does is incredibly abstract. A bunch of pieces of specially-shaped stone, use an invisible force to represent presence and absence (the concept of "zero" is only in recorded use for the last 3800 years or so and ancient greeks didn't even have a symbol for it). By performing ever more complex mathematics on these stones, we can create tools that people can use to perform abstract, and in some cases, physical work. And these interactions are nearly all performed based upon instructions that people write in text-based languages that don't even match up with natural languages.
And this is part of the origin of the issue inflicted upon younger people. In the US, literacy programs were largely replaced by programs literally designed to help people that are illiterate take care of their basic needs in a society that depends on written language.
Another way of putting it is: An illiterate person can press a button on a touchscreen to order a hamburger, because either there is a symbol of a hamburger, or, they were taught to recognize the shape of the word "hamburger". But, they might not actually know what the price actually means or, they may mistakenly order a plane ticket to Bamberg, Germany, because the words look alike. If they have a computer and an error dialog box pops up, will they know how to figure out how to fix it? Will they install "anti-virus" software that opens in a popup because it looks similar?
How about if they want to learn how to write a resume? How will they do that? What about figuring out how to write a mod for Minecraft? Or Enterprise software? These are all things that are dependent on linguistic literacy. Reduction in the general population's literacy makes people easier marks for cons and significantly reduces their ability to learn new things as well as effectively operate computers for anything but games and scams.
ETA: I'm far from an expert and would really recommend looking into what LeVar Burton of Reading Rainbow and Star Trek fame is saying about this problem.
And probably less lead, but more poisonous metals from vaping
Vape is just propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine, both food safe, with typical food flavoring additives
I vape so its not like I'm against it or anything but do you really trust that the coils are safe? Especially when all the pre-made coils are coming from China? I mean look at the baby formula fiasco from a few years ago or the lead paint in Children's toys. Not trying to fear monger but it's not far fetched at all that there could be safety concerns with a lot of vaping stuff.
I'm just making fun of that stupid YouTube psa
I know one of those too. And all the others call their grandkids to ~~configure the wifi~~install the internet on their phone for them.
And can't understand the difference between wifi and cellphone data, because their wife pays the bills for them.
The world is so much easier to reason about when an entire generation can be explained by a meme though.
I'm with you, remindes of this fun article on our human desire to see things black and white
Funnily enough seeing things in black/white is a symptom of more than one personality disorder.
And yet they will still have, compared to the average beyond their age group, significantly higher lead content in their blood.
I’d bet significant money that the ones who are able to fill technical and intellectual roles are the ones who were lucky enough to avoid the worst of the toxic air.
There’s a reason boomers are almost universally fucking dumb.
Yeah, people who grew up with boomers as parents, teachers, bosses, weird aunts, etc. Find the ultra- reductiveness to be very silly. The labeling of the entire post war generation as incompetent neocons has never fit well except in the minds of people whose only knowledge of history comes from tiktok. Where do they think their anti- establishment ideas came from? Do they think the hippies and civil rights activists were millennials or something?
Ok boomer
You win the "most mind-numbingly predictable reply all day" award. Congrats.
Most people of any generation don't know anything about Computers besides the most basic things. Too many people asked me to burn CDs for them because it was too difficult, I was like 11yo when people asked me...