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…!
Ok boomer!
My parents are Gen X, me and my older brother are Gen Z.
Parents keep asking, nay, DEMANDING, for us to fix their shit. Then i proceeded to have a fight with my brother about who’s responsibility is it to fix it.
Parent’s don’t know how to use a tax filing website 🤦♂️ (Tbf, they don’t know how to fill out paper forms either).
The first time we’ve ever touched a real computer with internet access was around 2010, before that, we were in mainland China and we had no internet (either too expensive, or unavailable as a service in the areas we lived in, not sure which, or my parents are just being cheap)
Let’s be fair, we millennial know how to fix stuff because stuff still can be fixed. We can glance back one generation away and learn about how stuff work back then, and also learn how to fix those stuff. Nowadays stuff aren’t meant to be fixed, (late) gen z doesn’t have thing to start tearing apart and learn about the inner working of stuff, because it’s all glued/snapped together, with the culture being once broke just toss.
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
I for one am happy to be left out of the ‘generation war’. It’s stupid. In my day blah blah blah- no one cares gramps. Live in the now.
Back in my day we had weed. We still do, but we did back then too.
I was going to complain, but you’re damned right.
Silence is golden.
Millenial here:
This is good advice, sage even.
…
EDIT:
I didn’t forget the couple of extremely cool and also very knowledgable Gen X mentors/bosses I had, hahah!
I’ve spent the last decade training Millennials just for that task.
I’ll be over here screwing with the K8S cluster if you need me.
You seniors and your K8s I tell you whut
Gen X invented the fucking tech from discrete 7400 logic.
Shhhh! We don’t need them asking us to fix their shit anymore. Let the millennials pretend they are the only ones that can.
I need to learn this wisdom. Gen x and I fix way too much bullshit from idiots. The only plus side is often people give me their old PCs and some of them have one or two great components. I recycle what I can and salvage anything worth saving but I need to spend less time fixing worthless hardware.
Just pretend you’re going senile or ‘the new stuff’ is just too advanced. If that doesn’t work you could always claim to have started a ‘tech repair/recycling’ side hustle and start billing people.
… because their Gen X boss told them what to do …
So very true.
As one of the older Millennials (1982), I can say that there is a lot of truth to this meme.
Yeah, this is more young X and old millennial. Xers born in the late 60s-early 70s and millennials born in the late 80s-90s don’t know shit.
I’ve heard us (young Xs and old millennials) described as the Oregon Trail generation. We grew up along side the tech so we understand it better than your average person from before or after.
Is this a black market body parts game? Drug wars meets Oregon Trail?
I’m not sure what their comment said before they fixed it, but if it was “The Organ Trail”, that game exists. It’s basically “The Oregon Trail”, but with zombies.
Oregon Trail.
Thank you, autocorrect strikes again.
I’m not sure why people are down voting this. I agree 100%. The most techie people I have ever known are part of what you called “the Oregon Trail generation” (I love this term).
People always get pissy about these generation things. It’s not about some people being better than others. There was a period of time where being able to use a computer meant being able to take a tabula rasa machine, install an os using a bunch of disks and a large manual, and figure out how to fix anything without the internet. There was also a period of time where home computers were becoming common. Those two periods overlapped and created a group of non-professional people mostly (MOSTLY) born between 75ish and 85ish that are much better able to use and troubleshoot tech than people born before or after.
But you always end up attracting a bunch of douches saying “I was born in (whenever) and I have a degree in (whatever) and I know more than people blah blah blah.” Yeah, I’m not talking about professionals or hardcore hobbyists, I’m taking about regular jerkoffs that had to figure this shit out without specialized education or the internet. It was a unique period that created a group a people different than what came before or after. No judgement, it just is. For some reason certain people take offense to that.
Instead of “the Oregon Trail generation” we should be called the “I read the damn manual” generation.
And a younger one…
The difference between Gen X and Millennials is that at around age 35 (circa 2009) I started telling people, who were almost always friends of friends who wouldn’t actually hang out with me normally, that I charge $100 an hour. Millennials still do it for free…
I wouldn’t even suck dick that low… Why would I take less pay for something I DONT like to do???
Haha…fair enough. Honestly though, I suspect anything above free would have worked. Some people have absolutely no respect for other people’s time. Especially since I don’t “fix computers” for a living.
Every generation has its nerds. I’m not suddenly a millennial just because I know how to fix a computer.
The point is late X/early millennial were the only ones “forced” to fix tech if we wanted to use it (obviously people older than that needed to as well but they were less likely to be into tech). Shit rarely worked out of the box, plug and play was shit, nothing was standardized, etc. Around the late 90s into the 2000s things worked more reliably without needing tinkering, and then apps came in and shifted things even further from tech literacy.
The PC revolution started with the Apple 2 in 1977. In the early 80’s everyone had a Commodore 64. By the mid 80’s everyone had a PC. If you were born in the 80’s, you were not editing autoexec files in diapers.
I’m Gen Z and I was still “forced” to fix tech if I wanted to use it. I mean sure, I didn’t have to deal with IRQs, setting up autoexec.bat and config.sys, and so on, but if you’re not at least a little bit inclined you wouldn’t have the patience to fix things even when you’re “forced”. You’d just give up and move on. There’s always something else to do. Things have gotten easier for sure, which is reducing the exposure to “falling in the rabbit hole” but one way or another interested people will get into it.
It’s like how cars are getting simpler to use, but you still have car guys around. We don’t say only old people know how to drive stick.
In any case, there’s better things to use as a generational boundary; like how a single G5 piano note will trigger a very specific group of people.
G5 piano note
'72 Gen X here, I HEAR YOUR CALL!!!
At this point I’m happy to let someone else do it. Being everybody’s tech support sucks. I can just tinker with and enjoy my own setups in peace.
“Meh”
Whatchu got going for you, pal? Crippling anxiety? Unable to socialize? Helplessly uninspired? The creativity of a mushroom?
Meh.
A denial.
A denial.
A denial.
A denial.
A denial.
The generation that couldn’t be bothered.
gen x
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.
You’re all educated professionals. This meme is more about your average user.
Tldr; you got your feelings hurt over a meme
Gen x doesn’t have feelings
They aren’t saying every person of those generations is the same. Your family is very techy and it makes sense that they’d be knowledgeable, but the point of the meme is that there was a generation that grew up with tech that kinda worked most of the time, forcing them to learn how to use it to be effective, leading to a higher proportion of people knowing how computers work. Nowadays, except if your job is fixing computers, the chance you know them in-depth and how to tinker with them is much lower, because there is no need, they just work most of the time.
Your family is very techy and it makes sense that they’d be knowledgeable, but the point of the meme is that there was a generation that grew up with tech that kinda worked most of the time, forcing them to learn how to use it to be effective,
The problem is their dates are off. Home Computers went mainstream in 1977 with the Apple II.
My dad’s a retired engineer and my mom was a computer programmer. Literal actual baby boomers.
My grandpa was a robotics engineer and thus knew how to use a PC quite well but watching him operate Windows 10 basically without utilizing any tools that came after DOS was bizarre.
To Microsoft’s credit, they have historically been very good about ensuring backwards compatibility. There are a few notable exceptions, but for the most part you can treat Windows as if it is DOS, and it still mostly works.
j/k That’s awesome.I saw this as a millennial and immediately thought to myself “did they forget GenX built the internet?”
I’m a xennial or whatever you wanna call us and I can’t stand the generational cold war that takes place in our society
deleted by creator
Actually agree.
I am consideted late gen-Z / almost gen-A. I grew up in rural middle-east and was introduced to home internet for first time in highschool(2020)
Where do I fall?
I agree with this person!
Conversely, me and my whole family is dumb as fuck, every generation.
Why the fuck are you oversaturating that saturated field, causing wages to drop?
Go study a trade, ffs
Gen X here. If I cared what any of those age groups thought I would feel slighted.
Bingo.
What I see is the same for most every generation. You arrive at adulthood and look around judging all the older folks as being clueless. You fail to solve all the worlds problems while you still know it all. Then you get a job and wise up. The ones who never realize they don’t know shit are the ones who cause all the trouble.
Sage words. Couldn’t be more apt if I tired. Yeah. As I e gotten older I have less patience/tolerance tolerance to suffer ignorance, arrogance, and incompetence.
Gen X - who, let’s face it, wrote most of this stuff - gets forgotten again.
I don’t know about you, but I quit doing that soul crushing work as soon as I could something I really loved.
Gen X is the Aslan lion meme: “Do not cite the deep computer repair magic to me, Millennial. I was there when it was written.”
Asian lion?
They mean Aslan, aka big kitty Jesus, from the Narnia books.
I read big kitty Jesus as big titty Jesus and was confused
You’re thinking of Gandalf Big Naturals. Easy mistake to make.
Damn autocorrect.
And this is how we prefer it.
As one of those Gen-X that actually helped create the dumpster fire we call the modern Internet, I have come to realize that we fall into two camps. You either look young enough to be classified as a Millennial (my wife) or you look old enough to immediately be thrown in the Boomer bucket (me)…which is really unfair because no other generation has hated and fought the fucking Boomers longer than us.
I’d love to show some GenZ photos of Matt Damon, Bem Affleck, Cillian Murphy, etc. and ask them what generation they think they are.
The struggle is, we all live long enough to be the next boomers. Maybe in 10 years it is: “OK, Gen-X”
I think what’s happening is Millenials are starting to get the “OK Boomer”.
Yep it’s just a phrase now and people don’t know what boomer was.
Before I deleted Facebook entirely, I briefly flirted with a Facebook group of Aussie gen xers for a bit of nostalgia, and I had to quit after only a few weeks because the ‘back in my day’ crowd became too insufferable. It’s already happened.
And while gen X definitely were instrumental in creating much of modern tech, most of them are still pretty hopeless at it. Watching some of my similarly aged colleagues trying to use a computer is an exercise in frustration.
That’s cool. We’re used to being forgotten and this way nobody will ask us to fix their computer.
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.
Hey, Millennial here. Just a friendly reminder to drink your metamucil today
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:
Al Gore didn’t need a smear campaign for his nonsense. I was there too, we were laughing our asses off at the shit he said.
“We don’t think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he “invented” the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore’s initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening.”
- Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn
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?
I am Gen X
This sounds like a commercial (fellow GenX here), haha
Here’s a 40 second video of Vint Cerf saying Al Gore did help create the internet:
no, they’re just choosing to not fuck with this shit because they’ve had enough
Whatever
They said boomers so same dif.
Ahhh I see. So what you’re saying is that Gen X is actually the root of our problems? Boomers were just another symptom that needed a GUI.
Eh. Genx understood how to work a VCR and deal with the rat’s nest of cables behind the TV
Computers are millennials
Older Millenial here. It was definitely GenX that paved the way for the computer world I learned, and it was mostly GenX who wrote the books and taught the lessons (often informal) that brought us what knowledge we have, at least in the beginning. Plus a small selection of exceptional individuals from older generations, including, dare I say it,… the baby boomers.
Older millennial here, too. This is absolutely correct. (Btw we are called xenials 1981–86)
There is a big difference between having the people who invented something and being the people who families (and companies…) depend on to keep them running. This being about the latter.
Or, at least, in my family, we tended to not tell the engineers at Ampex to get their butts downstairs because dad didn’t understand why the color was off on the football game he recorded last night
Utter BS. I’m on the old end of Gen X and I’m still building PCs for people and troubleshooting their shit when it breaks. I have yet to meet a much younger person who can do it as well.
Gen X seem to be either computer people or totally unaware. Millennials seem to be generally much less knowledgeable than the former and much more knowledgeable than the latter. Obviously there are millennials who are computer people, but my conception of them is more people who got computer science degrees than the person who lives in a shack in the woods and builds his own robots. Boomer computer people are even more formidable.
I’m not saying that’s true, but it’s the stereotype I have in my head.
Well put.
Your also on Lemmy so you’re the exception not the rule.
We were the first (of non-computer types) to adopt the web. We rode the AOL Instant Messenger train. What are you talking about.
AOL instant messenger was late to the party. ICQ started the instant messaging fad… that little “uh oh” notification sound is permanently burned into my brain.
I was on ICQ as well, but most people weren’t. I was generalizing to the contemporary audience.
Fuck that sound.
presses Ctrl+G to foghorn
Most millenials I deal with don’t know how anything works. They know apps and swiping screens. They are computer competent, knowing how to use them. Like knowing how to drive a car doesn’t mean you are a mechanic. They frequently know how do basic fixes like rebooting or reinstalling but less frequently have any true troubleshooting understanding. I don’t claim all millenials are like that, but broad stroke its not uncommon. I’d never say the generation as a whole is THE technical one though. I know more Gen Z that are technical by far, but that seems more matching Gen X to me. They either know technology or don’t. Nothing in between.
People can be exceptions to the norm. Most GenX we all interact with are as hopeless as the boomers.
Younger GenX are basically Millenials (but cooler and less uptight), and older GenX are basically Boomers (but nastier and louder).
No we’re not!!
Its almost like the “generations” are mostly arbitrary with a lot of overlap
When I joined the company maintaining Unix, I was one of the younger ones. It’s older X who knows how it’s all built; because they did it.
I had home computers 10 years before the internet really hit.
Very late Gen X or early millenial no. We came through VCR DVD it was a wonderful change. Also Torvalds would be Gen X.
As someone already said, you forgot Gen X. When I ask someone to open a command/terminal window, they have no clue what I’m talking about.
Insert I was born into this meme.
