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.
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?
I’m almost 40yo. I got a few good ones explaining stuff to my nephew, who’s now 16:
- The opening in my older computer case, covered with cardboard. It was a floppy disk drive that stopped working, the case predates the marriage of his parents.
- Why we didn’t simply “look it up” to know that the Mew under the truck rumours were false.
- What the fuck “paint online” is supposed to be. (Tibia, a MMO fairly popular among people in my generation, when we were at his age.)
- Weird popular names for money, like “pila” (after a politician, Raul Pilla), “cruzeiro” (old coin, replaced by the real in 1993), or “mirreis” (mil reis, after another coin).
I like it when my daughter shares her young people things with me. I don’t always get them, but it’s interesting to see how the environment she grew up in affects her tastes and what she values.
She was going through a playlist of her music online. I told her it’s really cool she’s able to discover so many different types of music, because when I was young, downloading one song took a long time. Grandma shared her stories about discovering music on the radio and getting music on cassettes. (And also the origin of what a “mix tape” is.)
Looking at the things I found humorous 20ish years ago, I don’t think the kids are all that different really.
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.
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.
