Gen X - who, let’s face it, wrote most of this stuff - gets forgotten again.
Fine with me. Leave us the hell alone.
Oh it’s a printer? I, uh, yeah, no I don’t know anything about printers sorry.
PC Load Letter? What the fuck does that mean?!
Gen X is the Aslan lion meme: “Do not cite the deep computer repair magic to me, Millennial. I was there when it was written.”
Asian lion?
They mean Aslan, aka big kitty Jesus, from the Narnia books.
I read big kitty Jesus as big titty Jesus and was confused
You’re thinking of Gandalf Big Naturals. Easy mistake to make.
Better than Wither Big Naturals
Damn autocorrect.
As one of those Gen-X that actually helped create the dumpster fire we call the modern Internet, I have come to realize that we fall into two camps. You either look young enough to be classified as a Millennial (my wife) or you look old enough to immediately be thrown in the Boomer bucket (me)…which is really unfair because no other generation has hated and fought the fucking Boomers longer than us.
I’d love to show some GenZ photos of Matt Damon, Bem Affleck, Cillian Murphy, etc. and ask them what generation they think they are.
The struggle is, we all live long enough to be the next boomers. Maybe in 10 years it is: “OK, Gen-X”
I think what’s happening is Millenials are starting to get the “OK Boomer”.
Before I deleted Facebook entirely, I briefly flirted with a Facebook group of Aussie gen xers for a bit of nostalgia, and I had to quit after only a few weeks because the ‘back in my day’ crowd became too insufferable. It’s already happened.
And while gen X definitely were instrumental in creating much of modern tech, most of them are still pretty hopeless at it. Watching some of my similarly aged colleagues trying to use a computer is an exercise in frustration.
Eh. Genx understood how to work a VCR and deal with the rat’s nest of cables behind the TV
Computers are millennials
Utter BS. I’m on the old end of Gen X and I’m still building PCs for people and troubleshooting their shit when it breaks. I have yet to meet a much younger person who can do it as well.
Gen X seem to be either computer people or totally unaware. Millennials seem to be generally much less knowledgeable than the former and much more knowledgeable than the latter. Obviously there are millennials who are computer people, but my conception of them is more people who got computer science degrees than the person who lives in a shack in the woods and builds his own robots. Boomer computer people are even more formidable.
I’m not saying that’s true, but it’s the stereotype I have in my head.
Well put.
People can be exceptions to the norm. Most GenX we all interact with are as hopeless as the boomers.
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No we’re not!!
Its almost like the “generations” are mostly arbitrary with a lot of overlap
We were the first (of non-computer types) to adopt the web. We rode the AOL Instant Messenger train. What are you talking about.
AOL instant messenger was late to the party. ICQ started the instant messaging fad… that little “uh oh” notification sound is permanently burned into my brain.
Fuck that sound.
presses Ctrl+G to foghorn
I was on ICQ as well, but most people weren’t. I was generalizing to the contemporary audience.
Most millenials I deal with don’t know how anything works. They know apps and swiping screens. They are computer competent, knowing how to use them. Like knowing how to drive a car doesn’t mean you are a mechanic. They frequently know how do basic fixes like rebooting or reinstalling but less frequently have any true troubleshooting understanding. I don’t claim all millenials are like that, but broad stroke its not uncommon. I’d never say the generation as a whole is THE technical one though. I know more Gen Z that are technical by far, but that seems more matching Gen X to me. They either know technology or don’t. Nothing in between.
Your also on Lemmy so you’re the exception not the rule.
Older Millenial here. It was definitely GenX that paved the way for the computer world I learned, and it was mostly GenX who wrote the books and taught the lessons (often informal) that brought us what knowledge we have, at least in the beginning. Plus a small selection of exceptional individuals from older generations, including, dare I say it,… the baby boomers.
There is a big difference between having the people who invented something and being the people who families (and companies…) depend on to keep them running. This being about the latter.
Or, at least, in my family, we tended to not tell the engineers at Ampex to get their butts downstairs because dad didn’t understand why the color was off on the football game he recorded last night
Older millennial here, too. This is absolutely correct. (Btw we are called xenials 1981–86)
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Whatever
no, they’re just choosing to not fuck with this shit because they’ve had enough
Hey, Millennial here. Just a friendly reminder to drink your metamucil today
I don’t know about you, but I quit doing that soul crushing work as soon as I could something I really loved.
They said boomers so same dif.
at this point it’s pretty funny….
Ahhh I see. So what you’re saying is that Gen X is actually the root of our problems? Boomers were just another symptom that needed a GUI.
To my fellow Gen X’ers…
Shhh!
Let someone else deal with the inept on the other end of the phone. Be happy we’re being ignored again.
I was going to complain, but you’re damned right.
Silence is golden.
And duct tape is silver
Millenial here:
This is good advice, sage even.
…
EDIT:
I didn’t forget the couple of extremely cool and also very knowledgable Gen X mentors/bosses I had, hahah!
I’ve spent the last decade training Millennials just for that task.
I’ll be over here screwing with the K8S cluster if you need me.
You seniors and your K8s I tell you whut
At this point I’m happy to let someone else do it. Being everybody’s tech support sucks. I can just tinker with and enjoy my own setups in peace.
The generation that couldn’t be bothered.
“Meh”
Whatchu got going for you, pal? Crippling anxiety? Unable to socialize? Helplessly uninspired? The creativity of a mushroom?
Meh.
A denial.
A denial.
A denial.
A denial.
A denial.
Edgy.
i figured gen z would start fixing my computer once i hit my current age (41); turns out i dont know any gen z’s that understand how computers work.
im really tired of being everyone’s tech support :(
I know of one, and it’s my kid. And they’re just as frustrated as I am about how little their peers know about computers
i did the world a favor and decided to not have kids. sadly, this also means i am unable to hand down a generation’s worth of computer knowledge, heh.
Mentorships exist and a lot of kids are hungry for knowledge. We can help the ones that want to learn, but maybe aren’t given a lot of opportunities.
Depending on definitions, I’m either a millennial or gen-z. Some of my team mates are awesome and know everything there is to know about computers. Others have knowledge gaps that make me question whether they went to uni. They’re also the same people who commonly don’t know how to find answers to things. They’re also the people proclaiming the loudest about the greatness of Gippers
Gippers?
Kind of a fond/humanised name for chat gpt me and some colleagues use. We’ve dubbed it our idiot friend, ‘Gippers’. Its commonly wrong and there’s a group of colleagues who trusts it and a group who doesn’t. I think we anthropomorphised the machine a little, and also its maybe a little cringey.
It’s funny how bubbles can change so much. In my personal experience, most Gen Z people know their way around computers and how to fix stuff. I regularly help my millennial sister with stuff like that.
41 myself and the future scares me for too many reasons, this definitely being one of them.
I am Gen Z, I can copy paste commands from online forums into the terminal, then proceed to fuck shit up. 🫠
(Don’t ask me to type commands from memory, I’d rather use windows spyware than deal with command line torture)
You just have to practice more! Though while I’m pretty good with computers Linux does still scare me a little too, I have a habit of poking around where I’m not supposed to and Linux is more than happy to let you break things
This is how I am for the part (including most people who aren’t computer enthusiasts or CS degree holders). I know my limits on what I am willing to do with command lines because I don’t have time to memorize all that shit.
I am gen z and just writing my bachelor’s thesis for computer science/Cybersecurity. Many of my peers are in CS too.
as a software engineer who didnt go to college, i am not talking about programming; i have peers at work who have a masters degree in CS who know nothing about computers.
i’m talking about troubleshooting problems and fixing them by telling your boomer aunt what to do over a video call when her keyboard makes her computer too slow for her cat to read her favorite comic when she presses the “G” key.
And again, generation X completely forgotten about.
Yep
We fix our own damn computers before the Millenials get out of bed.
The whole history of this meme is a tired Boomer-tier joke. It’s 9gag material at this point.
We’re already at that end of the alphabet again?
lol. My dad’s a retired engineer and my mom was a computer programmer. Literal actual baby boomers.
I work in IT. Gen-X. Which you forgot because you’re bad.
My daughter just got her degree in Cybersecurity. Millennial.
tl;dr: STFU with this stupid inter-generational tribalism, it’s wrong and stupid.
Tldr; you got your feelings hurt over a meme
Gen x doesn’t have feelings
My dad’s a retired engineer and my mom was a computer programmer. Literal actual baby boomers.
My grandpa was a robotics engineer and thus knew how to use a PC quite well but watching him operate Windows 10 basically without utilizing any tools that came after DOS was bizarre.
To Microsoft’s credit, they have historically been very good about ensuring backwards compatibility. There are a few notable exceptions, but for the most part you can treat Windows as if it is DOS, and it still mostly works.
j/k That’s awesome.They aren’t saying every person of those generations is the same. Your family is very techy and it makes sense that they’d be knowledgeable, but the point of the meme is that there was a generation that grew up with tech that kinda worked most of the time, forcing them to learn how to use it to be effective, leading to a higher proportion of people knowing how computers work. Nowadays, except if your job is fixing computers, the chance you know them in-depth and how to tinker with them is much lower, because there is no need, they just work most of the time.
Your family is very techy and it makes sense that they’d be knowledgeable, but the point of the meme is that there was a generation that grew up with tech that kinda worked most of the time, forcing them to learn how to use it to be effective,
The problem is their dates are off. Home Computers went mainstream in 1977 with the Apple II.
I saw this as a millennial and immediately thought to myself “did they forget GenX built the internet?”
I’m a xennial or whatever you wanna call us and I can’t stand the generational cold war that takes place in our society
The generation labels are arbitrary anyway, I wish people would drop this dumb bullshit.
You’re all educated professionals. This meme is more about your average user.
Conversely, me and my whole family is dumb as fuck, every generation.
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Actually agree.
By age I would be late gen-Z / almost gen-A. I grew up in rural middle-east and was introduced to home internet for first time in highschool(2020)
Where would I fall?
First introduction to Internet in late highschool or College means you’re a gen X.
You can keep still, or whatever, but frankly it doesn’t matter. You don’t matter. Your parents (Boomer’s) mortgaged your generations, and everyone since, future for a pointless capitalist nightmare.
Totally normal response to a meme.
And we GenX are happily left out of this one.
Left out of the meme, not left out of being called to fix shit.
We truly are the middle child of generations, forgotten until we are needed.
It’s OK - whenever we’re not left out we opt out anyway…
I wish
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Gen X invented the fucking tech from discrete 7400 logic.
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Ok but what about Gen X?
We could fix it too, but we don’t wanna.
We’re burned out. It’s time to pass the soldering iron.
I tried to get into the whole Arduino thing as a Gen Xer. I couldn’t believe the complexity and back story you need to know before getting started. Totally baffled by the whole thing. Just give me a processor, some memory and a serial port. Why do I need an IDE, drivers, a bootloader, fifteen different kinds of whatevers I don’t understand, yes, I am burned out, where are the Doritos?
You can just install and invoke the compiler directly, and you only need a driver if you’re on windows and using the bootloader to program it, and you don’t need a bootloader if you have an ISP (programmer) so you can flash it directly, and you don’t need anything else though one of the main reason people use Arduino is for the libraries
I just wanted to generate a simple pulse from a switch press. Needless to say since I needed a breadboard anyway, I just popped in a 74LS123 with a resistor and a capacitor. I couldn’t even begin to understand what I needed to get that pulse from an Arduino. And I used to program PICs bare metal. It’s like the complexity traded places. On the PIC, the tools and process are dead simple. But writing the code for the little monsters required understanding every opcode and peripheral and how they interact. It looks like on the Arduino, I can just type sleep(5000) but to set up the whole thing to get there is where the complexity lies.
If you buy an arduino dev board it’ll come with the bootloader already installed, so you just install the ide, install the driver if you’:re usingc windows, plug in the board, press upload and you’re done?
They’re too tired for that too. They’re more of a “blow in the hole and jiggle it” people.
Napping. Wake me up when September ends.
Let’s be fair, we millennial know how to fix stuff because stuff still can be fixed. We can glance back one generation away and learn about how stuff work back then, and also learn how to fix those stuff. Nowadays stuff aren’t meant to be fixed, (late) gen z doesn’t have thing to start tearing apart and learn about the inner working of stuff, because it’s all glued/snapped together, with the culture being once broke just toss.
Computers themselves are still pretty fixable.
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Shh, we get to be anonymous, tech literate and be able to buy our own houses.
Shhh - let the Millennials do it, they need the validation, and most of us need a nap.
There are some parts of Gen Z that can actually tear stuff apart and actually fix systems, but those are the nerds (which also includes me) that care enough to actually learn stuff. The majority is quite tech illiterate
Millenial here, its actually the same for us. Most millenials dont actually know how to fix a computer, either.
I know enough Millennials who don’t know shit. “My email address is www…”
Same. My older brother got scammed by the “hello this is paypal. Your account got hacked.” Eventhough i told him to hang up and that it is a scam
Anyone can get scammed, they just have to get you with your guard down.
Yeah i got scammed because they called while i was talking to a mechanic about my breakes. So i was rather distracted
There are luddites in every generation.
Yeah GenX is STILL doing this. Though be of good cheer my millennial brethren…When Skynet takes over, we’ll be secure as long as we slave for the overlords. The rest…?
We’ll pray for you.
Even Skynet will forget Gen X, trust me.
“Humanity eliminated!”
Meanwhile Gen X and New Zealand:
And Wyoming, because Wyoming doesn’t exist.
If you all didn’t want to be the New Zealand of generations you would’ve had your mom give birth earlier or later duh.
Just like New Zealand should push itself closer to a continent if it wants to be on maps.
Also as a dum millennial I am always amused when my brethren ask me about social media etc and say I don’t know about tech cause I don’t got an ig account or watever. Bitch please, I have worked in kernel dev I know all the lies we present as a file. I get angy when people that can’t read x86 assembly tell me I’m not technical.
Hahahahaha, take my GenX upvote
Well I don’t know… I worked with boomers who first built out the internet in my country. Now they mostly retired, but the Gen-Xers who remain are also incredible.
My dad who’s also a boomer and an anesthesiologist got admin rights at the hospital he worked at because he helped everyone around with their computer troubles and the tech support trusted him and were happy he reduced their ticket load.
Maybe you guys just know the wrong people.
