In swedish we say “jänkare” as a derogatory term, you don’t have anything similar?
Based Neil Young enjoyer (don’t think I don’t see that user name)
Swedish is exactly the same for the examples you brought upp, but we share a lot with german so its checks out i guess..
worst take ive seen on this site ill fight you
I couldnt find it referenced as anything but labor day anywhere, but who knows I suppose!
Fwiw I have 0 social media presence. This post is the most I’ve done in forever. I didn’t make this post because dad won’t acknowledge my tiktok dance or whatever, i don’t anything except this and youtube for slop. This is about the more specific phenomena of being very tech savvy and into video games, modern shows, etc. while being entirely divorced from their online context. It’s just interesting (and a bit furstrating sometimes admittedly) to me!
I think you’re just a boomer soul and that’s ok. We’ve all got our vices, i have a few internet funny men that i like watching while eating cereal, sue me I guess. Fwiw i find most mainstream online culture horrible too.
Thing is though, dad do be loving the mainstream treats. He’s just completely divorced from the cultural context they exist in, wrt online. Instead of saying copium he quotes a bigoted skit from the 80s or just takes what he reads at face value and gets really upset about it. If he was just a grillpilled grass toucher i wouldn't be making this post, you know?
Yeah i think that’s a good way of looking at it
I agree, if that only were the case with my dad. Instead he religiously reads online newspapers and frequents weird “family” forums where he says he’s “just trolling a bit” but in reality gets super upset about “the feminists” or whatever and brings it up when we’re having a coffee not having seen each other in weeks
Sorry friend i really don't think you do unless you’re on some serious doses of “I can fix him”
Thank you for the long comment! I really like point 2, that sounds about right to me. I am quite tech savvy myself, but most of my peers really aren’t.
About memes, you're correct in that they came along while my parents were busy having a baby, but to put it plainly, my dad is way more into social media than i am. I am a bit of an exception in that i have 0 social media presence and only scroll youtube and hexbear, but still. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that it’s not like my dad is just not interested in internet culture. It’s more that he sort of thinks he is, and to some extent prides himself on being “aware” and gets really upset if I try to tell him that his entire understanding just doesn’t really line up with reality.
It’s not a problem, really. I just find it interesting and wanted to talk about it
Yeah hes definitely the type who spent his youth complaining about old people and now refuses to acknowledge that he has become “old people” lmao
Ok so what I suppose you would call an "elder zoomer" or whatever, born in the span of '98-'02, entering my mid-20s. Get all your geriatric chomsky emotes out of your systems, it's fine. My parents were born in '71 and '72 respectively, meaning they just entered their 50s. My dad has always been a computer guy, played dnd back in the 80s, introduced me and my brother to pirating media growing up, etc. Basically, he's a nerd. He's always been a nerd. He also holds some weird contradictory views ranging from very based (like pirating and hating the US) to very chuddy but that's unrelated for now.
My point is, my dad isn't some tech-illiterate boomer who hates "the iphones and nintendos" or whatever. Despite this, he's completely, and I mean completely oblivious to any and all internet culture. Hell, my mom runs circles around him in terms of being able to understand memes and me and my brother have even gotten her to start using "copium" correctly to my uncle (which is hilarious but also resulted in me having to explain to my extended family what it means during christmas dinner). It's not like my dad didn't get on the internet when it first came around, he was a super early adopter of both cellphones and the internet. I also know that he has spent a not-insignificant amount of time on various hobby forums and so on. He still doesn't know what a "meme" is though, he sends me and my brother "funny pictures" which are all some rank-ass 2012 facebook-funny-page tier shit that always manages to be a bit problematic no matter how innocent the subject matter seems.
He's also incredibly thin-skinned online. He's tried playing online games because, well, he like playing games! He just can't though; he gets so incredibly offended over any and all toxicity (yes toxicity is bad but he's a grown-ass white cishet male he's not exactly being targeted with violent slurs) that it would probably be incredibly humorous as an outsider.
His relationship to media online is also quite interesting. He's fully aware of youtube, with the caveat that to him it's still just the site where you "go to find a grainy video of some indian with a thick accent to fix an obscure tech problem" (paraphrased from him) or where you watch uploads of live concerts or clips from TV shows. Basically any video uploaded after 2010 doesn't exist to him. Youtube is just for home-video amateurs, there's no artistic merit in it, "why would you ever watch someone else play a game? are you stupid"-type-beat, etc. I think if I showed him something like a Jacob Geller essay he would just straight up not get it.
The same goes for video games. While he plays plenty of newer games, he thinks of all games as being either competitive match-based PvP games like counter strike or single player experiences where you play from the start to the end once and then the game is done. I've tried so many times to explain to him that the reason ESO is so weird coming from skyrim is that it's an MMO, and MMOs are fundamentally different. He has no concept of roguelikes or other games that deviate from this standard form of a "cinematic" single-player experience. Just recently he started playing 7 Days to Die and it has been blowing his mind seeing this "super innovative gameplay loop", but instead of contextualizing it in terms of other survival-crafty games, he thinks it's cool because "it's just like Fallout with the scavenging"
Idk people I don't really have a big point to make here at the end. I love my dad even if our relationship is a bit strained, and the stuff I bring up here are not meant to be specific to him. My mom is the same minus the video games in many ways (not understanding that online videos are more than just charlie bit my finger etc). I'm also aware that framing it as a generational thing is a bit unhelpful and all that, but what can you do.
Do you people have similar stories with tech-literate people who are somehow completely out of touch in terms of internet culture? It's somehow fascinating to me, and I think maybe talking about it could help me communicate with my parents about it better.
Last night i dreamt that i was explaining to someone how before Reagan the CIA was HQd in Wyoming and agents got paid extra to live there with their families. Then in the 80s the HQ was moved to California and because of it being a more populated and “nice” state the benefit programs were scrapped for the spooks and it was a whole thing.
Mind you I'm not american, my brain just invents new ways of illustrating how cartoon villain the US government is that they dont even treat their feds decently
What i described above never happened afaik it’s just something my brain made up but i swear of read it on here id be like “yeah ok sounds plausible”
Death to America.