• oyo@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 days ago

    Let’s be fair though. Adobe changes the Acrobat interface every two weeks for no reason. PDF has always been an absolute shitshow, super slow, walled garden format. After like 30 years it’s still a 30 step process to add a note box with an arrow that looks half decent

  • Underwaterbob@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    45
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 days ago

    It only relatively recently occurred to me that the vast majority of people use the Internet either solely or mostly with a mobile phone. It blew my mind since I grew up with PCs and modems and the Internet is so much better on a large screen that’s not half full of ads.

  • ssillyssadass@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    257
    ·
    5 days ago

    Computers have been dumbed down and simplified for the masses. When I was a kid a computer did not cooperate until you raised your voice.

    • IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      129
      ·
      5 days ago

      I do industrial programming. Everything is so far behind that yelling at the “computers” does nothing. Physical violence is just about the only thing they respect.

    • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      33
      ·
      5 days ago

      Yeah, newer generations have been raised on tech that “just worked” consistently. They never had to do any deep troubleshooting, because they never encountered any major issues. They grew up in a world where the hard problems were already figured out, so they were insulated from a lot of the issues that allowed millennials to learn.

      They never got a BSOD from a faulty USB driver. They never had to reinstall an OS after using Limewire to download “Linkin_Park-Numb.mp3.exe” on the family computer. Or hell, even if they did get tricked by a malicious download, the computer’s anti-virus automatically killed it before they were even able to open it. They never had to manually install OS updates. They never had to figure out how to get their sound card working with a new game. They never had to manually configure their network settings.

      All of these things were chances for millennials to learn. But since the younger generations never encountered any issues, they never had to figure their own shit out.

      • Zeddex@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        17
        ·
        5 days ago

        Or reinstall the OS on the family computer because one of your dumbass siblings downloaded a sUpeR cOoL song from one of their friends on MSN Messenger.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        3 days ago

        It’s not so much that the tech just worked. Often it doesn’t work. The difference is that when it doesn’t work it’s not user-serviceable. Up until maybe 2010 or so, when things broke there was often something a user could do to fix them. But, especially with the introduction of locked-down mobile phone OSes, that’s not true anymore. Now it’s just “wait for an update”.

    • samus12345@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      5 days ago

      It was always a struggle to get the damn thing to do what you wanted it to. It turned out to be a good thing long term.

      • M137@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        23
        ·
        5 days ago

        Even as a teenager (didn’t have a computer before that) I had infinite patience with computers, you can fix/change/make anything with enough time, nothing will be better if you get mad and ignore reading and making sure you understand what’s happening. Seeing how young people handle tech now is fucking depressing, they just click past everything without reading, get mad and rage quit after 30 seconds of something not working and think anything that’s more than two clicks/taps is too complicated.

          • M137@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            5 days ago

            Young, most old people I know either don’t know anything and are fine with that, they get help for even the simplest things, or they can handle it themselves without problems.

  • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    > be me
    > zoomer
    > use linux
    > i use linux
    > i don’t know how to use windows, or macos
    > i dont know how to use the most popular operating systems
    > wait
    > i am the joke now

  • shads@lemy.lol
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    37
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    4 days ago

    OK so I have a pet theory about this. I grew up in a period when computing involved friction and lack of ready resources to ease that friction. Solving problems involved actual research, in the research process more and more details of how computers operate were exposed to me. I had the time and focus to learn and the motivation to stick at it when it was difficult. I then did something horrible to almost everyone who asked me for help, I removed that friction.

    With the noblest of intentions I prevented everyone around me from experiencing that friction, I made it easy. Consequently I caused those people around me to miss out on those basics I struggled with. I uncovered the arcane lore of endianess so everyone around me who wasn’t already an adept would be spared. I plumbed the mysteries of the parallel port so that others could use a printer with only mild mystical invocations. I immersed myself in SCSI termination so that my friends and family might partake of IDE (retroactively named PATA) in peace.

    I came from an era of computing where these things mattered (at least to some degree) and they moulded me and shaped how I use a computer to this day. My brothers will always be dependent on myself and my ilk to act as guides and so much of what I know is functionally useless today so a neophyte could not follow the twisted path I did.

    I was blessed as well to come of age in a time when a computer was a comprehensible assemblage of parts, when I could identify at an IC level the components of it. I feel like that is what is missing in the modern incarnation of technology. I also worry this is where we stagnate, the field is too large for anyone to compass it entirely and we splinter in to specialisations.

    However this is also a sign that technology has come of age. I am certain, absolutely positive, that if I was to pick an arbitary topic, say music, I would seem as illiterate and helpless as the Zoomers we are bemoaning as mere consumers of Tech. I can enjoy a piece of music, I can even take a rough stab at the rusiments of how it is made. Ask me to explain the nomenclature of a time signature on sheet music and I will look the dunce before I finish the first sentence.

    So maybe we should give them a break and realise that for a lot of them, It… Just… Isn’t… Important…

    They will learn this stuff if and when they need to. Otherwise “magic box does things when I perform this ritual” is enough for them to function in their world, the same as “Car starts when I turn this key” is enough for me to function in mine.

    Holy crap, I wrote this on my phone, what is wrong with me?

  • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    160
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    5 days ago

    I can:

    • Accomplish damn near anything from a command line
    • Write machine code
    • Remember a fairly broad swath of special character altcodes without looking them up
    • Disassemble damn near any computer or other machine, and stand a good chance of putting it back together

    But also:

    • Use modern programming languages, including object oriented paradigms
    • Actually read what is on my screen and comprehend it, including error messages
    • Understand and operate any arbitrary interface without having to have it explained to me by rote

    Behold my mixture of skills, and tremble.

    • TheEntity@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      112
      ·
      5 days ago

      Can you summarize this in a vertical video? I stopped reading after the third word, I’m here for memes, not to read a damned book!

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      3 days ago

      Write machine code? For what kind of processor?

      That is one ability that doesn’t really belong. That’s much more of a Boomer thing. Not all boomers, obviously, but the ones who were computer experts were the ones who had to learn machine code. By the time even Gen X came along, assembler and C were already much more common.

      • PolarisFx@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        5 days ago

        Depends, my browser has mostly taken over as my pdf viewer and I think it lacks the functionality but if I were to install a cracked copy of Acrobat Pro or PhantomPDF then that’s like a 2 click operation.

    • TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      5 days ago

      I can

      • reinstall VLC

      oh wait that was all the dependencies VLC needed, I deleted them??, oh no, oh crap. Why isn’t my password working, help???

      (real reason why my first Ubuntu distro got nuked)

      • uranibaba@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        5 days ago

        I once wanted to move all the files in the folder was I in to another folder and I did something like mv /* ../. What is important here is that I did /* and not ./*. Fortunately it was only a raspberry pi so it went fast to flash the SD card.

        Also, how did you go about reinstalling VLC if you deleted all dependencies?

        • TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          5 days ago

          that I did /* and not ./*

          that’s so funny but so sad 😭😭

          how did you go about reinstalling VLC if you deleted all dependencies

          I just distrohopped to kubuntu instead lol

    • otacon239@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      5 days ago

      The day I started learning Regex was the day I felt like I was really learning computers. I went from 2 hour tasks to 15 minutes.

      I doubt you’d even be able to reasonably explain what they are let alone how they work to the average person outside the Millennial generation.

      I fear AI data processing will replace much of the Regex skill set. Why learn Regex when the computer just does it for you… 🙄

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        3 days ago

        Silly millennial, even Boomers were using regexen in the 70s, and they were commonplace by the time GenX nerds started playing with them in the 80s and 90s. Your elders also know that regexen are fun but extremely dangerous, and should only be used in cases where they won’t make things much worse.

      • mearce@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        5 days ago

        I agree that regex is an important thing to learn. Not sure any old LLM would do a very good job, and I hope that no tool replaces people actually learning how to write regex.

        I’m not sure what you mean about the average person outside the millennial generation not understanding them, though. Maybe I’m mistaken, but I don’t think the ‘average’ person in any generation knows what regex is. Unless there is some reason the average millennial was actually exposed to them and forced to understand them?

        As for being doubtful that anyone could understand them aside from a millennial, I assume you’re being hyperbolic? Sort of sounds like “Kids these days can never learn what I learned!” (I’m teasing).

        Anyway I’m in agreement with you. This thread did remind me of a pretty neat project that, while still requiring domain knowledge, could save some time and be a good learning tool without being as fallible of a crutch as an LLM.

        Have not tried it, and am not an experienced developer, so I am curious to your thoughts/criticisms: https://github.com/pemistahl/grex

        • PolarisFx@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          5 days ago

          That’s a good idea actually. I hate writing regex, so I asked Gemini to do it just now. Once I explained it in the format it wanted: what the source would be, what I wanted filtered and the language I planned to use it with it spat out a perfect expression without me needing to even use my brain. Technology is wonderful.

          • mearce@programming.dev
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            4 days ago

            I’m sure LLMs can get it right, but if I was going to use a tool for something like that, I’d want one that was more deterministic like the linked tool claims to be.

        • otacon239@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          5 days ago

          Yeah, I am exaggerating a bit, but I’ve not met anyone under the age of 25 that’s even remotely interested in putting in the effort to learn (anecdotal, I’m aware). Many have expressed wanting to learn, but then they never follow up when I try and pursue teaching anything.

          And I’m not necessarily saying that the average person already understands them, but someone from our generation will probably pick them up far more quickly then your average Gen Z/Gen A.

          • mearce@programming.dev
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            4 days ago

            Maybe what you’re claiming is true, I don’t know whether is ‘probable’.

            I poked fun at this before, but I don’t think it came across. If I’m not mistaken, millennials were the subject of a lot of boomer complaints about “kids these days”, being called lazy or entitled etc…

            Maybe zoomers are dumber, maybe they’re full of microplastics and entitlement. Or maybe this thread is an example of the “chastise the next generation” history repeating. One generation is lumped together and shat on by older generations, some of which then make similar claims about the next generation(s) all backed up with nothing but anecdotes and confirmation bias.

            I’m not trying to take dig at you, but I do want to highlight the similarities between claims like these and when a boomer might’ve said “I know a millennial who spends more on coffee than I would, so millennials are bad with their money. Millennials, who are bad with their money, cant afford houses. Yet they act entitled to homeownership, and so, they are lazy.” It’s a claim that assumes something about the integrity and intelligence of a swath of people and ignores the systemic issues that made homeownership hard for many millennials compared to past generations.

            Again, maybe you are right, I do not know. I don’t think, though, that boomer rhetoric that shat on millennials as a whole was particularly accurate or productive.

            • otacon239@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              4 days ago

              I certainly don’t blame them for these pitfalls I don’t think it’s laziness. It’s 100% a lack of education. Teachers have all but given up trying to get kids to pay attention in class. It’s become a snowball effect.

              When I was in school, most of my classmates took it seriously and took much of the education at face value. And almost all of my classmates are people that could handle the full Office suite.

              Now it seems every kid thinks they already know computers because they started with an iPad at the age of 4, but what they don’t realize is phones and tablets are the equivalent to toys.

              You don’t ever actually learn how to use a phone. Just individual apps. People don’t even really browse the internet blindly anymore.

              I think it’s probably the difference that a lot of boomers probably saw with cars in the 2000s-2010s. It used to be everyone had a rough idea of how a car worked and most people could learn in a year or two how to do basic stuff.

              Now it’s all a closed magic box requiring a full technical degree. Phones fell the same. Its a magic box that they never had the opportunity to wonder how it worked.

    • Chris@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      5 days ago

      Why would you write machine code outside of uni! Assembly exists for a reason?

    • Emerald@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      5 days ago

      Understand and operate any arbitrary interface without having to have it explained to me by rote

      Omg, this all the way. I’m in a class for learning AWS stuff and its crazy the amount of people who suddenly can’t do anything when one button is on a different screen than the instructions told them it was. Like come on, use some basic thinking skills.

      Another infuriating situation was having to do a class on Microsoft Office. It was infuriating because it was incredibly basic stuff. I’ve never used Outlook before, but I completed each task they asked of me in like 5 seconds because I have a basic understanding of how software works.

    • kazaika@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      5 days ago

      … modern … Object oriented

      wat?

      Bro that shits like 30 years old and most langs released after lets say 2010 have put that stuff in the backseat for backwards compatibility. Anyway I get your point

      operate any arbitrary interface

      Dont believe it. Behold the shittyness of modern UI

    • baines@lemmy.cafe
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      4 days ago

      Bobby no one’s paying you for this shit, go show Billy how to sum numbers in Excel.

    • Emerald@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      5 days ago

      Remember a fairly broad swath of special character altcodes

      I use the compose key. When you message with me, you are sure to receive proper dashes and real ellipsis.

      Well, unless I happen to be using my phone or another computer at the time.

      • doctordevice@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        5 days ago

        Hold on — why can’t you do proper ellipses and dashes on your phone? I don’t understand…

        This message brought to you by Android.

        • Emerald@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          4 days ago

          Well there is no em dash or en dash key on the mobile keyboard. And there isn’t a … key either.

          • doctordevice@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            4 days ago

            I typed my comment above on my mobile keyboard. I’m just using the standard Google keyboard on my Pixel, nothing fancy. Em and en dash are available by holding on the hyphen, and the ellipsis is available by holding on the period (annoyingly, only when on the numbers/symbols page).

  • ganbramor@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    25
    ·
    4 days ago

    The number of people in this thread stumped by the “rotate a PDF” comment, even what it means at all, while a smartphone has been 95-100% of their “computer” usage in their lives.

  • AWittyUsername@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    29
    ·
    4 days ago

    We grew up in an analog childhood, but digital adulthood.

    We’ve been at the cusp of all the changes, we probably had to boot into Ms DOS and navigate to the A:// drive to play whatever was on the floppy disk with a whopping 1.44mb.

    Now you download almost instantly to your phone/tablet. The internet as we knew it is mostly dead, everywhere is a walled garden of shit.

  • burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    40
    ·
    edit-2
    4 days ago

    this is less a problem of ‘people are stupid’ and more ‘educational institutions have been dismantled over the last several decades and large numbers of people are pushed through school despite being functionally illiterate, if they graduate at all’

  • bluewing@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    38
    arrow-down
    10
    ·
    4 days ago

    As a boomer, reading this thread/discussion has been so amusing in many ways while enjoying my cuppa tea this morning. A classic “the younger generations are stupid.”

    The older generations looking down the ones that follow. And the following generations looking down on those that precede them. And no one understanding ain’t none of us are all that bright.

    Ever has it been, and so ever shall it be.

  • missandry351@lemmings.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    39
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    4 days ago

    Expectation: these new generations are practically born with computers in their hands when they grow up they are going to create a new world so fast and develop new technologies

    Reality: if tik tok doenst work they don’t know what else to do with their 1000+ euro smartphones

  • Vespair@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    66
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    5 days ago

    I think Zoomers need a generational divide in their generation, tbh. In my experience, older Zoomers are intelligent, capable, motivated, and largely leftist. For some unknown reason though, younger Zoomers are ignorant, prudish, too easily contented, and weirdly conservative. I have yet to understand what happened to cause the divide, and I can’t point to any stats or evidence to support this belief, but anecdotally I have noticed this trend within my own life and spheres of influence.

    • Doctor_Satan@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      39
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      For some unknown reason though, younger Zoomers are ignorant, prudish, too easily contented, and weirdly conservative. I have yet to understand what happened to cause the divide,

      The online manosphere/tradtube spent the past 10-15 years raising these kids while their parents fucked off. That’s what happened. These are the kids who made people like Andrew Tate famous, and made Joe Rogan way more relevant than he has any right to be. It’s a great lesson in why people need to pay more attention to the media that their children consume.

      • kameecoding@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        15
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        4 days ago

        That, and it’s unsurprisingly connect to the piewdiepie fascist pipeline thing, Helldivers popular as fuck, Warhammer 40K having a renessaince, I see plenty of shorts about how boys want to die a heroic death, that’s a fucking staple of fascism

        This is such a good video on this stuff, how young kids get sucked into fascism layer by layer https://youtu.be/pnmRYRRDbuw

        https://youtu.be/P55t6eryY3g

        • SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          4 days ago

          Most of the reasonably intelligent people playing Helldivers know full well that it is satire with a side of sick sarcasm.

          If anything it’s antifascist indoctrination on a grand scale.

          • monarch@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            4 days ago

            I think a lot of people meme too hard and you end up with a the_Donald situation where all of a sudden the people agreeing with your jokes aren’t aware you’re joking. I have seen multiple right wing review channels unironically praise the helldivers government.

        • Doctor_Satan@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          4 days ago

          Yeah Pewdiepie was an entry point for kids. There were a ton of them back in the early 00s that did video games and other seemingly innocuous stuff on YouTube, but would slow-drip the racism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry, while promoting the “heroic death” trope. I have two nephews who loved those TY channels, and luckily my brother caught on real quick to their game and made some changes. Now I have two full grown Leftist nephews.

      • Vespair@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        edit-2
        4 days ago

        I agree with this, but what made this different then our generation or early zoomers? I was raised online as a house with an internet-connected home PC in the early-to-mid 90s with two parents who worked until night; there were grifters and proto-manosphere groups then and I’m sure moreso for the early zoomers, so I have to assume there was either some change in the methodology behind the delivery in these messages or, more likely, some change in the parental oversight, but I can’t identify exactly when or what

        • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          20
          ·
          4 days ago

          Yeah but there wasn’t an algorithm picking out all of that shit and giving us a constant stream of 100% pure troll heroin.

          Seeing one post in fifty telling you garbage puts it into the context of “that guy is saying some weird shit”. Seeing only garbage in your feed makes it seem normal and those opposed to it are the weirdos.

          • Doctor_Satan@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            4 days ago

            This is the correct answer. Once Youtube and other platforms figured out that the only thing that sells better than sex is hate, they built algorithms around feeding their viewers a constant stream of hate to keep their eyeballs glued to the screen. It’s yet another example of how Capitalism will always gravitate towards Fascism.

        • kugel7c@feddit.org
          link
          fedilink
          Deutsch
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          4 days ago

          I think perhaps in tandem with education - parental or institutional - getting even worse/changing from what you or I might be used to. The shift from search to algorithm as the primary way to interact with the Internet is also a significant factor, the Internet might’ve changed significantly before I was really there, but it certainly changed 2008-2016 mostly in that shift from search to platform/algorithm.

          And early zoomers might’ve started their online existence just around the start of that transition while late zoomers, basically only know the Plattform/App/Algorithm world we have today.

          If you were to be really cynical about it : The powers at be started losing the control over the messaging specifically to the online world, and managed to grapple it back starting in the mid 2000s just as the size/power of the space became significant. Zoomers might be here or there depending on how and when their first online experiences played out.

          I’m just on the very earliest of zoomers, and my cohort largely got hit with 2008 as we were just starting to grapple with politics, and with 2016 right around graduating high school. For me Search was the Internet starting point, Wiki, YT and forums all in service to my curiosity and also there for my entertainment/ placating.

          perhaps for someone a bit later it’s all just entertainment, no problem solving, no strange sub subculture, just whatever you desire to see or listen to or read imidiately there, without you even needing to think about it, so accurately getting your attention that it’s perhaps more attractive than thinking, or making a decision.

          The bad habit is there for me too, I think some younger people might not be able to even recognize it as such, maybe for them that’s just how the world works.

        • locahosr443@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          20
          ·
          edit-2
          4 days ago

          Maybe the younger ones still elastic brains were just too vulnerable

          E: Usenet, irc, forums etc were like an early training ground hardening us against the purveyors of bullshit. When bullshit became the business of billionaire corporations online we were ready for it. They never had a chance…

          • Vespair@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            16
            ·
            4 days ago

            Usenet, irc, forums etc were like an early training ground hardening us against the purveyors of bullshit. When bullshit became the business of billionaire corporations online we were ready for it. They never had a chance…

            I think there is a lot to this. One of the big divides I’ve noticed is that these younger zoomers seems to conflate what is socially acceptable with what is advertiser-friendly, and I have to assume a lot of that comes from growing up in these heavily corporate-controlled spaces in comparison to the “wild west” of the internet that raised us.

    • Camelbeard@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      5 days ago

      Even with millennials (1981 to 1996) there is a big difference when you where born.

      If you are an early millennial you grew up with MS-DOS, so you had to learn the terminal to get anything done. You probably had your first smartphone after you where 25.

      If you are a late millennial you grew up with Windows XP and probably had a smartphone as a teen.

      • thebigslime@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        edit-2
        3 days ago

        Circa 1990 didn’t get smartphones as teens. The iPhone launched on only AT&T in the US in 2007. We were all locked into 2 year contracts back then with LG Envys and Motorola Razrs.

      • Vespair@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        5 days ago

        Of course, it just seems to me like there’s a more distinct mid-generation cultural shift rather than just technological in comparison to our generation, and I am curious about potential catalysts. But again, I can only speak from my experience and personal exposure, so there is the possibility of locality specificity as well as other variables, so everyone remember I am just a layman and weigh my experience anecdotally rather than definitively.

      • Vespair@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        5 days ago

        That has not been my experience, no. I am speaking younger adults, not teenagers; I don’t really have many interactions with teenagers or children these days so I don’t have enough experience with alphas to have really any sort of opinion on them. As I understand it, Gen A starts after 2010, so any adult today would still be a Zoomer. Granted of course that “generations” are a loosely-defined concept so the years they are defined as may vary, but it is my understanding that the typical understanding of Zoomer goes as far as 2010 at least.

        • Genius@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          11
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          5 days ago

          Boomers 1945-1960
          Gen X 1960-1980
          Millennials 1980-2000
          Zoomers 2000-2020
          Gen alpha 2020-2040

          If we’re going to have a made up system with no rules, it might as well be well ordered.

          • Vespair@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            10
            ·
            edit-2
            5 days ago

            Convenient as that potentially would be, that does not seem to be the popular understanding, and I see no reason not to use to the conventional understanding in a case where stubbornness is unlikely to shift said understanding.

            Hopefully unnecessarily preemptive “if you don’t like Wikipedia” invitation to websearch using the engine of your choice and observe the general response without hunting for a cherry-pickable example which defines them as such.

            edit: i noticed you were downvoted and feel compelled to mention that I did not downvote you; it’s weird to downvote people for normal conversation.

            • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              ·
              4 days ago

              15 year generations don’t really make sense though, the whole concept of a generation is that they’re the previous generation’s kids.

              • Vespair@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                4 days ago

                I don’t disagree, but unfortunately nobody granted me authority on the general consensus on this one. I will say though that lineagial generations feel like only one possible definition, and cultural generations defined by common cultural experience (as is the case we’re discussing) feel like they have some validity for me as well.

    • Tencho@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      5 days ago

      As an old zoomer I’ve observed a sharp difference between 2001 zoomers and 2004 zoomers far beyond a simple 3 year maturity difference. Its jarring.

  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    95
    arrow-down
    8
    ·
    5 days ago

    Let me guess: they’re talking about Millennials, and are entirely forgetting about Gen X once again.

  • tantalizer@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    79
    ·
    5 days ago

    The amount of my students that wrote the whole email in the subject line is crazy. At first I thought it was a mistake or something. But there are sooo many…

    They also don’t know what a file browser/explorer is. As soon as the download notification is gone, the file doesn’t exist anymore.

    Giving files proper names? Unheard of!

    • FrChazzz@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      38
      ·
      5 days ago

      So many Boomers I know do the subject line thing, I had no idea it was a Zoomer thing too. Oh no…

      • Novaling@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        5 days ago

        I’m pretty computer literate (I’m using Fedora silver blue now and I’m a cyber college student), and I’m gen z.

        I hated our digital literacy units in school, because it was always the most braindead shit every year. Stuff that you shouldn’t have to explain to a person every year, like digital footprint (think before you post), make sure it’s a https website, and misinformation vs disinformation. I wanna cry because my tech and society class I’m taking right now feels like the same shit, but I’m paying now.

        I’m not sure how they should revamp, but maybe they need to show modern examples like the honey scam, the thousands of Tiktok influencers who admitted they lied about the stuff they sold when they thought the service was shutting down, and how Google search is forcing shitty AI results. But we do have the unit, it just feels braindead to anyone like me who gives a damn about the services they use online. But I’m a nerd who looks at privacy/cyber shit for fun for hours, not TikTok dual screen braindead…

    • LiveLM@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      edit-2
      5 days ago

      Giving files proper names? Unheard of!

      What kinda monster manages to live like this??? I say hushedly deleting flsjfjsjfksj.pdf

    • SailorMoss@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      4 days ago

      As soon as the download notification is gone, the file doesn’t exist anymore.

      That seems to be how Android literally works though.