I am mid-40s. My daughter is 11. I take her to school, among other driving things, and usually play NPR. Whenever she needs to refer to what she’s hearing – usually to ask if I’ll turn it off so she can pull up some godawful thing where a random Youtuber squawks discordant lyrics to a Pokémon video game score – she calls it a podcast. I’ve stopped correcting her, particularly since most of the “shows” release as podcasts by the next day anyway.
Remember when we were young and we would say how we would make sure we’re always going to keep with the times and not grow old? Yeah, me too.
Speak for yourself, man. I’m’a go listen to some Zeppelin and read some Shakespeare.
My 7yo son definitely would have no idea about physical formats if he didn’t see my N64 cartridges sitting alongside the Switch lol. I had to explain to him that we had to buy or rent movies and games if we wanted them. Blew his mind.
“We used to have to watch commercials”
“We used to have to wait til the next week to watch the next episode”
“We used to have to wait til we got home to call people”
“We used to wonder out loud about stuff and have to go to the fucking library to find an answer”
My son’s face screws up for all of these
One of the things my friends and I would do in the middle of our lengthy discussions about whatever was to call the library and ask them to settle some dispute or other. They were always sincerely thrilled to help, often to the point of needing to go do research and then call us back.
Here are some other fun ones.
Ask her what she thinks the save icon in Microsoft Word and other programs is. Betcha she doesn’t know what a floppy disk is.
Ask her why her phone camera app icon is that circle with spiral lines and makes that “kscht” sound when taking a photo. Betcha she doesn’t know what a film camera with a mechanical aperture is.
Find a video of an AI generated person talking and note the age at which people younger can immediately clock that it’s AI generated and people older can’t. Right now, my social circle is at about 40 and younger see it, 40 and older don’t. 40-50 seem to be unsure and feel some uncanny valley-ness, while 50+ don’t even suspect anything.
Then ask her to explain some current meme. Skibidi toilet? C’mon, do you honestly even want to know what that means? We’re too old for that crap.
Then ask her to explain some current meme. Skibidi toilet? C’mon, do you honestly even want to know what that means? We’re too old for that crap.
🚽 😠 vs. 📺 👍. The epic of our times. It might not be what we wanted, but it’s what we deserve. 3/10, complete brain rot, I heavily recommend it.
Sounds familiar. Our kids (9 and 7) asked us at dinner the other night what “over the air” meant and what “radio” was. All they know is streaming.
Not surprising. I’m 36 and it feels strange when someone talks about “radio”, “over the air”, “cable tv” and similar old technologies. It’s only been like 10 years since those still existed but it already feels like ancient past.
Can’t speak about everywhere in the world, but broadcast media is pretty much dead. Radio still exists because of cars, but even that is moving towards streaming.
I’m always slightly saddened by my little boy’s “why don’t you just search it up” any time we don’t know something.
I happily remember the days of pub conversations or just chatting shit and arguing with friends over random stuff like how far sound travels per second so you can work out how far away a lightning strike is, or whether it was Paul Rudd or Ryan Reynolds who appeared in an episode of the X-Files, or whether an Amax Eagle Autogyro is faster than an actual eagle.
He doesn’t like to do that and knows I have my phone in my pocket so why don’t’t I just search it up?
