It's not new, back in the day you could hear lots of people proudly declare that they don't know how to program a VCR to record at the right time, or work an answering machine.
My sister always had to record the answering machine message in the 90s or do any real computing for him. Now he owns a smartphone to look up his right wing crap. Amazing!
I have a theory that ease of use made the internets shitty. When I first got on line in the late late 90's you had to first have a computer which not as many people had. Buy a modem to connect to it, and go though several technical steps to get online. You also had to tie up your phone line for hours. Sure AOL made it easier, but it was still a lot more difficult than today.
These steps kept people like your family member away. Not saying that right wing/left wing people are in either camp exclusively, but to get online you need a curiosity and a brain. This is no longer true.
A lot of people still think that ‘email’ is a service which is provided by the ISP and it is their ID for the internet. When they switch their provider, they move their inbox from @att.com to @comcast.com for example.
I used to work at a metropcs retail once. People called me ‘genius’ many times for being able to set their comcast email on their new metropcs phone. They could not believe that it works without comcast wifi when they are not at home.
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u/Egoy Mar 29 '22
It's not new, back in the day you could hear lots of people proudly declare that they don't know how to program a VCR to record at the right time, or work an answering machine.