Ask Lemmy

Menus at restaurants are to be printed not via a QR code and a shitty website.

• I don’t want to have to create an account for everything. Even when account creation was required in the past, it would be enough to have a username and password (sometimes email address). Now often times there are so many unnecessary mandatory fields.

• I like my devices and appliances to have one dedicated function and to do it well, without extra features, preferably available offline. Music is listened to on the mp3. The TV is only the display and never the content source.

• I still prefer in-person interactions, jobs, lessons, and shopping to online ones (but support having online options for those who prefer them).

I genuinely think you should be able to get a job interview by walking into a business and introducing yourself with a firm handshake

writing a billion versions of my resume with matching cover letters and manually inputting all the information already on my resume into individual application forms and then getting rejected by AI screening scripts is making me wish i was dead

I prefer calling people to texting them.

But I also don't like being called.

I guess those are my two wolves.

In person interaction is infinitely superior to anything done online. "Meeting" people online just doesn't hit the same, even with video calls.

I prefer buying stuff in stores rather than online. I need to see it physically before you scam me.

Edit: my back hurts

I miss physical buttons.

I avoid smart home type shit

I hate that every facet of human existence is being monetized.

I hate cloud based services. I don't want to be reliant on and send my data to someone else's computer. Give me local control and local data storage or get off my grass!

The kids' new slang is fucking stupid. My son last night was excited about his skills in the game he was playing and told me he was " cracked " ... cracked?

Man, like, I know we used " bad " to mean good, but come on. Cracked? Cracked is a crazy person. Cracked is how we pirated computer games. Cracked is your engine block after you poured cold water in an overheated car.

This is even stupider than " crashing out " meaning you threw a temper tantrum instead of falling asleep after an up all night acid trip.

I fucking hate it.

I refuse to use overly smart devices. Yes, I have a few zigbee light switches and thermostats that are controlled by a local HomeAssistant installation but why would I want to by my fridge, dishwasher and toothbrush to be connected to the internet?

I don't like "smart" features, I hate being forced to create accounts for everything, I want my data to only be local, I loathe smileys, I'd much rather talk to you face to face, I don't know wtf is an app and why yours is just a wrapper to your webpage, pure html pages with terrible colour choices are fucking class, I say "hacker" to mean "hacker" and not "cracker", I still don't understand the success of tablets, and you look like a dick with your mini doomscroll machine on your wrist.

EDIT: fixing rage induced typos

I despise overly-liberal and even overly progressive-minded young people who are absolutely naive and delusional about society, and can only view the world through their bubble that gets reinforced by their friends and online social groups. And I ain't even talking just about tankies and people down at the bottom of internet brainrot barrels.

I am a progressive and believe in socialism and a borderless world and would fight to the death against fascism. But I'm seeing way, way too many young people tuning out of reality and supporting absolutely dumb-as-fuck takes and having unrealistic expectations about what's going to happen in our world.

The lack of ability to recognize how and why a side you oppose wins and gains power is a biproduct of living with those blinders. The dismissal of millions of people who don't think like you is just as bad as the millions of people who hate you for your identity. We have to get a lot smarter and accept a lot more hard truths about how we're going to keep pushing the needle towards progress. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices like getting out and voting even if you don't like the candidate. Supporting and physically getting involved with community and groups even if you're a self-diagnosed introvert with autism.

For some screwball reason, the concept of forcing yourself to do hard things so you get better at them has become very conservative-coded but it's how we've succeeded against evil for generations. We have to start being a lot tougher and stop balking at people who don't share all your values. We win with community and organized resistance, not constant scolding and trying to be the smartest lefty in line for the camps.

...i expect institutions to protect me...i call my representative and senators and get platitudes...i keep calling...

I don't use tiktok, instagram, and I deleted facebook, it's all targeted advertising slop. My "friends" on facebook didn't interact with me, they interacted with my posts. I made a post stating I was going to delete facebook on X date, and if anyone wanted my contact information they should reach out before then. 1 person reached out to keep in touch. I refuse to download apps on my phone. I already have an internet browser on the phone; one app to rule them all. Why do I need a fucking app for what I can do on your webpage? I switched to linux because both apple and windows are in a race to see who can be the shittiest walled garden that invades your privacy and steals your data, so yeah, I'm still very much, don't trust strangers on the internet, including corporations. No I will not give you my information to get a discount or bullshit rewards points. I'll pay full price, my data is worth way more than your paltry discounts.

I often reference my younger years in the late 1900s about how It was this or that. "Back in my day in the late 1900s" kinda thing

I'm often slow to adopt new tech. Unless that tech actually demonstrates a benefit to me, I don't really want to deal with.

A lot of this is due to cynicism regarding things like privacy/security, planned obsolescence, and enshittification. I also don't want to adopt something that is then discontinued ("unplanned" obsolescence?), so I often wait until something becomes well-established.

Owning a house

My boomer trait is that I frequently type in my password where the username is supposed to go.

Every time you do this change your password immediately. This is shockingly easy to find in logs and match up to the users. You'd be surprised how often application logs are damn near wide open in a log repo to entire IT departments. Just trying to look out for you OP.

I'm constantly ragged on for still calling remote controls "the clicker".

I hate how tech is in everything now. Everything is IOT. Everything can expire because of software abandonment.

You know how you have those 70 year old fridges that still work? I'm sure that new Samsung IOT one will have planned obsolescence after 20 years tops.

You know how we have classic cars? Thing of the past. Locked firmware and phone home capabilities will brick new cars for similar reasons when they become old.

I get annoyed when the price tags are too small to read

Being older that some people, which is apparently what 30% of people call a "boomer"

Your nose ring makes you look like a bull.

I've never used Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok. I'm trying to get away from Facebook currently. I've successfully dumped Twitter, which I hardly used anyway. I only use YouTube because I can still block all ads, but if they ever force ads into my videos, I'll drop it in an instant.

I've never cared for social media except as a way to stay in touch with friends and family, and maybe a way to meet new friends. But modern social media is just garbage content pumped into your feed constantly for clicks and reacts.

The only reason I haven't let go of Facebook is because almost everyone I know is still there. If I dump it, I lose contact with 90% of my social group. I don't really use Facebook anymore though, except to contact people.

EDIT: On a related note, I don't believe children should have electronic devices. Maybe around 10 years old, they should be allowed to carry a locked down phone or something, so their parents can reach them, but they can't browse the Internet or send photos to people, etc.

It was around 2010 or so when I first saw a friend hand their iPad to their 1-yr old to keep them distracted. That was a $600 device! Which was a lot of money for a personal electronic device back then.

As an IT professional who had to fix electronic devices all the time, I mentioned to my friend that a child probably shouldn't have unsupervised access to an iPad, and they told me that's why it has a thick padded case; a lesson they learned when their first iPad got cracked by the child. So the baby broke a $600 iPad and they bought another and handed it back to the kid?! Sheesh...

I buy music instead of paying for a streaming service like Spotify

My joints sound like stepping on a box of Ritz crackers. Does that count?

Sometimes I look old just by the way that I touch the screen of my phone. Wtf.

About every 20 minutes or so, I say "That's how they get ya", while looking up something on my 5-years-out-of-date "smart"phone that can't download any new apps.

I think you should treat others with respect

except like always treat them how you'd like to be treated, not just when it's convenient for you. which seems to be the boomer way. example: boomers loooove bright ass LED headlights when they're driving behind them, but complain when they're blinded by the exact same car facing them.

so the solution is don't use those fucking headlights, right? but all these motherfuckers out here are just buying that shit up and don't see a problem with it. I nearly hit somebody last week because they were crossing 100 m before the intersection in a spot that pedestrians typically do not cross and I couldn't see shit because of the oncoming car right behind them.