• @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    2
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    When did Millennials get Boomer Brain anyway? If you took Boomers at their word thirty years ago, nobody under the age of 70 would know how to fix a car today .

    Now these “Young people don’t understand technology” memes are spreading like a nasty STD. Just endless posts of the most heinous ignorant horseshit.

    Meanwhile, I’ve got kids flying homemade drones down at the park. I’ve got to fight through gaggles of teenagers on the way to robotics competitions and hack a thons when I’m downtown for lunch. My local Microprose is stuffed full of people under 30. All the active Linux geeks are practically in diapers, while millennials cling to Microsoft and fucking Apple.

    But nobody is using the shitty VR that Zuckerberg is shilling, so Zoomers can’t code? FFS, it’s GenX that’s forcing AI down all our throats.

    Don’t give me that “young people can’t use computers” shit.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      0
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      Us millenials are going to become the next boomers. The other generations around us like genX, zoomers and genA are comparatively smaller than the millenial generation, substantially so in the UK where I live.

      Can’t wait until my peers and I capture the legislators and start redirecting all of society’s resources into our interests.

      Edit: Already drafting comments to leave on the comments section of major newspaper articles about how genA need to pull themselves up by their bootraps, stop enjoying avocados, and cultivate some “stick-tuitiveness” (sub in other made-up phrase here).

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      01 month ago

      The divide is that zoomers don’t NEED to understand technology. They instead default to learning the fluffy user interfaces. Older users were required to know the basics of file systems, and even touch on command line operations just to get by.

      Modern kids aren’t required to learn that. They are perfectly able to, but no longer required to. We currently have a lot of newer “mechanics” that are perfectly good at driving, but didn’t really notice there as an engine thing up front to look at.

      It creates a binomial split. Many don’t notice the youngsters quietly getting good. They do notice the increase in idiots out of their depth due to overconfidence.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        11 month ago

        Actually, that has always been true.

        Yes the UI has become fluffier. But users have always just used first and most convenient way to do something.

        • They didn’t need to know how file system worked, they just put all their files on their desktop.
        • Most never used a command line and never will. They would just shrug and do something else if it required it.
        • If a button is even slightly moved, to them it is a travesty that fucks over their whole workflow.

        The subset of tech savvy users may be slightly bigger, but the majority never learned how computers worked beyond clicking around. That is in every generation. Our vision is just skewed because we grew up in a tech heavy environment.

        But if you ever worked in IT support, you’d know that not knowing how computers work is the default in every generation.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      0
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      I work with college students all day. They are computer illiterate. It’s like working with the old. Generalizations are sometimes kinda true.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        11 month ago

        Cool, I ALSO work with college age kids all day and they navigate/troubleshoot our software fine.

        I guess our two completely useless anecdotes will now cancel out into irrelevance.

        • Zoot
          link
          fedilink
          11 month ago

          Navigating software is a hell of a lot different from troubleshooting, as OP/ The image was saying.

          No rat in this race just pointing it out. (But everyone i know who’s my age couldn’t tell you shit about computers, why they work, how they work, and how to fix even the simplest of problems)

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          0
          edit-2
          1 month ago

          I’m not sure why you find it controversial to observe that older people, who grew up without computers, and younger people, who’re also not using computers, are two groups that tend to suck at using computers. This is not surprising.

          This kind of generalization matters. For instance, when designing education policy.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            01 month ago

            why you find it controversial

            It’s not controversial, just inaccurate.

            Again, like doggedly insisting nobody born after 1980 knows how to fix a car.

            You’ve bought into a dogmatic piece of online propaganda. You’re not living in the real world.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              0
              edit-2
              1 month ago

              Perhaps you’re right and the widespread use of iPads and smartphones isn’t interfering with computer literacy. My impression as someone who works in education is that it’s interfering with computer literacy.

              I also want to point out that my generation, millennials, were indeed much less inclined to fix their own cars (understandably).

              • @[email protected]
                link
                fedilink
                01 month ago

                widespread use of iPads and smartphones isn’t interfering with computer literacy.

                I see that hypothesis, but it glazes over the more glaring transition - widespread adoption of cheap electronics, generally speaking.

                The iPhone premiered in 2007 at something like $300-500. Most people couldn’t afford that. It was another five years before you started seeing rudimentary budget brand smartphones.

                We’ve got far more tech literates today thanks to the abundance of cheap hardware. The expectation for tech literacy has risen with this proliferation.

                my generation, millennials, were indeed much less inclined to fix their own cars

                And that’s why auto shops no longer exist or are run exclusively by geriatrics? :-p

                Quite a few millennial age auto mechanics exist today. Quite a few GenZ/Alpha aspiring mechanics exist.

                You just don’t find them in the upper class suburbs or state university campuses.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          31 month ago

          I have multiple people at my job who claim to be tech savvy but don’t know how to type on a keyboard and constantly have tech issues when the rest of us don’t. …they’re older than the rest of us though. They just lied on their resumes so it’s okay.

          The youngest workers at my org have no issues.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            1
            edit-2
            1 month ago

            claim to be tech savvy but don’t know how to type on a keyboard

            Okay, sure dude. And I know people who claim to be race car drivers but they don’t know how to turn the steering wheel.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      225 days ago

      Yep. All of this is just your typical “I don’t actually socialize with anyone my own age or else I would understand how bad they are with technology.”"

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      11 month ago

      I mean if you work in the industry you would absolutely see a rise, a significant one, in people generally inept at the technical requirements of their jobs that’s factual not “ignorant horseshit” - it’s not that young people can’t learn this stuff it’s that young people grew up in, and are still in, an environment that doesn’t foster learning of these skills or independence at a more personal level so those learning through traditional education are being failed by the system while simultaneously being given tools to make self sabotage easier than ever before and the values that tell people to seek out and do things on your own are quickly going extinct. If someone can’t do something, especially at a wide scale not like one individual who didn’t pick up a skill or something, this is a system problem and yes there are significant systemic problems young people are being faced with in their personal and professional/student lives acting like “that’s ignorant horseshit” is just denying something is wrong, it’s advocating for the status quo, something is wrong, young people are being failed and unless we acknowledge this problem we can’t address it

    • Björn Tantau
      link
      fedilink
      11 month ago

      And on top of that I have enough millennial colleagues who don’t know shit about anything in regards to tech.

      Maybe people just reinforce their cliques in their 40s and just think everyone in their age group is like them.

      And especially nerdy autists like to gravitate towards technology and ignore all the other people around them.

    • Pyr
      link
      fedilink
      11 month ago

      I mean, most people don’t know how to fix a car these days other than boomers. Sure there are the few which made it their career to do so but I would the majority of millenials and boomers would not know how to fix their car. Let alone a newer car with all the electronics. No one knows how to fix that shit it’s built to be disposable now.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        11 month ago

        Boomers don’t know how to fix cars these days either. In Ye Olde days, cars were designed to be fixed. These days they are riddled with unnecessary electronics, and those electronics are riddled with just enough DRM that reverse engineering anything in your car is a crime.

        A Boomer can fix a “classic” car, but nobody other than a mechanic can fix a modern car because of all the DRM-riddled electronics.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        11 month ago

        I mean, most people don’t know how to fix a car these days other than boomers.

        Oh yeah, famously.

        Sure there are the few which made it their career

        North of 750k, sure. We professionalized the job of car repair and people who specialized in the field continued to develop their skills in an increasingly complex field. We didn’t just lose the skill of automotive repair.

        We also introduced a number of module components to the chassis and the electronics, effectively making body work, car electronics, and mechanical repairs into three separate fields. So the process of auto repair got more complicated. Boomers did not keep up with the trade. If anything, they got phased out.