this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
250 points (94.0% liked)

4chan

4877 readers
586 users here now

Greentexts, memes, everything 4chan.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 45 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (7 children)

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.

[–] steeznson@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

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).

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Can’t wait until my peers and I capture the legislators

You're a billionaire?

[–] steeznson@lemmy.world 1 points 52 minutes ago* (last edited 50 minutes ago)

I was thinking of doing it how the boomers have done. Old people make up a majority of the voters, especially if their generation makes up a plurality of the society's demographics. So basically boomers were able to demand all the assistance in terms of acquiring assets (including low taxes) and now they've got them they are demanding all the social security goes their way despite it being less than they paid in initially.

Millenials need to make up for lost time though. Maybe we can tell the politicians we'll only vote for parties that exempt over 60s from any form of taxation and demand that the state retirement payments triple. Just for a start... then we can live another 20-40 years and gradually claw more each year.

Edit: Another idea, we could start building affordable housing again but earmark them as only being for millenials. This is going to be sweet!

[–] Zenith@lemm.ee 4 points 5 hours 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

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 18 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 11 points 11 hours 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.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 5 points 12 hours 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.

[–] yeahiknow3@lemmings.world 21 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (2 children)

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

[–] Derpenheim@lemmy.zip 15 points 18 hours 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.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 8 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I work with new hires all day and they're doing great.

[–] yeahiknow3@lemmings.world 7 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

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 growing up without using computers, are two groups of people that tend to suck at using computers.

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

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] yeahiknow3@lemmings.world 3 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

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).

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours 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.

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 4 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Simplification of UI. Or abstraction of the system via apps.

I work for a MSP and we genuinely had a junior tech not know how to use file explorer. I get they are junior and don't know Active Directory or group policies but not knowing explorer sould make them unhireable as a tech worker.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

we genuinely had a junior tech not know how to use file explorer

Microsoft's done an infuriating job of hiding it to the point where you increasingly need 3rd party tools to manage your desktop.

But the solution is for GenX/Millennial managers to get their enterprise applications off Windows and onto Linux. Not to just get mad at the least sophisticated entry level staffer and blame an entire generation for not growing up on DOS.

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

The dude didn't know how to get the size of a folder or get the file count in a directory.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

So sit him down and teach him.

Should take five minutes.