Bullshit

And I can’t even tell if it’s because printers have gotten worse or millennials are just the IT department forever.

It is the printer.
I first started dabbling in computing 40 years ago. I took a Basic Class in the back of a Radio Shack.
Printing and printers have always been a fucking nightmare.
It’s 100 % because you no longer need to understand how information technology works in order to use it.
So our parents didn’t know because the tech didn’t exist (or came late in their life), and our kids because they never needed to learn.
- I work in an industry where we use computers all day and this is painfully clear. I grew up with a mouse in my hand, shortcuts are hardwired into my brain. Watching someone right click them slowly move the cursor to copy, then right click and slowly move to paste, then slowly navigate to formulas then click refresh is brutal. It literally takes them 3-4x as long as it takes me to do the same task.
  On the bright side, I only work about 20 hours a week and still outperform them, so thanks I guess?
- It's partially that. It's also because printers do suck more now. Had an HP 5p in the 90s that was a workhorse, reliable as hell, and would simply print whatever you sent. period.
I have a great rule to promote self reliance. I'll gladly help you, but if the answer is in the first 20 results on Google, it costs you 50 euro.
I only had one relative get angry, asking how he was supposed to know if it was. I told him to check, and he angrily said "well then I might as well do it myself".
Exactly.
- Those first 20 results in 2025:
  1-4: AI slop
  5: Reddit thread (no comments)
  6: Reddit thread (comment including the solution has been deleted)
  7-9: AI slop
  10: Microsoft support forum (two pages of generic advice from support workers located in India who get paid a starvation wage)
  11-12: stack exchange (both with poorly written questions followed by angry comments)
  13: quora (nonsense mixed with stuff that somehow actually makes things worse???)
  14: Wikipedia
  15-17: AI slop
  18: Reddit thread (only one comment "nvm figured it out")
  19: Arch Linux forum (links to Arch Wiki)
  20: the actual solut... no wait, it's also AI slop
- 20??? I'm pretty sure if you scroll down past 5 results you're already in the top 1% of users doing so.
I thought this was about Gen X, rooky Gen X mistake, sorry, forgot we forgotten.
- They don't forget us when they are struggling with their computer...
- Same
Today I had to teach two people from different generations, the difference between right and left click.
- Did you mention the center wheel click? No? Probably for the best.
- 💀
Not just millennials… I’ve been family IT support since the late 80s. And not just printers. TVs, cable, VCRs, DVD players, BlueRay, stereos, home theater, networking, WiFi, smart appliances, laptops, tablets, phones, etc.
- Not just millennials… I’ve been family IT support since the late 80s.
  I mean, as a millennial I only missed that by a couple of years. I was already the most computer-literate person in the house when I was 7, in the early '90s.
- I feel like being competent in electronics can be so aggravating depending on how people treat you. I don’t even want to think about those giant tv/dvd/multi-disc changer set-ups with sound systems people had. Rip.
As a Gen X person who also does occasional family tech support, printers have always been shit as far as I can tell.
Also I don't think I've ever encountered a device made by HP that wasn't trash in some way or another.
It's because the kids don't care enough to learn. Seriously.
This is a generalization, it does not include everyone.

Richard Stallman literally started the Free Software Foundation over his frustrations with a printer

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt

Xerox gave the Artificial Intelligence Lab, where I worked, a laser printer, and this was a really handsome gift, because it was the first time anybody outside Xerox had a laser printer. And, you know, copiers jam, but there's somebody there to fix them.

Well, we had an idea for how to deal with this problem. Change it so that whenever the printer gets a jam, the machine that runs the printer can [...] tell the users who are waiting for printouts go fix the printer.

But at that point, we were completely stymied, because the software that ran that printer was not free software. It had come with the printer, and it was just a binary.

And then I heard that somebody at Carnegie Mellon University had a copy of that software. So I was visiting there later, so I went to his office and I said, "Hi, I'm from MIT. Could I have a copy of the printer source code?" And he said "No, I promised not to give you a copy." He had signed a non-disclosure agreement.

Now, this was my first, direct encounter with a non-disclosure agreement, and it taught me an important lesson -- [..] non-disclosure agreements have victims. They're not innocent. [...]

(he goes on for a bit, but ultimately describes never accepting any software that requires signing an NDA ever, and then goes on to write his own unix)

And then I heard that somebody at Carnegie Mellon University had a copy of that software. So I was visiting there later, so I went to his office and I said, “Hi, I’m from MIT. Could I have a copy of the printer source code?” And he said “No, I promised not to give you a copy.” He had signed a non-disclosure agreement.
"this is it kids, this is the moment, right here, where all the madness starts.... " time traveller viewing the birth of free & open source software
- And now you can print from Linux without installing a driver from a cd

Blame tablet culture. Everything is now optimally desgined for user friendliness. Kids can just download an app from the appstore and point at what they want it to do. People don't even know anymore how the filesystem on their computer works. If the dow load pup-up in chrome disappears, they think the download has dissapeared and they need to download it again.

TBF, Android and iOS do not make it clear where files are going when you save them like desktop OSes do. It's almost as if they are intentionally trying to hide their file structure, especially Apple, which is beyond frustrating.
- They are intentionally trying to hide it.
  The default file browsers don't access the entire file structure, what exists and what you can see and edit, without root.
  You can, or at least could, sideload a FOSS filebrowser, much more straightforward UI, doesnt shit itself if you arent logged into it.
  What they instead do is make it really, really easy to upload all your personal files to their cloud, which is either going to cost you time, money, or your privacy.
  Its why Microsoft genuinely doesnt understand why everyone hates OneDrive, why they genuinely don't see a problem with Windows becoming an AI prompt/API with ads.
  Because its basically the same as the mobile UI paradigm.
- I know where mine usually go, but sometimes they go somewhere else. Why did it do that? Where did it go? Sometimes I run a search and still can't find it. Wtf? So, I have re-downloaded when I was in a pinch.
- It's been known since probably the seventies that normies have trouble with hierarchical file systems. UI researchers kept testing the assumptions about file systems, and the results in the majority of populace have always been abysmal. Which is why people have the desktop piled with every file they ever created or downloaded, and why UI designers are trying to move away from shoving file systems into users' faces.
I thought the younger folk would be faster on computers than me but I had to show a junior new hire IT tech what a zip file was and how to open it. Something that I assumed would be second nature to them, they hadn’t seen. Growing up with analog and moving to digital as society progressed, I assumed the next generation would smoke me in tech but it’s been surprising that because tech has “Just worked” for many of them they haven’t had to learn how it works. A blessing and a curse I suppose.
- Honestly sometimes having learned the analog counterpart is really useful. It's a different field but the first time I mixed live audio was on an old analog mixer. It wasn't really all that difficult to use once explained. Shortly after we replaced it with a digital mixer (behringer x32), and I'm so glad that I had the opportunity to use the old analog one because so many concepts would appear, at least to me, difficult to grasp if you're starting out on the digital one.
- The next gen grew up on tablets and iphones and walled gardens that make everything a mystery to them. Corporate infantilisation
- File compression is for poor people.
Everything is now optimally desgined for user friendliness.
Feels like the opposite to me. Modern mobile style interfaces feel extremely hostile, designed to minimise the amount of information the user can extract from the application (and maximise the amount that can be extracted from the user and sold to the highest bidder) and our control over it.
Classic desktop interfaces (and no, the stupid office ribbons are not included in that), even when poorly designed, are many orders of magnitude easier to use and navigate, and provide a lot more tools and information.
- Agree with you on all of it, but the office ribbon I think is actually not bad design. Especially if you use alt shortcuts, you can get pretty quick at accessing a bunch of options via the keyboard.
  The little stupid arrow to show more options notwithstanding.
  Here's a very entertaining video on how bad ribbons can be: https://youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI
- I agree, but we have two have different meanings of user friendly here.
  You: The thing makes it easy to do what I want, to understand what it can do.
  Them: The thing makes it easy to do what the designer wants, makes it easy to understand what the designer wants me to do with it.
Also I've noticed a total lack of curiosity or willingness to learn how to use these products. It takes a little brain power sometimes.
- Brain power, you say?
  Here's a test of Zoomer brain power:
  Ask them to name their favorite Zoomer band.
  Not artist.
  Band.
  Band comprised of Zoomers.
- And a lot of Lemmy could be accused of having the same attitude towards sports, fashion or pop culture. People aren't obligated to be interested in tech, for most people it's a tool, not a hobby.
Literacy and numeracy scores in the US in general peaked in 2012.
If you graduated high school / college around then, statistically, everyone +/-5 or greater your age is generally less literate, less mathematically literate, less knowledgeable than you, ceteris paribus.
- Do you have any data on that? Maybe it's my personal bias but it seems to me, having graduated high school in 2002, that people ten years younger than me tend to be less literate. That's charitable language. They certainly struggle much more with tech.
People never knew how filesystems work. It's been tested time and again, people aside from nerds have trouble with hierarchical filesystems. They had trouble in the eighties, they had trouble in the nineties, had trouble in the two-thousandths and obviously still have trouble today. Saving every single file on the desktop didn't start with tablets.
Nerds just have no idea how the majority of the population fare with computers, and don't know that UI designers in fact test their UIs and continually check their assumptions. But nerds are cocksure in blaming UI designers and ‘tablet culture’, which culture made computing accessible to everyone from toddlers to decrepit geriatrics.
- So, since it's unusable for people who are unwilling to learn, the solution is to make it unusable for everybody?
Yeah maybe, but try popping out of an app for five seconds to copy something and then come back to paste it, and tell me how user friendly and optimised that is.
Back in my day we had to walk up hill both ways.

Just think, once we all die off, no more printers.

The responsibility of knowing how to use a printer skips a generation, much like male pattern baldness.
- skips a generation, much like male pattern baldness.
  TIL my grandpa made me color blind and balding, that dead sonofabitch
- So, I'm reading two false claims, and I've got a long line of highly proficient bald family members to prove it
- I'll believe it when I see it.
The 3d printers are so cool though.
- Sorry, no printers.
We may just start charging for this ultra-specialized skill
Hopefully finally only one.single.protocol to simply move pdf to printer?
- That's been invented in the eighties, it's called PostScript, which is a precursor to PDF. You sent a PostScript file to the printer, and the printer evaluated PostScript and printed the result. Except, with the spread of home printers, processing was moved into the drivers to eliminate costly electronics from printers.

Have to help your cousin who is the same age as you but somehow never learnt how to use a printer

I mean honestly this seems more like a curse of anybody that's slightly technical or does it work. Doesn't matter the age.

Literally helped my parents with this last night.

Also, fuck windows for defaulting a setting I’d never seen before: “let windows manage my default printer”

That’s why it wasn’t printing. What a fucking stupid idea.

Ah, I see mom’s PC updated and it’s trying to print with the fucking “OneNote XPS” virtual printer again.
Also I see the “OneNote XPS” printer I manually remove every month is back again.
- Gearing up for this tomorrow, every time I turn off automatic updates and uninstall a bunch of bullshit…every time it’s right back there.
- I manually remove every month
  People don't learn about cron and scripting anymore, smh my damn head.
Are they running win 11? 'Cos the queue in that doesn't work.
Literally, it's gonna print the first job then just error everything queued behind it.
As a general rule, if I ever encounter an option that involves letting Microsoft handle it, I always say no. Like when software crashes and it asks if you want to send it to Microsoft. I've literally never said yes because I assume it'll think about it for like 10 minutes, then the software that sends the crash report will crash, and then it will try to get me to agree to OneDrive.
- Absolutely same. This was just on and I’d never seen it before.
Not a terrible idea if there's one printer plugged in. The idea isn't bad, it's Windows that's bad.
- Before things like the XPS printer showed up, if there was only one printer anyway, it was the default. Pointless.

When I was around 8, we had a printer that never seemed to work. One day, I somehow cast a spell that allowed it to print out a couple of colouring book sheets, but I had no idea how.

I couldn't get it to work again, but my one-time success led my mum to believe that I understood the magicks that power printers, and she became frustrated at me for this. Fun fun fun

Like when you 'fix ' a family members computer and Everytime it malfunctions after that it is your fault.
- When I was a kid, one day our service provider had connectivity problems... Guess who my parents accused to be the culprit first. Well, I guess being the only one making use of that modern it seemed to be a logical conclusion for them somehow, not knowing anything about the internet. At least from then on they knew a bit more about what can go wrong.

PC LOAD LETTER.

The paper cartridge (PC) needs to be loaded with letter sized paper.
It's a command to get the paper cartridge and load letter sized paper in it.
C'mon people.

I’ve used computers recreationally for 35 years, professionally for 30.

I’ve never owned a printer.

I refuse to support equipment I don’t use.

I don't understand how my 3D printer, which literally arrived as an unmarked box full of bits that I assembled myself while drunk and with no prior knowledge on Boxing Day (and it looks like it), works more reliably than my 2D printer that came fully assembled by professionals and supposedly is based on decades of established technology.

The kids aren't alright.

Seriously.

On the one hand I know exactly what you mean and I agree to an extent. On the other I see hope in the youth. They value different things in a good way. For instance, in talking to my niece and nephews I've learned that being smart is considered cool now, which was most definitely the opposite when I was young.

I'm lucky that the people in my life do try some basics before asking me and tell me what they tried. Sometimes things just seem to start working when I arrive, so I just play along with it and say the printer was intimidated into working by my mere presence.

Oh, you have that aura too? I like it in that it helps me avoid spending time on fixes, but it's annoying too because deep in my mind I wonder what really went wrong.
- I do that with my SO too even though they're not a tech person at all lol. I'm just like "can you come over for a second and watch this error because it'll work if I show someone else." And that genuinely does the trick maybe 30% of the time. One of the mysteries of the universe
- The printers are playing the long game.
- I've had users who had equipment that worked when I came in to help them with the problem. I think what actually happens is that the user, possibly unconsciously, realizes that they have to pay attention to the UI, because I will, and does the action to make the equipment work the way it's supposed to work.
The panic my coworkers get in their eyes when they pull me from a task just to show me something that suddenly works for them is always funny.
“This was totally not working for 10 minutes straight.”
I'm lucky that the people in my life do try some basics before asking me and tell me what they tried.
If not, you raise them to do that.

We are complaining about printers now? Outstanding! I can help! I never miss the opportunity to say double-fuck Hewlett Packard/Compaq and anything they’ve ever thought about producing with the heat of a thousand suns. Two shitty orgs that geometrically devolved into quintessential, archetypal enshittification enshrined, the unequalled horrors that are HP printers and drivers.

Are we having stereotypical talk shop about printers?
I though it was an urban legend, but I did buy a used brother and I'm def delighted. Spent less on it than a round of inkjet for my crappy Canon. Guess what, 6 months later and I'm still using the toner that came in it. I'd be in the 2nd round of dried inkjet.
- Why, yes. Yes, we are.
  My experience mirrors yours; 6 years later, still no issues. Moreover, old used laser Brother’s seem to love shittynonametoner.com cartridges as well.
Back in the day I inherited a Compaq laptop that had Windows 95 on it. I "upgraded" it to Windows 98, all was well for a year or so and then it started throwing BIOS errors. I couldn't work it out so eventually I ended up having to contact Compaq support. I explained what was going on and they said it was because I installed 98 and that one's only supposed to run 95.
I said I didn't think that was it, because it ran 98 perfectly well for like a year before this happened and also it was a BIOS error, which presumably occurs before Windows even loads. They told me it was 98 and that machine was only meant to run 95. I tried a few more approaches and they just said the same thing over and over like a robot. Eventually I just gave up and was like never mind, I'll work it out myself.
Turns out that on that laptop, the BIOS memory is stored on a watch battery like a fucking Nintendo Cartridge. New $1 battery, no more error. Also the last HP/Compaq thing I owned just because support was so shitty at me lol.
We are complaining about printers now?
Sadly, no. We're complaining about age cohorts.
- In the future, kindly refrain from introducing reason to my painstakingly constructed anti-HP tirades. It throws me off stride.

To be fair I can make a 3D printer work more easily and for longer without any maintenance than a regular ass printer. I get that inkjets are actually super complex but bro there are now cases where it is literally easier to make a thing than to print out a picture of that thing.

Guess it's time for someone to start 3D printing documents with 1 layer high text
- You can attach a pen to the print head to build a plotter quite easily.
  https://travisbumgarner.github.io/gcode2dplotterart/
- Time to start submitting documents as 3D-printed stone slabs.
  Time is a flat circle.
That's because you can actually access everything
ever seen one of those $200k stratasys "polyjet" resin 3d printers for medlabs? i bet you they're like inkjets cubed to service, minimum. if that tech ever makes it to consumers we'll be doomed.
- What do they use it for?

The truest meaning was achieved by posting this on shitjustworks.

parents understand how to use Facebook now. Never heard of Lemmy
kids understand how to use TikTok. Never heard of Lemmy
- Pretty sure most of any generation have never heard of Lemmy

Here’s my obligatory Fuck You to ink jet printers and cartridges.

A few months ago I finally got a Brother b/w multi function laser printer and not having to refill Magenta or Black regularly is no longer, and my mind is at peace.

Mine just had a cartridge explode all over it and my counter. I took the hint and threw it out with no replacement.
My mom hates it since she can't just drop by and have me print something, I've never felt more free.
- I realized a while back that I print so rarely that I'm better off just using a print shop for the rare occasions when I do need to print something. They are priced for massive orders, so printing a few pages can cost under a dollar (though tbf, I haven't needed to print anything since inflation got crazy, so not sure if that still applies). Then they can deal with DRM ink and all that BS.
  We'll see how things go when my daughter gets to essay age, though.
Those things last forever too lol. I'm admittedly not a heavy printer but the test cartridge that came with mine lasted me for like 5 years. I think I'm still only on my 2nd or 3rd toner cartridge ever!
Won't regret it, had one for 10 years changed the black twice. Also the powder doesn't have a shelf life like liquid ink, so I bought the two drums when I first got it.

Tbf printers are the most unnecessarily complicated pieces of shit ever

I don't have any kids. I'm free!!

I'm like you, though, I can't afford them either so.... Win-win?
- Can't afford the kids or the printers?
Sweet spot. Never have to print anything.

I haven’t had a printer in years. Best decision I’ve made. When you don’t have one, your need for printing things seems to decrease. We just order prints at the library the 2 times a year we need to print something for like 25 cents a page

Start needing legal assistance and see your printing needs skyrocket. Gathering evidence takes a lot of paper.
- Legal is when you start needed the cursed tech that is fax as well. My condolences
I have an ancient Brother laser printer that is magical. It runs on Linux, the toner cartridges last for about a decade and if you leave it unplugged for like a year and then turn it back on to print one document it doesn't mind at all. I'm never getting rid of that thing.
We have young kids. So, we are printing things for them all the time. Doctor's notes, coloring sheets, copies of forms for school (reading logs, etc.), on and on.
Plus, my wife is a musician and prints out music, we print our insurance cards, baby business cards, holiday card mailing labels, etc.
We don't print every day, but enough that it's worth it. It also scans and copies, which is helpful.
- So in summary, you use paper in part because you have a printer and in part because public services and offices are behind the times.
- When it comes to school, I’ve been able to get by with signing forms on my iPad and then emailing them to the school. Doctor’s notes also go by email nowadays for me. Only one that needed to be physical in the last two years was a form for self administration of a medication. If I had remembered to ask for it at the doctor’s office when we had our appointment, doctor’s office would have gladly printed it. It can be slightly inconvenient at times, but I’ve really reduced my paper usage.
  Choosing to print your own insurance cards, business cards, and return labels definitely is one of those things that you find another way to do if you didn’t have a printer. My personal opinion is that having a printer makes you need to print more and that’s what I’m still hearing from your comment.
  Tho I will make the caveat that printing music as a musician is pretty much a business need. But business needs are outside the scope of my advice that getting rid of a printer is extremely doable and will reduce your printing needs.

Oh, a Boomer needs tech support, of any kind, family, friend, otherwise?

$100/h.

Stop subsidizing their utter incompetence, time for 'tough love'.

A kid?

Like an actual kid?

Free.

How would they know any better?

But, let em know the first fix is free, on the house, next one will be $5, then $10... or, they can spend no money if they want to spend an hour getting tutored on the basics maybe once a week.

Generate fishermen, not fish.

Show them that they are capable, can learn, can solve problems... if they're patient and humble enough to try and learn.

I mean, it depends on the family dynamic I guess?
My older generation family members have a lot of skills and experience I also lack, and the minute I pick up the phone to ask for help they're giving me their time for free too.
I'd rather live in a kind world where we help our little communities only because it's the right thing to do, as long as it's not gone to the point of being taken advantage of.

Had to teach our seniors to use alt+tab, Had to teach our interns to use alt+tab

I figure out how to not use a printer because they are nonsense expensive pieces of crap. The small amount of printing I have to do I do at work. Told the kids to use the ones at school, that 5cents a page is never going to reach the cost of owning a printer at the rate we print.

Oh no, they didn't believe me and got a printer. Or, more correctly, got their aunt to buy them one because I was denying them, almost abuse they whined. As soon as it ran out of ink, back to printing at school. They figured out what an expensive pain in the ass piece of equipment it is for themselves.

My mom had a black and white one that used toner, when it had to be changed you better be wearing black clothes and rubber gloves.

Too much time this year has been lost fixing random cups issues for people. Too much damn time!

You really don’t have to if you just make your kids use the computer instead of the phone

When we're all retired and dying off, the world will regress to the pre-industrial age it seems.

At least we can depend on our AI carebots to get the dosage right 60% of the time.
and we will never recover

That's why you give them a laptop and a Gentoo install iso on a bootable pen drive before they can talk.

"Billy, did you use genkernel rather than manually configuring and building your kernel?"

"Yes, Dad..."

"You know what that means."

"Yes, Dad. No allowance for two weeks."

If there's any way to induce autism, this is gotta be it.
- Yeah they were way off with Tylenol.

Thank god I started using computers before smartphones were as ubiquitous as they are now. If I had waited til I was a teenager I would have no idea how to use a computer.

My brother taught himself to the point where he shows me how to do the techy stuff.

My partner and I fit in this range. We don’t have kids, but there is the offhand occasion where we need to print something so we just do it at work.

And if worst comes to worst, we have a shitty old cheap Canon that works if you turn off all the lights, light certain candles, and draw a printer-gram on the floor while we hold hands in the center of the room while saying a quiet prayer under our breath.