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…And yet again, Gen X has been forgotten.
Cool cool.
I kinda prefer it that way. Leave me the fuck out of this bullshit. I’m not stepping on knocks the way Boomers did but I’m also old and tired enough that it’s not going to be me leading the charge for change. I’ll deal with my own PDFs.
Y’all are the ones that know how to make the printer work, which is wizardry to millennials and boomers alike
What? I’m a millennial Nd I know how to make a printer work
I wouldn’t expect gen x to be as largely known for computer illiteracy as those two generations
One of which who first heard of computers as this strange new technology nobody’s heard of, and the other entering adulthood while desktop computers are slowly becoming irrelevant for some if not most
So in my perslective I would’ve thought Gen X was right there with Millenials in the sweet spot
gen x and y are bullshit arbitrary classifications based on years…. (boomer is based on a real event that makes that generation distinct, so that makes sense)
the true computer masters are the Oregon Trail generation… if you remember the Oregon Trail video game in elementary school, you grew up with computers everywhere but just the terminal and no pictures, and got to interact with it evolving into weird pocket computers and shit….Yeah, generations in general are bullshit arbitrary classifications based on years.
I agree about the boomer name, too.
I actually thought I am part of this blessed generation that can use a computer. But rotating a PDF? That beats me.
PDF is a pointless file format that should not exist. Come at me.
10000 times better than the previously mainstream way which was people sending you office docs expecting you could open that shit.
Yes, but not just that. Opening a document in Word is for the writer.
A pet peeve of mine is when I’m sent a user guide as a Word document complete with squiggly lines under the words it doesn’t know.
Even worse is when a colleague sends a document like that to a customer.
PDF is a published file format, I find it hard to imagine a world where you could convince me downloading the user manual for my motherboard or downloading Lego assembly instructions should come as a word document.
I bet this person thinks all raster images should be bitmaps. Sorry maybe that was too harsh.
Pointless?? Really? We should have just stuck with postscript? I’m pretty happy with pdf for almost anything as there’s a good chance it’ll render how whoever sent it to me was seeing it. What would you suggest/do different?
It’s good for sending documents you don’t want to be tampered with because most people don’t know how to edit a PDF.
You can lock other file formats too though
Pdf will always look the same though. A doc/docx file can look wildly different depending on the editor you are using.
This. I care about graphic design and aesthetics. So when I send a document to a group for review, I’m not taking the risk of giving them something they could mess with.
Just pick up your laptop and rotate it to whatever angle you want.
Ctrl+shift+plus sign
The real skillset isn’t necessarily knowing how to do these things off tbe top of your head, but knowing how to look them up.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle for the next generation is how thoroughly Google has enshittified.
Cobbling together four different online tutorials about a vague idea you think the damn program should do is the original “vibe programming”. I am looking at you Power Automate.
Sounds like something imagemagick could do so that would be my first strategy to try
LibreOffice Draw should work just fine for that :)
Are you joking right now? I tried opening a pdf with Libre Draw recently but it didn’t work.
Try OnlyOffice.
Or just open it with Firefox like a normal person.
KDE Okular to your rescue!
We got a new kid around 19 working at our office for processing data and I hate how true this is. The amount of times I’ve had to say “No, you have to double click to open folders” is entirely too many. Either that or “You have to actually right click on the icon you want to copy you can’t just click anywhere on the screen.”
You know, I can forgive tech illiteracy. I don’t like it, but I can forgive it. What I can’t forgive is a basic inability to retain new information.
You gotta teach someone to double click on something to open it? Fine. But you should only have to do that once.
Fuck me I’m not ready for that. You expect it from the old people but I might have to leave the room if a young person asked me something like that.
In high school I had to teach a kid how a mouse worked.
I mean, I know millennials who don’t own a computer. Just phones. They got young kids. Not sure if those are alpha at this point or whatever, but how are they supposed to learn it if they got nowhere to practice?
Quite a few working class kids and teens grow up like this.
I teach undergrads, and every year basic computer skills get worse and worse. I guess it’s not entirely their fault, but things like just asking them to save a file to their computer is insanely difficult. Lots of universities are starting to get task forces to figure out how to teach (or where to teach rather) basic digital skills, it it’s all going to hit the workforce really soon en masse.
Let it all implode. I’m sure the companies will thrive with this reality with the bonus of AI slop on top that all these people will be using and putting in all system across our society.
We are getting this teached in 6th grade what country is this from?
You get one guess.
US?
That’s a BINGO!
(I’m old enough to have received a decent education here and capable of observing the noticeable decline over the past ~30 years)
The amount of times I’ve had to say “No, you have to double click to open folders”
That’s a real problem when you’re used to Kde and have to use a windows machine.
(Why is this damn thing so slow ? Oooh, right, double click)
You can absolutely configure Windows to open folders – and all other shortcuts – with a single click, and IIRC one of the knocks against Windows ME was that this was the default option. And it was godawful, along with the “click” noise it made on navigation. (I think it was WinME. I’ve probably suppressed the memory, and rightly so.)
But the long and short of it is if you want consistency between your UI’s in that regard you can indeed have it.
I use KDE Neon and have used Kubuntu before. Double click to open a folder is the default, same as Windows.
It is in the latest versions but it’s very recent. The default has always been single click. They changed it because of windows users.
Let me guess: they’re talking about Millennials, and are entirely forgetting about Gen X once again.
For once they didn’t forget gen X-- I think OP is about xennials
Gen X could write a program that’ll make a floppy drive’s loading noises play the Imperial March.
Or those of us from Gen Z that where born just at the cutoff and got tech acces at a way to young age.
Hahaha its funny each time that happens.
My uncle is GenX and way smarter than my millennial ass. They paved the way for child free poppin off and being tech savvy with a normal tech free upbringing.
Anecdotal I know. But always funny how self centered us millenials can be thinking were the last normal generation.
GenX can’t use computers either.
The generation that grew up with ZX Spectrum, C64, Amiga etc knows how to use computers.
Fine. Gen X can’t use modern computers.
Some can’t. Computers weren’t commonplace until many GenXers were in their 20s, so some never learned. Those that did learn often learned the deep magic.
The generation that used them to create the new generation of smart devices? Sure.
The generation that made most of the websites and software associated with the internet?
I figured they were talking about the Oregon Trail generation. It’s made up of the folks who were old enough and young enough to play the game in schools and spans across parts of X and millennials.
That’s a great way to describe our larger cohort! I’m going to use that. I’ve got so many friends across the Gen-X to Millenial range that all feel like members of the same generation.
Not my term, I just happily co-opted it.
My copy was on a casette
Commodore? I know they had a tape drive and the game. I had an old TI 99/4A with a tape drive and we had Chisholm Trail but it was different.
Probably. But if I’m being generous, we’re really only talking about younger X and older millennials.
I heard millennials can’t even grow a proper long beard
Yea but our mustache game is unmatched by anyone pre-1920’s.
Are they the same generation whose parents said “they’re really good with computers …they go on the iPad all the time”?
WhAt’S a CoMpUtEr?
An IPad is a computer with a touchscreen interface instead of mouse and keyboard
Thanks for reminding me, now I’m angry.
Glad I could brighten up your day!
For fuck’s sake, give us 2005-2007 kids a microgeneration. We’re like late zillennials.
I’m old, Gandalf. I may not look it, but I feel this meme in my bones.
Computers have been dumbed down and simplified for the masses. When I was a kid a computer did not cooperate until you raised your voice.
Hello, COMPUTER!!!
SLAMS DESK HELLO!
FathER!
FaaaThERR!
It was always a struggle to get the damn thing to do what you wanted it to. It turned out to be a good thing long term.
Even as a teenager (didn’t have a computer before that) I had infinite patience with computers, you can fix/change/make anything with enough time, nothing will be better if you get mad and ignore reading and making sure you understand what’s happening. Seeing how young people handle tech now is fucking depressing, they just click past everything without reading, get mad and rage quit after 30 seconds of something not working and think anything that’s more than two clicks/taps is too complicated.
You talking about young people or old people?
Young, most old people I know either don’t know anything and are fine with that, they get help for even the simplest things, or they can handle it themselves without problems.
I do industrial programming. Everything is so far behind that yelling at the “computers” does nothing. Physical violence is just about the only thing they respect.
That’s where the term punch card comes from
FORTRAN? More like, these hands. Put 'em up, numb nuts.
Percussive maintenance is surprisingly helpful a lot of the time.
Until your trackpad is acting up a bit and you become so frustrated you smack it and now it hardly ever works.
Same with flinging a laptop across the room, which ultimately became my excuse to replace a 12yo Sony laptop.
A blowie works a lot more often.
More flies with honey they say… but i still cant get this usb right the first try.
This often devolves into Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly.
therapeutic at least
As long as you don’t let too much magic smoke escape.
If the magic smoke comes out, that’s entirely the electrician/electrical designer’s fault. Their circuits shouldn’t have let me do that.
I would love to have more effective means to threaten inanimate objects.
Yeah, newer generations have been raised on tech that “just worked” consistently. They never had to do any deep troubleshooting, because they never encountered any major issues. They grew up in a world where the hard problems were already figured out, so they were insulated from a lot of the issues that allowed millennials to learn.
They never got a BSOD from a faulty USB driver. They never had to reinstall an OS after using Limewire to download “Linkin_Park-Numb.mp3.exe” on the family computer. Or hell, even if they did get tricked by a malicious download, the computer’s anti-virus automatically killed it before they were even able to open it. They never had to manually install OS updates. They never had to figure out how to get their sound card working with a new game. They never had to manually configure their network settings.
All of these things were chances for millennials to learn. But since the younger generations never encountered any issues, they never had to figure their own shit out.
Or reinstall the OS on the family computer because one of your dumbass siblings downloaded a sUpeR cOoL song from one of their friends on MSN Messenger.
And that is why I’ll only allow my kids to use Linux!
And when that wasn’t enough, the fists came out.
There are TWO generations between Boomers and Zoomers.
It’s funny how Bs and Zs kind of horseshoe into being ignorant about how computers work. Boomers never had them growing up, while Zoomers were born with phones in their hands using corporate apps and never learned how computers actually work. Those of us in between had to learn how they worked to use them.
I mean, I know millennials who don’t own a computer. Just phones. They got young kids. Not sure if those are alpha at this point or whatever, but how are they supposed to learn it if they got nowhere to practice?
Quite a few working class kids and teens grow up like this.
Like birds and New Zealand, gen x doesn’t exist online.
It’s easy to forget us because we’ll just say “whatever” when you do.
I’m partial to “meh.”
The amount of my students that wrote the whole email in the subject line is crazy. At first I thought it was a mistake or something. But there are sooo many…
They also don’t know what a file browser/explorer is. As soon as the download notification is gone, the file doesn’t exist anymore.
Giving files proper names? Unheard of!
deleted by creator
I’m pretty computer literate (I’m using Fedora silver blue now and I’m a cyber college student), and I’m gen z.
I hated our digital literacy units in school, because it was always the most braindead shit every year. Stuff that you shouldn’t have to explain to a person every year, like digital footprint (think before you post), make sure it’s a https website, and misinformation vs disinformation. I wanna cry because my tech and society class I’m taking right now feels like the same shit, but I’m paying now.
I’m not sure how they should revamp, but maybe they need to show modern examples like the honey scam, the thousands of Tiktok influencers who admitted they lied about the stuff they sold when they thought the service was shutting down, and how Google search is forcing shitty AI results. But we do have the unit, it just feels braindead to anyone like me who gives a damn about the services they use online. But I’m a nerd who looks at privacy/cyber shit for fun for hours, not TikTok dual screen braindead…
ability to discern facts from msinformation/disinformation
But… I love the uneducated…
Giving files proper names? Unheard of!
What kinda monster manages to live like this??? I say hushedly deleting flsjfjsjfksj.pdf
Asdf.txt, asdf2.txt, asdf.m3u, asdf.odf…
I have a coworker who named a file template after the person they were sending the file to. I cannot follow the logic.
So many Boomers I know do the subject line thing, I had no idea it was a Zoomer thing too. Oh no…
I often leave the subject line blank, is that better or worse?
Yes, officer, this one right here
About the same level… Put a subject people can search for.
As soon as the download notification is gone, the file doesn’t exist anymore.
That seems to be how Android literally works though.
Gen Z is not the same thing as Gen Alpha. Gen Z grew up on PC.
All my homies hate excel
Not true
Millennials think it’s them , because they learned how. Gen X knows, because they wrote it.
Yea surprise some people are good at using computers some are bad, has nothing to do with whatever generation someone is apart of, generation labels are so dumb. Literally every “milleinal” I’ve known comes to me for their computer problems.
There are two generations that can do this task X and millennials.
Forgot the forgotten again
