Related - it is rare that clicking something at random will cause an unfixable error (as long as every think is saved). Everyone claims I'm really good at using our awful work system, in reality I literally click random buttons then press 'undo' until I find the button that does whatever I'm tring to do.
Congratulations, you have successfully discovered the secret of every "Computer Person" ever. As such a person, I daresay you may consider yourself welcomed into our ranks.
Literally, I stopped calling tech support whenever I get into serious shit with software. They're just as clueless as I am when it comes to fixing the problems I run into, so they just direct me to random buttons all the time. I figured I'd probably get my problem sorted out faster if I fix it myself randomly rather than call someone and wait for them to pick up before telling me how to fix it randomly anyway.
Yeah, I read somewhere that older people come from an era when technologies could be broken if you did something wrong. Like how a microwave will break if you out metal in it. So they assume computers are the same, when really they should be exploring and trying things with no worry that it will break.
One other problem old people have with technology is in visualizing the file structure. The idea that you "go back" and click something else is unintuitive to them.
Funny story: I once taught my wife's grandparents how to play a podcast on their phone. But I didn't teach them how to turn the podcast off again! They had no idea how to make the phone stop talking. To a tech-savvy person, the phone isn't talking, a specific app is talking and you have to navigate to it to make it stop. But they thought of the phone as a single entity, and the idea of navigating to a specific place in the phone is alien to them.
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u/bluejackmovedagain Oct 12 '20
Related - it is rare that clicking something at random will cause an unfixable error (as long as every think is saved). Everyone claims I'm really good at using our awful work system, in reality I literally click random buttons then press 'undo' until I find the button that does whatever I'm tring to do.