Anon sends a file

theres a generation of kids who don't understand basic directories because of the mobile market and never actually used a pc in a regular usecase.

put in perspective, there are those who are more proficient on a touchscreen keyboard more than an actual keyboard.

I call bullshit on this post. Since Windows 10 you can just double click a zip file and it opens up like any other directory (even if it isn't) and shows you the files.

If this zoomer wanted to open it they'd obviously double click.

So calm down boomers, this is fiction.

It's Chromebooks, phones, and tablets that you don't ever have exposure to actual files. Chromebooks especially now that they're so common in schools because they're cheap.

Weird, right? I feel like I grew up in the perfect generation, where I started with MS-DOS and Windows ‘95. We had to KNOW how things worked in order to get games and other software running. Had to know how to install, how to fix driver issues, how to configure things, etc. Even (re)install a complete OS.

But tech these days ‘just works’. A lot of software is one click installs, with no real user interaction needed. And everything else is easily accessed on the web or a phone app. Windows itself is also much more reliable, so even that doesn’t require much knowledge.

It’s made everything available to a much wider audience, but it also means people don’t need to develop actual skills in this area. A good example is my dad. He never figured out how to do things on our Windows ‘95 PC, but he loves his iPad because it’s so easy toddlers can use it.

We asked an intern to write a lettre for a RMA, and he printed the letter, we tell him what he has to modify. He is like "I have to type all this again" "What do you mean lil intern?!?". Intern deleted his file after printing it. O.o

I have yet to meet the braindead skibidy rizz zip file zoomers everyone keeps talking about. I assume I'll find them with the latte avocado toast millennials.

Gen Z at uni here. Most of my fellow zoomers know what a zip file is. But some people just don't computer that much so they simply don't know.

However if you're doing a computer job and you don't know that's ridiculous.

Behold the difference between the generation growing with Win98, where everything was manual and accessible and doing it wrong could mean a manual install, and the generation growing up with iPhones, where you're not allowed to change anything whatsoever.

That's because all they know how to use are iPads. They don't actually understand how real computers work.

Plus of course there is this attitude that if it doesn't immediately work on its own you should give up and just pray to the nebulous entity that is "IT people".

You wouldn't believe how many people get annoyed that I don't know what their password for something is.

There are tech illiterate people in every generation, but they definitely seemed more prevalent in the boomer generation. In my experience it's Boomers > Gen X > Zoomers > Millenials in terms of most to least technologically incompetent. Always suspected millennials are usually more comfortable with tech because they grew up with it, and it grew up with them.

For older generations, especially boomers, I figure they were more set in their ways and for many (but not all, obviously) it was hard to adapt. For Zoomers, I think it was just assumed that they'd just be inherently good so there were many things they were never actually taught (though many of them learned for themselves because they are nerds, which is pretty great if you ask me). Anyways, that's my theory on generational tech literacy.

We Millennials were born in a sweet spot where PCs were widespread enough to be virtually in every house since childhood but also not too streamlined and simplified.

We had a pc that sometimes didn't work properly, we had to use the command line from time to time, troubleshoot and look up errors. When something fails we try to find out why and only after a while we give up and claim it's an error or look for help.

Also you know, stupid people are in every generation.

They use magic that just works. They don't need any understanding of the processes because things are so user friendly they never had a rigorous cleansing through fire in order to figure out where things were broken like Gen X had.

If you think it's bad now wait until AI destroys all the entry level skills and it becomes impossible to get experience to master something that AI can't do.

im a gardener. some apprentice who has never owned a computer, not bcs they couldnt afford it, but bcs due to mobile phones there simply is no need for it, asked me how to shut down a computer. not kidding. it wasnt even some obscure gnu/linux distro, it was bog-standard windows 10.

This really bugs me at work sometimes. I'm a designer and I often have to split up images in several mails because others don't understand the concept of archives. Or even worse: send the photos as "excel image file" (slapping them all in a excel sheet). I even once had a printery tell me my file was corrupt because it was (accidentally on my part) compressed as 7z. Oh how I would love to send files more often as 7zip... But that's black magic apparently.

Interestingly I heard that it's not that they're less technology skilled exactly (I'm not commenting that I'd or isn't the case), but instead grown up on a different platform, notably iPhone/iPad/android instead of a PC.

This has meant a big push by companies to develop mobile first. So much so, some companies don't even have a browser version of their system anymore.

Meh. Being young, ignorant and willing to learn in a new job is very different that being old, proudly ignorant and refusing to adapt to how your current job evolved.

I work with a couple guys that basically aim to do as little as possible in as much time as possible.

I'm a millenial and it seems i've become a boomer, telling these guys to stop building cardboard towers as everyone notices and will tell their supervisor. Then they get angry with me for some weird ass reason while they just spent 3 days doing one hour worth of work.

Our supervisor wants me to get them to work better, but it's 4 of them and one of me.

I understand the mindset that it's the employers task to supply you with work, but there's plenty y'all just refuse to pick it up and get at it.

They grew up on iPads and phones.

I'm on the flip side. I know what a zip is and I can't stand you using closed source suck-your-soul.

wut is (z, b)oomer. all users are usually dumb. if you are average half are dumber than you

It's a work PC. And for the users work PCs operate entirely different from all other similar OS machines they know from private life.

That’s partially fault of IT isn’t it. They didn’t set the computer up with an unzipper.

💀

We have gygabites of storage on our phones and on the cloud, it makes sense that zoomers don't know what a zip file is. It's like chastising me, an early millenial, because I don't know Morse code.

I'm mostly afraid of these people will end up being teachers, mentors and managers for my future kids... I'll need to do so much home schooling but at least that'll hopefully only make me bond better with my kids.

Maybe he's telling you something here though. Like how zip is a shitty format to send anything with?

They don't know how to program in assembly because they don't have to know. Same is true for WinRAR, rotary phones, stick shifts, and all the other cruft that prior generations had to deal with.

Hardship makes you hardy but reducing hardship is progress.