Boomers and certainly gen X/older milenials are probably more into tinkering and getting it working…it guides for zoomers with their point and click tablet/ipad interface or SaaS that need guides.
As a youth of the late 80s I know bbs, forums, etc
I would not include boomers but I get what your saying. Gen z isn’t a monolith though and neither is Gen x. Some people are techies and won’t have a problem figuring out the fediverse. Non techie “normies” will probably get confused and write it off unless it becomes more accessible. Good thing apps are coming!
This exactly. I navigated setting up BBSs and using them before commercial Internet. Then when Internet came to my city, you had to dial into your slip account first. Reddit’s ancestors were usenet groups. You login to your news service (usually your ISP) and then browse the groups that interested you. Each group is like a subreddit, it would be discussion on a specific topic. If you wanted to see a video, you had to download it in parts (often only getting SOME of the parts, then having to post requests for files by their part number and then wait a few days) and then use another program to recombine them into one file. Then you needed to download an app that would play that particular file type (avi, mpg, etc). You would also need to download and install the correct video codecs.
My experiences with the Fediverse so far remind me of those late 80s early 90s years, when the Internet didn’t have a corporate polish. I am a GenXer, and I welcome growth of the Fediverse. I don’t need Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, etc to die or fail. I am just thrilled to feel like I can come here and SEE what is here to be seen. I don’t want my social experiences tailored by an algorithm designed to keep me engaged and eyes on ads.
This, to me, is how the Internet flourishes. Not controlled by corps.
lol. Babyboomers and Gen X invented and built the internet. We programmed VCR’s and could navigate dial-up settings for v90modems. Maybe write a guide for gen Z, as anything more complex than a swipe is too much technology for them XD
I feel there’s more nuance to this and this is an inaccurate and disingenuous generalisation.
A very small portion of baby boomers and gen x were involved in this compared to the masses who simply exist as sheep.
The “enlightened” ones are a minority in every generation from what I can see.
I also feel this whole my generation > your generation is just another mechanism of segregation. Instead let us bring forth our collective knowledge of setting VCR times and laugh about getting to the last floppy/stiffy disk in a set and finding corruption because… magnets.
It really is just Gen Z. Millenials were programming shit and bashing everything together with hardware and software adaptors as kids. Gen Z grew up in the world of the slick interface that just works.
During the age wars (because that is somehow a thing…) this comes up all the time.
The reality is that most millenials also have absolutely zero understanding of problem solving. They want "a script I can follow’ just as much as boomers and genx and all the other fairly arbitrary demarcations.
Zoomers benefit from having very intuitive interfaces. We aren’t going to go backwards on that. Hell, we can already start to see the shift between “I intuitively know to swipe these menus” becoming “I just ask the voice assistant which connects to an LLM to interpret what I want it to do”. And that is a good thing.
The Internet likes to pretend millenials are all tech gods. As someone who has supported, worked with, and managed millenial, boomer, and increasingly zoomer people in even “computer science” levels of “tech”: We very much aren’t. Some people (self included) had a passion for it growing up and continue to learn how to do new stuff. Other people are basically Jen from the IT Crowd who understand enough to sound competent to complete idiots. And other people will stop work for a month if you move one of their shortcuts or get rid of python in favor of python3.
And we can very much see this with the shift to fediverse apps. Plenty of folk STILL insist that Mastodon is too complicated because… it is basically email levels of domains after your username. And those are the same people who are bragging about how they love their steam deck because they can install so many plugins and change so many settings.
This misconception comes from the fact that gen X were basically the first crowd to be the bulk of the Internets at the dawn of it, and all of them were technically proficient enough to do it, so there is a bias: you had to know something about computers to be on the internet. Nowadays you don’t need to know anything, the barrier is virtually non-existent and basically anyone can do internets with their phone and some “app” without knowing anything at all about how it works or how to setup a connection or even type an address.
Most of us were and are pretty dumb when it comes to technology or even problem solving, nothing changed in that regard.
Bro get people from reddit to use Lemmy. Create guides for boomers so that they know how to register and navigate lemmy
Boomers and certainly gen X/older milenials are probably more into tinkering and getting it working…it guides for zoomers with their point and click tablet/ipad interface or SaaS that need guides.
As a youth of the late 80s I know bbs, forums, etc
I would not include boomers but I get what your saying. Gen z isn’t a monolith though and neither is Gen x. Some people are techies and won’t have a problem figuring out the fediverse. Non techie “normies” will probably get confused and write it off unless it becomes more accessible. Good thing apps are coming!
This exactly. I navigated setting up BBSs and using them before commercial Internet. Then when Internet came to my city, you had to dial into your slip account first. Reddit’s ancestors were usenet groups. You login to your news service (usually your ISP) and then browse the groups that interested you. Each group is like a subreddit, it would be discussion on a specific topic. If you wanted to see a video, you had to download it in parts (often only getting SOME of the parts, then having to post requests for files by their part number and then wait a few days) and then use another program to recombine them into one file. Then you needed to download an app that would play that particular file type (avi, mpg, etc). You would also need to download and install the correct video codecs.
My experiences with the Fediverse so far remind me of those late 80s early 90s years, when the Internet didn’t have a corporate polish. I am a GenXer, and I welcome growth of the Fediverse. I don’t need Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, etc to die or fail. I am just thrilled to feel like I can come here and SEE what is here to be seen. I don’t want my social experiences tailored by an algorithm designed to keep me engaged and eyes on ads.
This, to me, is how the Internet flourishes. Not controlled by corps.
It feels free and exciting again.
lol. Babyboomers and Gen X invented and built the internet. We programmed VCR’s and could navigate dial-up settings for v90modems. Maybe write a guide for gen Z, as anything more complex than a swipe is too much technology for them XD
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I feel there’s more nuance to this and this is an inaccurate and disingenuous generalisation.
A very small portion of baby boomers and gen x were involved in this compared to the masses who simply exist as sheep.
The “enlightened” ones are a minority in every generation from what I can see.
I also feel this whole my generation > your generation is just another mechanism of segregation. Instead let us bring forth our collective knowledge of setting VCR times and laugh about getting to the last floppy/stiffy disk in a set and finding corruption because… magnets.
Lol you assume all boomers invented and built the internet ? Wait till you meet my uncle.
Heck, genXers are the only generation who can set the clock on a VCR. A skill now lost to time and technology.
It really is just Gen Z. Millenials were programming shit and bashing everything together with hardware and software adaptors as kids. Gen Z grew up in the world of the slick interface that just works.
No, we grew up on Vista and 8.
During the age wars (because that is somehow a thing…) this comes up all the time.
The reality is that most millenials also have absolutely zero understanding of problem solving. They want "a script I can follow’ just as much as boomers and genx and all the other fairly arbitrary demarcations.
Zoomers benefit from having very intuitive interfaces. We aren’t going to go backwards on that. Hell, we can already start to see the shift between “I intuitively know to swipe these menus” becoming “I just ask the voice assistant which connects to an LLM to interpret what I want it to do”. And that is a good thing.
The Internet likes to pretend millenials are all tech gods. As someone who has supported, worked with, and managed millenial, boomer, and increasingly zoomer people in even “computer science” levels of “tech”: We very much aren’t. Some people (self included) had a passion for it growing up and continue to learn how to do new stuff. Other people are basically Jen from the IT Crowd who understand enough to sound competent to complete idiots. And other people will stop work for a month if you move one of their shortcuts or get rid of
pythonin favor ofpython3.And we can very much see this with the shift to fediverse apps. Plenty of folk STILL insist that Mastodon is too complicated because… it is basically email levels of domains after your username. And those are the same people who are bragging about how they love their steam deck because they can install so many plugins and change so many settings.
This misconception comes from the fact that gen X were basically the first crowd to be the bulk of the Internets at the dawn of it, and all of them were technically proficient enough to do it, so there is a bias: you had to know something about computers to be on the internet. Nowadays you don’t need to know anything, the barrier is virtually non-existent and basically anyone can do internets with their phone and some “app” without knowing anything at all about how it works or how to setup a connection or even type an address.
Most of us were and are pretty dumb when it comes to technology or even problem solving, nothing changed in that regard.