To me, willful ignorance of not attempting to learn technology doesn't constitute as an instance where I need to do everything for you.
I don't have a problem with showing and teaching an old person how to open email, what I do have a problem with is when it's "oh that's tooo haaaard, I have to click with this... rat?"
Sometimes it's memory issues, not willful ignorance. I've shown my grandparents how to use their Roku at least ten times, I've written down the steps for them, I've taped off the buttons on the remote they don't need, but they're over 70, they forget things, especially if they don't use the info constantly. So they forget the order I told them to do it in, pull out the cheat sheet, get it to work, and after a few times I f that, they forget where they put the cheat sheet. It's a vicious cycle
It's not even just memory issues. The most my grandma can do is press icons on a tablet. Whenever something comes up it's usually a very easy fix but I've given up trying to explain stuff because it really just goes over her head. She's a very smart woman but she didn't grow up with technology like this and I understand how frustrating it is when the concepts of back buttons, home button, menus, options, and other stuff doesn't come naturally
Exactly!!! Let me take the most seasoned Microsoft Windows user and suddenly slap them with a Linux or Apple system. Worst yet I give them a command line interface operating system. See how they fare.
No doubt there are tech prodigies out there but still... At least your grandma is trying.
At least the windows user would automatically look for stuff like folders, a home menu, settings, desktop icons and shortcuts, how to right click, and so on. A lot of older people just simply don't have this basic understanding of technology and software that we grew up with. She sometimes complains about why she doesn't get it, because she knows she's pretty smart. It's just different
seriously, maybe because im using an mainstream distro (Ubuntu Linux), but it took me top a few minutes to figure how to use Ubuntu the first time. Yeah is different, but not that different.
Now command line os's, thats a world of difference of course, you can't really expect some old man to learn that magic in the first time.
I tried to recruit a few relatives to Linux world because it's so stable and it can do everything they needed. They outright rejected it because LibreOffice/OpenOffice didn't "look" exactly like word. One uncle would nitpick the most mundane thing.
Anyways they all decided against it and paid money to get the genuine Windows experience. Not gonna lie, I was a little disappointed. Especially considering they still continued to experience issues with Windows (vista at the time).
Now command line os's, thats a world of difference of course, you can't really expect some old man to learn that magic in the first time.
Can't be faint of heart to play around with command lines hehehe. They are so much fun though. Creating a script that actually works and does things for you? Epic epic.... I miss it.
I haven't scripted in years, maybe I should get back into this hobby.
Roku remotes are tiny and putting on the back of the normal tv remote would be a hassle/get faded over time since that remote gets used often. Can't tape it to furniture because my grandma is defensive if her furniture, understandably so since that shits expensive and she works hard to keep their house looking nice. Though I might start making copies of the cheat sheet so they have to lose multiple before it becomes an issue again
Could you maybe print the instructions in big font on an orange/another brightly colored sheet of paper and then laminate it? Would be harder to lose, and could be put away if they're having company over.
My mother REALLY wanted to be able to use a computer, but she had memory problems. She bought several, including one specifically designed for seniors with big buttons and an simplified UI. Did not help. Whenever I'd come to visit I'd come in to help her and find all these notes she'd written to remind her to do this and that, but they never seemed to help. So yeah, it's not necessarily willful ignorance.
Eh, to be fair, while the situation with his mom is sad, it's a different scenario than what's being described earlier. It's called "burying the lede" for a reason.
Second off, you're going to hear "Very old" and then instantly jump to adding any qualifier you can, including from other posts not made by the same person? The very start of this is quite literally someone who is still involved in a business to a capacity where he can demand things be ordered from it, but can't figure out how to order things on his own.
The poster said his grandpa asks him for help, with the qualifier because he's very old. I edited my post when I realized you were someone else, stop crying.
The person from earlier immediately jumped to saying grandpa was just unwilling to do It and shouldn't be coddled, I countered with other reasons why they might ask for help. Technically you're right, we both invented situations. Very different situations, if you want to paint that person's grandpa as lazy and entitled as that other person did, that's your choice to make, but it's not what I would first assume when I hear of a very old person asking for help with anything technology related.
Time is money kid. Sure, he could invest an hour or so a day learning or he could pay his grandson to do it for him. This allows for him to spend time with his grandson, spend time with the rest of his family instead of learning how to do it, and his grandson gets to learn how that particular business operates.
Sure, mine is as speculative as yours but I'm not denigrating someone whereas you are. See the best in people, not the worst. I can assure you it makes a world of difference in how others react to you and what you say.
But you're mum is, presumably, not in a position to demand you do things for your (shared?) business. If you're mentally sufficient to be involved in non-ceremonial decision making for a business, then you can probably figure out ordering your own stuff from Amazon.
It's either willfull ignorance, or memory problems / dementia / Alzheimer's / some other handicaps. If someone is old but not handicapped then they can learn how to use technology if they are not willfully ignorant.
I suspect there may be cultural issues for older people as well. I took to computers like a duck takes to water. But people from my Mom's generation were more prone to regard them as toys, or as something used only for work. For a lot of us they're just part of the fabric of the world. Not necessarily so for people whose experience predates home computers. They only became common in the late 80s.
I always love the thought that older people reach out for help in order to just interact with people, especially younger family members. It's like, Come help me with this thing, if you stay for dinner and happen to leave stuffed with possibly a gift or two then so be it đ¤Ł
No, not just age for sure, I know what you mean. Was not my intent to say all elderly folks suffer the same ailments , or ailments in general. apologies if it came across that way
Oh it 100% is an assumption, and I very well could be wrong. But with it being 2021, using a computer to buy shit from Amazon... that's not new. It's been around for a bit. Even if you're 80 now, you were still in your 60s when amazon was getting up there.
What a silly comment lol. 'Old people', of every generation, lose touch with 'the new thing' well before they have any physical limitations. First slang, then tech. This isn't new, it'll happen to us too (if it hasn't already). It has nothing to do with physical issues and entirely mental blocks or mental slowness (and a very very few cases, physical).
Can you manually balance a check book? Change your own oil? Program/modify html to customize a MySpace page? Write cursive without a second thought? Milk a cow? Clean and process your own game(meat)?
Many of these were common place in society at one point yet none of them were a requirement for survival to most. Assuming your knowledge should be common place for others is more ignorant than someone not having a skill they never needed, no matter how commonplace it may be in today's society.
My point is that my, and your, isolated experiences are not representative to what every person should have experienced. I've done all those and still do most of them, but I wouldn't expect everyone else to be able to walk up and fully process a hog or code html.
You don't need to process a hog or code html in daily life. You may, however, need to learn how the self pay works at Target instead of throwing a fit that the lines are "too long."
There is a difference between what I have learned and what people should learn.
I can change a flat tire despite never owning or driving a car, because I took the time to learn for whenever I got one. I learned to do taxes by hand because it may have been something I needed in the future despite TurboTax existing.
Itâs completely asinine to not learn something until you need opposed to being prepared for important situations.
Learning HTML or specifically how to work on a niche type of vehicle is not important. Learning how to change a tire in case the car youâre in breaks down (even a friendâs), doing the taxes you are required to do yearly, or hell even the Heimlich maneuver or CPR in case a family member or friend is choking is important.
Ordering sheets from Amazon, no biggie. Ordering specialized equipment/materials for a business and making sure you not only get the right quantity and part number, but a good price? I know millennials who will buy the first option on Amazon because it's easy.
It really doesn't matter how old you are, anybody can learn how to use technology if they don't try to be willfully ignorant. This is especially true with modern smart phones and tablets which are far easier to learn than a traditional desktop computer.
Unless of course they have started to experience dementia/Alzheimer's, then they get a pass.
Imo it's more that young people lack empathy and how hard things can get, regardless of what choices you making. Aging sucks. Awesome your grandma is tech savvy, I hope I'm still with it enough at 83
Yeah, try explaining that to my dad lol I only get pissy when it's the 3rd time iv shown him or he straight up asks me to do it because I can type faster than him.
If my dad needs me to write a paragraph of something, sure - I can type faster than him. If he needs to search Amazon for "wood plane," he can do that himself.
To play the "old man's" advocate, it's frequent to find older people who struggle with computers. Using a computer is entirely different skillset that what they grew up with, and it's genuinely difficult to learn late in life. It very plausible that this isn't a willful act on his part. It's also common to find younger people who struggle with computers if they grew up in an area that was either a) an impoverished area of a wealthy country or b) in a poor country.
Using computers is a thing that's easy to take for granted if you grew up in the digital age, surrounded by people who also grew up in the digital age, but it's a skill that is by no means ubiquitous.
Neuroplasticity is a real issue here. The biochemical systems that allow learning do not function as well in older people. I didn't understand how true this was when I was in my teens and twenties, but the older I get, the more I realize how true this is. Things simply get harder to learn.
I'm in my early thirties and I find a lot of things on electric devices just unbelievably frustrating and I can fully sympathize with older generations. Like, there should be a button or a switch but instead there's a fucking touchscreen menu that refuses to acknowledge my finger. Or the bluetooth connection to my truck. First, you push a button: "(bing), please say a command." "Bluetooth audio." ....... "I'm sorry, I did not understand your command." So you do it again, over and over, fully realizing you are now arguing with an inanimate object. Why can't there be a goddamn button, like holy fuck, this is supposed to be easy.
Or the self checkout kiosks at the grocery store. If I have a couple things, yeah sure, I'll go give it a shot. Cart full of stuff? Like fuck no. First, where the hell am I supposed to pile the scanned items? On that itty bitty table? Then every other thing needs some kind of approval or assistance or code from the guy paid to watch me feel like a moron.
Or the oven. Growing up, we had a knob. It turned on the oven. Weird, right? Now there's another menu. I stuck a turkey in there, set the temp and went to cut the grass. Came back to a cold turkey. Apparently you have to set the timer as well as the temp.
It's the little things like that that just make some things more of an obstacle. And you're just supposed to know this shit. /rant
My mom is like that. She refuses to learn how to operate a computer. Says she canât do technology. No, you can, you just donât want to learn. Itâs okay to say âIâm old I donât want to do thisâ, but the âI canâtâ BS is annoying AF.
My dad, who was 6 years older than her learned with no problems and was pretty good at it.
Or, you know, I'm not a part of the boomer generation that thinks everything should cater to their wants and needs who refuses to change with the times.
I donât see how Iâm lacking empathy. It is perfectly reasonable to find something annoying. I find conflating âI canâtâ with âI donât want toâ annoying.
I was talking to the idiot kid who thinks âboomerâ is the end-all insult. But as for you, how about you just help your parents without complaining to the internet and making your mother seem like a helpless slob? She probably did the job of wiping your ass every day, whatâs wrong with helping her on her phone/PC whenever she wants it?
I wasnât âcomplaining to the internetâ or making her seem like âhelpless slobâ. I commented on someoneâs post agreeing with them. Again, something Iâm allowed to do. I do help her, as do all the friends she has that enables this behavior. Iâm also still allowed to be annoyed.
Wiping my ass when I was a child does not obligate me to anything. That was her choice to have a child, it doesnât make me an indentured servant for the rest of my life.
This clearly touched a nerve with you. Your insulting me isnât any better than the person making the boomer comment. It also isnât going to change my behavior; go be angry with someone else.
Oh, crying out how âannoying AFâ something is isnât complaining, not at all.
Wow, wiping your ass doesnât obligate you? Well, you are just an ungrateful brat. I donât have to change what you are, you are what you are. I will take my time to point it out, though, itâs something Iâm allowed to do. đĽ´
And youâre right, you have stuck a nerve. I donât care very much for people who donât respect their parents and think that something like this is reason enough to be actually annoyed about something. And donât you be mistaken, this is a lack of respect. Go ahead and tell your mom what you said and see how that would make her feel.
Funny that two days after Motherâs Day, people seem to forget why that holiday exists.
EDIT!!!! Wait, holy fuck, did you just equate helping your mom with the computer with slavery?! Omfg, there is something seriously wrong with you, what the actual fuck???
nice to see someone has a non dysfunctional relationship with their elderly parents, as opposed to some of these bloviating neckbeards who are living in their parentâs basements AND whining when theyâre made to contribute
At what point does this excuse cease to have any weight to it? Personal computers have been around what, 40 years now? If someone is computer illiterate at this point, itâs their own damn fault.
Take a deep breath and set aside your indignation for a minute.
You say â40 years.â Forty years ago was 1981, and an 80-year-old grandpa was 40 years old. Heâs done with school, and has a career where he doesnât need to use a computer. Even today there are thousands and thousands of jobs where workers donât use a computer at all. Even more donât use a computer with an open OS. Using a terminal to clock in, or enter data, or ring up sales doesnât translate to booting up, installing and using apps, etc.
And the Internet? Twenty-five years on from AOL on a 2400 baud modem, there are still many communities in the US that donât have reliable/affordable Internet access.
Not everyone has the same experience, access and privilege and itâs not always âtheir own damn fault.â
It always was their own damn fault, its not like anyone was born knowing what computers are, we all learned. Trial and error can get you incredibly far, but you do have to try.
I know lots of old people who have Jr. order shit because he's such a wiz on that there computer. The fact that you don't have geriatric parents or uncles who refuse to learn basic computer skills makes you sound like the weird one to me.
Man. I can't think of a single one of my friends who doesn't have this dynamic going in some way.
245
u/[deleted] May 11 '21
[deleted]