Me as Gen Z trying to get all my Gen Z friends to join Lemmy, not very successfully. Though to be fair, I’m basically as old as you can be and still be Gen Z.
My introduction is subtle. I text content to people. When they ask me where I get it (it's happened twice so far), I say Lemmy. They say, "what's that." Gives me an opportunity to explain the similarities and differences with (advantages over) Reddit. No takers yet, but it's coming.
On Reddit there’s a lot of “lemmy’s too complicated to be adopted by the general public”. Ik we don’t all have the same tech literacy but it doesn’t seem that complicated, like, do you understand emailing? Then you understand most of what lemmy is… (also you don’t even have to understand the intricacies to enjoy your experience there)
Frankly I think it's simply that the public doesn't particularly care to figure it out. As an analogy, people use Windows because that's just what their computer came with, and therefore saying that Linux is free (as in price) is a meaningless selling point to them. You don't convince Windows users to switch by saying that Linux is free, you convince them by saying that Linux is more convenient, stable, and less annoying.
In the same way, you don't convince the public into using Lemmy by arguing about why open protocols are better. You convince people by saying that Lemmy is basically like Reddit but not overrun by bots and spammers
I don't think its just complexity, its a semi-ghost town if you venture out of the political topics.
I mean, there was never a GoT community, The Expanse Community, Rick and Morty, Squid Game, or like even a GTA community. Inactive communities with 1 post every 3 month doesn't count.
Like this is really just a place to vent about life, and for general everyday discussions, not for topic-specific discussions.
Maybe part of why Lemmy skews older is because this is basically what "old" Reddit felt like.
Before Reddit became the Walmart of internet forums that put all the little guys out of business and gained enough critical mass to have a niche community for every topic under the sun, it was just a quirky place that catered towards tech, politics, and this exact sort of "general everyday discussion" you're talking about.
I loved that era of Reddit, and I love that Lemmy is providing something that's close to that experience.
i think lemmy skews older because of the more complicated sign-up process and people being more tech-inclined around here and a bit more mature than the general public. and i love that, btw. less shallow "entertainment" and more memes and especially based arguments about things.
I wonder how Lemmy and other parts of the fediverse or alternative web like Gemini Protocol would be if it gets adopted by let's say 1/10 of the world.
I think: pretty much as amazing as the internet in the 90s/early 2000s.
I literally have explained the open protocols for social sharing that were released years ago. I tried to tell them that nobody can track you. And the ads they see don't go to corps but literally no buy in from my friends and family. My sister has a blue sky account and I told her she was part if the Masterdon/Lemmy federation. She just thinks blue sky is a better twitter, for now.
i wish there was a useable german instance for the general public.
discuss.tchncs.de is great but as the name says, rather for techy people
feddit.org is borderline unusable garbage between political shit-takes (constant bickering and non-constructive arguments) and generally a very non-open mood, it feels to me.
Yeah it's hard to get people to join when you explain how instances work and then immediately follow up with "never ever use [list of instances] because they oppose democracy and want the west to nuke itself."
Even me being 20+, I feel like a kid interrupting adults talking lolz
I read a lot of "back in my day, there weren't smartphones" comments whenever the post talks about technology and smartphones, and I feel so left out. I mean, Smartphones have been a part of most of the life I remember. Can't really remember the world without smartphones.
Idk what I'm doing here, but reddit banned Tor, so I have no where else to anonymously ask weird questions and rant about life.
Eh, don't sweat it. I'm 41, and I still find myself feeling the same way when my manager is talking.... and he's younger than me. I've been told you reach a point where you just don't care anymore but my supervisor is 52 with two grown children and says she still gets that feeling from time to time, so who knows how true it is.
Now for the "get off my lawn" portion of the reply. I can remember in 1991 my aunt was working for a legal firm and running documents around for them, they needed instant contact so they paid big bucks to have a mobile phone installed in her car. It cost a ridiculous amount per minute to talk on. One day she was talking me to McDonald's and I asked why she had a phone in her car since she couldn't plug it in, after she explained it to me I asked if I could call my dad, she said yes but make it quick. She dialed his number at work and handed me the phone. When he answered I blurted out "hi dad I'm calling from Aunt Juanita's car! Have to be quick, bye" and before she could stop me I hung up the phone.
She called him back to apologize and let him know everything was ok, then handed the phone to me so my dad could lecture me about phone etiquette and tell me to be good for Aunt Juanita.
Also I remember being excited to get to go to the school library to play Oregon trail on the green screen computer and having to swap out 5 inch floppy disks throughout the game to move to the next part.
Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to take some ibuprofen as all this typing is aggravating my joints. LoL.
5 1/4 inches, you heathen. I'm closing in on 50. I am beginning to understand really old people who just let the young ones talk and don't take their advice. Stuff you're supposed to be doing has changed so much, that it is tempting to just do whatever you've been doing all your life. It'll just change again, so why bother.
I can see that, I have a few people now who I know aren't going to listen, so I tell them the correct way and then sit back and watch them do something completely different.
We of the fabled Oregon Trail Generation had the unique experience of an analog childhood and an adulthood in the digital hellscape we all know and love.
So when we wandered off into the woods for hours, or even once I could borrow a car and head over to a friends' place? Completely unreachable. The only exception was the house phone at a friend's place if we were there.
When I was in college, Wi-Fi was just becoming popular. The equivalent to walking down the sidewalk with your face in your phone was the couple grad student TAs who were busy or nerdy enough to walk between buildings holding their laptop open in front of them. Wi-Fi was not built in of course. It was a PCMCIA card sticking out of the side.
When we were home or in our dorms, we didn't sit on our phones, we sat on our PCs! And now decades later I've transitioned back to sitting on my PC at home and it's great, lol.
My first personal cell phone of any kind was my dad handing me down his old work phone when I finished college and moved a couple hours away. It was a Motorola Startac motherfucker! Look it up and be jealous!
It's funny because I'm only in my mid 40s and have very little gray hair. I don't feel like an old, but I have absolutely hit the point of the "back in my day" attitude. I usually don't actually say anything unless I see a good joke in it, because that would be cliched and obnoxious.
I bet there's something about being the age where you could be a grandparent. There's something pretty damn wholesome about watching people who are young enough to be your children having their own families and careers and stuff. We had our kid about a decade later than we wanted, so I think my son gets to benefit from me being half chill grandpa and not 100% frantic young parent.
I agree! I only heard it in recent years which is pretty recent relatively speaking, but it instantly made complete sense.
I think the most recent memory I have of playing it in school (not emulated later or something). I did a search to look for dates, and I found this awesome short article about the creators. The origin story makes the game even better in hindsight.
Early 30 here. Mobile phones only started being accessible when I was like in 5th year of school, smartphones, like proper ones, android/ios - that was closer to my university days. Before that we had different phones with good displays but controlled by buttons, you could play games on those too, but lot simpler ones.
What I'm trying to say, your gen is about the first one to experience "smartphone was here always" vibe.
im 26, I was a kid with flip phones, I remember dropping my dads in the toilet, I was an early ipad kid basically, needed phone games lol, I rmemeber early iphones and the fake chinese ones with the picture puzzle game, kinda went through a lot of eras growing up, had an xperia play as my first phone in middle school (amazingly didnt regret it even tho any phone + psp wouldve been a far superior combo lol) Ipod touch 4 year or two before is when the appstore was poppingoff with angrybirds, doodle jump, etc.
When I hit highschool everyone had smartphones and they were just becoming close to what we have today then. Snapchat was popular, vine, instagram was starting to become the weird arty sht it is now. Iphone started becoming a status symbol in middleschool, im kinda all over the place, but ppl had androids/whatever os wasnt iphone/android for a short period
ppl blame imessage but the real issue back then was app support, ppl just wanted consistently and everything to work, plus androids tended to have worse quality around the board when uploading even with better hardware think they still have lower limits for apps like tiktok
I was probably older than you are now when you were born. It's been interesting (in the ancient curse sense of the word) to witness firsthand a world without internet slowly becoming online, advancing, then decaying into the corporate-run AI slop hellscape we're seeing today.
Smartphones? I remember before cellphones.
How about only having to remember 4 digits to call someone?
Or... How about just going to their house to see if they wanted to hang out. No phones involved.
Haha. I'm 40.
Wow. I'm 44 and I remember the switch from seven digit dialing to ten digits but we already moved past four digits in my area before I was born. Unless you're talking about the prefix being the same for the whole city, like everything started with 262-XXXX so you only had to remember the four at the end?
Oh yes, for clarity, the first 3 digits were the same for everyone, so we didn't have to think about them.
Haha, well after the official change from 4 to 7 digits.
Feel free to ask weird questions and rant about life! Our lives were very different 20 years ago, so it's interesting to learn from the perspectives of other generations.
We speak in metaphor and paradox instead of innuendo. For example: there is a before and after the internet and neither of these periods include the previous 30-40 years.
Yeah, I mean I wasn't there for old reddit and I am only on lemmy because of the reddit protests, but I couldn't see any of my classmates using anything that's on the fediverse.
Certainly my case. But most of the enshitification of Reddit happened just in the last few years, max decade. You'd think we'd at least have some 20 and 30 somethings.
The young want to be near the popular crowd and the popular ones want to be where the crowd is. Classic network effect. Once you get older, that need to be in the middle of the noise and excitement goes away for many and you look for the more quiet comfortable places.
I doubt it. People don't mention when they're young (except in some specific cases like this). Young people can't compare things to a time they didn't live so only older people mention their age usually. I'm 17 rn been on the fediverse since 16 or maybe 15 I don't really remember.
Edit: I personally feel actively discouraged from mentioning my age (even irl i look older) not cause of safety or anything but I js feel like I'll be treated differently when people know I'm younger. Its happened quite often to me both IRL and online where I'll notice a distinct shift in tone after they know how young I am
Well I studied CS, was a Unix sysadmin for a few years, then a consultant for a enterprise software company. But I've been in sales for 20 years, so that should count equally against me, although I do still have some linux servers at home. I'm probably still a bit overqualified for the task of signing up to the fediverse.
Mastodon is the German nudist beach of social media. There’s a strong sense of camaraderie, but the average age is somewhere north of 50, and people under 40 instinctively cringe when they hear about it.
As an ageless fifth dimensional being extending my influence into this world through this rotting meat sack I am confused by both of you as I still recall time as a singularity
This is it. I grew out of reddit too. And it's funny cause when I started using it was around 2012-ish, and everyone was around their 20s/30s with the occasional edgy teen # chan refugee. Yeah we told a lot of the same dumb jokes still circulating now (cause it's more than half bots now), but now every single thread is literally ALL the same exact jokes I saw a decade plus ago, again and again, day after day.
At least this lemme gives a joke a few days to rest before trying to milk that old skinny cow again.
I'm just happy there aren't any, or at least many, teens and kids here. Reading the comments on Reddit, YouTube and anywhere else where they are is a fucking fever dream of stupidity, ignorance and weirdness. It's mostly fine here, and it's a nice break.
Idunno if it counts as ageism when they're talking about stupid behavior among people with minds that are factually, biologically, not finished developing. Same reason it isn't ageist to say "ten year olds are not allowed to drive cars because they aren't smart enough to do it responsibly"
Never said it was ageism but I am sure it is at least close to it and a good reason to look it up.
I agree with the part here being a nice culture compared to other "social" medias. However repatriating general stupid behavior just on kids is definitely ageism - not sure if that was OPs intention.
Don't quite agree with your comparison:
What you mention is more of skill learning process. Social media is more of a proper behavior to have - I think here the age doesn't matter nearly as much as your surrounding.
Is the average age of a social media user really that young? Are very young adults and legally speaking children the driving force behind the base of social media? Are even modestly older individuals not willing to try and engage with this developing type of medium?
Kids and trendy young people are on tiktok and Instagram and do short video clip based social media.
The people who grew up with the internet being a place where you type and read things to be social, are here and places like here.
I think folk just prefer what they know, like if you grew up with loud and bright video clips being the normal way to interact online, you'd probably not want to switch over to reading and typing- which probably also feels like more effort to these people than just performing for a camera.
Same likely goes for us text based social media people but in reverse.
I think a lot of older people have jobs and real-life hobbies. When you're a kid trapped in the suburbs with no neighbors to play with, you can't drive, you can't walk to anything, the idea of being terminally online is very appealing. I'm still growing out of it in my 30s
I'm curious if that's because you think people seem immature or something? I'm in my 40s, and work with people both older and younger than me. I can see comments across Lemmy that I wouldn't find unusual for here, except maybe a stronger leaning towards left leaning politics, privacy, etc.
It's more about general toxicity and too quick to judge (edit: which I guess counts as immature), but I gotta say it has gotten better, likely due to said users slowly getting banned.
I noticed multiple times that the person I was arguing with was suddenly removed by moderators.
One of the coworkers quickest to get kinda yelly about his opinions at work was a genx guy (older than me) who had very strong "classical liberal" opinions as well as the typical belief that he was being logical, not emotional, as he raised his voice while talking to us about policies he didn't agree with. He also had the typical misogynistic view that he was rational while women were emotional. One time he and I were getting a little heated in a shared discord chat and a mutual friend who was the admin muted both of us.
I told the friend something like "fair, you did try to change the subject and we ignored you, my bad." The older guy got super pissed someone controller his speech and he left the discord forever.
I've also seen my uncle get butthurt that I tried to meditate a discussion between him and my sister (she requested my help because he and my aunt would just both say their side against her and not let them talk.) I mostly just stopped them from interrupting each other and asked them to let the other person speak, and I did it both to my sister and my aunt and uncle.
They later complained about being told what to do in their own house.
While young people can be impulsive and judgy, I find that age does not always fix that. The people it doesn't fix get entitled and think their age justifies their beliefs and that they're automatically wiser than you.
I've had the same experience with some older folks, so there are of course exceptions. I borderline see myself as a young dude (~30) and nearly everyone I work with is older than me, and my communication with younger people as of lately has mostly been digital, and digital communication tends to be far different from physical one, so my experience might aswell be skewed and in the end biased.
136 Comments
virku@lemmy.world · 87 pts · 363d
Me in my 40s
ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 47 pts · 363d
Thats above 20, so you're key demographic and not at all an outlier
Mac@mander.xyz · 37 pts · 363d
Give them a break. Grandpa doesn't understand memes.
SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social · 17 pts · 363d
CAN YOU YOUNG WHIPPERSNAPPERS WRITE A LITTLE BIGGER?
justme@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 363d
That explains a lot
aeronmelon@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 363d
Yeah, this doesn’t make me feel like the Fediverse is full of olds at all. Im old enough to be the average user’s parent.
daggermoon@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 363d
Dad?
FenrirIII@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 363d
Are you winning, son?
aeronmelon@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 363d
Only if she was lying about her period being a few days away.
ruuster13@lemmy.zip · 77 pts · 363d
Week 1 feels like a ghost town. Week 2 feels like old old Reddit. Week 3 feels like old Reddit. I'm content and there is content.
isar@lemmy.ml · 19 pts · 363d
Watch out! At this rate it’ll feel like enshttfied Reddit by week 5
ruuster13@lemmy.zip · 9 pts · 363d
^do these obvious human accounts think we can't spot them?
finitebanjo@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 362d
Are you under the opinion that Spez is going to buy out all of the mom's basements and make Lemmy have a public offer?
Aetherion@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 362d
upsi
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 362d
lemmy has 30 K users by now worldwide btw, it started in late 2019 iirc. maybe we can get a million by 2030.
moseschrute@lemmy.ml · 51 pts · 363d
Me as Gen Z trying to get all my Gen Z friends to join Lemmy, not very successfully. Though to be fair, I’m basically as old as you can be and still be Gen Z.
ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 363d
My introduction is subtle. I text content to people. When they ask me where I get it (it's happened twice so far), I say Lemmy. They say, "what's that." Gives me an opportunity to explain the similarities and differences with (advantages over) Reddit. No takers yet, but it's coming.
isar@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 363d
On Reddit there’s a lot of “lemmy’s too complicated to be adopted by the general public”. Ik we don’t all have the same tech literacy but it doesn’t seem that complicated, like, do you understand emailing? Then you understand most of what lemmy is… (also you don’t even have to understand the intricacies to enjoy your experience there)
Contramuffin@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 363d
Frankly I think it's simply that the public doesn't particularly care to figure it out. As an analogy, people use Windows because that's just what their computer came with, and therefore saying that Linux is free (as in price) is a meaningless selling point to them. You don't convince Windows users to switch by saying that Linux is free, you convince them by saying that Linux is more convenient, stable, and less annoying.
In the same way, you don't convince the public into using Lemmy by arguing about why open protocols are better. You convince people by saying that Lemmy is basically like Reddit but not overrun by bots and spammers
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 362d
I don't think its just complexity, its a semi-ghost town if you venture out of the political topics.
I mean, there was never a GoT community, The Expanse Community, Rick and Morty, Squid Game, or like even a GTA community. Inactive communities with 1 post every 3 month doesn't count.
Like this is really just a place to vent about life, and for general everyday discussions, not for topic-specific discussions.
dehyzer@piefed.social · 13 pts · 362d
Maybe part of why Lemmy skews older is because this is basically what "old" Reddit felt like.
Before Reddit became the Walmart of internet forums that put all the little guys out of business and gained enough critical mass to have a niche community for every topic under the sun, it was just a quirky place that catered towards tech, politics, and this exact sort of "general everyday discussion" you're talking about.
I loved that era of Reddit, and I love that Lemmy is providing something that's close to that experience.
Sloogs@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 362d
Hell yeah 🤘🏻
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 362d
i think lemmy skews older because of the more complicated sign-up process and people being more tech-inclined around here and a bit more mature than the general public. and i love that, btw. less shallow "entertainment" and more memes and especially based arguments about things.
Aetherion@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 362d
sick.
I wonder how Lemmy and other parts of the fediverse or alternative web like Gemini Protocol would be if it gets adopted by let's say 1/10 of the world.
I think: pretty much as amazing as the internet in the 90s/early 2000s.
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 362d
Hey now the green text community is doing well, though I wish we got some of the spicy shit.
Aneb@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 363d
Re:
I literally have explained the open protocols for social sharing that were released years ago. I tried to tell them that nobody can track you. And the ads they see don't go to corps but literally no buy in from my friends and family. My sister has a blue sky account and I told her she was part if the Masterdon/Lemmy federation. She just thinks blue sky is a better twitter, for now.
irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 363d
Bluesky uses a different protocol to mastodon.
witten@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 362d
irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 362d
That's not really true anymore.
There is multiple different instances now. I can use bluesky without using bluesky's servers.
witten@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 362d
irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 362d
You can.
Relay's are less expensive now, it's about 24 a month.
app.wafrn.net is a tumblr thing with atproto support.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de · 4 pts · 362d
i wish there was a useable german instance for the general public.
discuss.tchncs.de is great but as the name says, rather for techy people
feddit.org is borderline unusable garbage between political shit-takes (constant bickering and non-constructive arguments) and generally a very non-open mood, it feels to me.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 362d
Yeah it's hard to get people to join when you explain how instances work and then immediately follow up with "never ever use [list of instances] because they oppose democracy and want the west to nuke itself."
S_H_K@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 362d
Same here we playing the long con.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works · 42 pts · 362d
Average here feels like 40+
Even me being 20+, I feel like a kid interrupting adults talking lolz
I read a lot of "back in my day, there weren't smartphones" comments whenever the post talks about technology and smartphones, and I feel so left out. I mean, Smartphones have been a part of most of the life I remember. Can't really remember the world without smartphones.
Idk what I'm doing here, but reddit banned Tor, so I have no where else to anonymously ask weird questions and rant about life.
Drusas@fedia.io · 9 pts · 362d
It's okay--we old folks can benefit from having a few younguns around.
oppy1984@lemdro.id · 8 pts · 362d
Eh, don't sweat it. I'm 41, and I still find myself feeling the same way when my manager is talking.... and he's younger than me. I've been told you reach a point where you just don't care anymore but my supervisor is 52 with two grown children and says she still gets that feeling from time to time, so who knows how true it is.
Now for the "get off my lawn" portion of the reply. I can remember in 1991 my aunt was working for a legal firm and running documents around for them, they needed instant contact so they paid big bucks to have a mobile phone installed in her car. It cost a ridiculous amount per minute to talk on. One day she was talking me to McDonald's and I asked why she had a phone in her car since she couldn't plug it in, after she explained it to me I asked if I could call my dad, she said yes but make it quick. She dialed his number at work and handed me the phone. When he answered I blurted out "hi dad I'm calling from Aunt Juanita's car! Have to be quick, bye" and before she could stop me I hung up the phone.
She called him back to apologize and let him know everything was ok, then handed the phone to me so my dad could lecture me about phone etiquette and tell me to be good for Aunt Juanita.
Also I remember being excited to get to go to the school library to play Oregon trail on the green screen computer and having to swap out 5 inch floppy disks throughout the game to move to the next part.
Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to take some ibuprofen as all this typing is aggravating my joints. LoL.
state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 362d
5 1/4 inches, you heathen. I'm closing in on 50. I am beginning to understand really old people who just let the young ones talk and don't take their advice. Stuff you're supposed to be doing has changed so much, that it is tempting to just do whatever you've been doing all your life. It'll just change again, so why bother.
oppy1984@lemdro.id · 1 pts · 361d
Forgive me techno father, for I have sinned.
I can see that, I have a few people now who I know aren't going to listen, so I tell them the correct way and then sit back and watch them do something completely different.
Zink@programming.dev · 6 pts · 362d
We of the fabled Oregon Trail Generation had the unique experience of an analog childhood and an adulthood in the digital hellscape we all know and love.
So when we wandered off into the woods for hours, or even once I could borrow a car and head over to a friends' place? Completely unreachable. The only exception was the house phone at a friend's place if we were there.
When I was in college, Wi-Fi was just becoming popular. The equivalent to walking down the sidewalk with your face in your phone was the couple grad student TAs who were busy or nerdy enough to walk between buildings holding their laptop open in front of them. Wi-Fi was not built in of course. It was a PCMCIA card sticking out of the side.
When we were home or in our dorms, we didn't sit on our phones, we sat on our PCs! And now decades later I've transitioned back to sitting on my PC at home and it's great, lol.
My first personal cell phone of any kind was my dad handing me down his old work phone when I finished college and moved a couple hours away. It was a Motorola Startac motherfucker! Look it up and be jealous!
It's funny because I'm only in my mid 40s and have very little gray hair. I don't feel like an old, but I have absolutely hit the point of the "back in my day" attitude. I usually don't actually say anything unless I see a good joke in it, because that would be cliched and obnoxious.
I bet there's something about being the age where you could be a grandparent. There's something pretty damn wholesome about watching people who are young enough to be your children having their own families and careers and stuff. We had our kid about a decade later than we wanted, so I think my son gets to benefit from me being half chill grandpa and not 100% frantic young parent.
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 362d
Never heard the term Oregon Trail Generation before but immediately knew what it meant. That's a great name.
Zink@programming.dev · 1 pts · 361d
I agree! I only heard it in recent years which is pretty recent relatively speaking, but it instantly made complete sense.
I think the most recent memory I have of playing it in school (not emulated later or something). I did a search to look for dates, and I found this awesome short article about the creators. The origin story makes the game even better in hindsight.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-you-wound-playing-em-oregon-trailem-computer-class-180959851/
rain_enjoyer@sopuli.xyz · 5 pts · 362d
reminder that not everyone is a westerner. my home village only had internet (adsl) like in 2008 or so
Mika@sopuli.xyz · 5 pts · 362d
Early 30 here. Mobile phones only started being accessible when I was like in 5th year of school, smartphones, like proper ones, android/ios - that was closer to my university days. Before that we had different phones with good displays but controlled by buttons, you could play games on those too, but lot simpler ones.
What I'm trying to say, your gen is about the first one to experience "smartphone was here always" vibe.
dil@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 362d
im 26, I was a kid with flip phones, I remember dropping my dads in the toilet, I was an early ipad kid basically, needed phone games lol, I rmemeber early iphones and the fake chinese ones with the picture puzzle game, kinda went through a lot of eras growing up, had an xperia play as my first phone in middle school (amazingly didnt regret it even tho any phone + psp wouldve been a far superior combo lol) Ipod touch 4 year or two before is when the appstore was poppingoff with angrybirds, doodle jump, etc.
ZeffSyde@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 362d
I remind my currently 20 something nephew how he would cry crinkly crocodile tears if he wasn't given a dose of Talking Tom.
dil@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 362d
When I hit highschool everyone had smartphones and they were just becoming close to what we have today then. Snapchat was popular, vine, instagram was starting to become the weird arty sht it is now. Iphone started becoming a status symbol in middleschool, im kinda all over the place, but ppl had androids/whatever os wasnt iphone/android for a short period
dil@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 362d
ppl blame imessage but the real issue back then was app support, ppl just wanted consistently and everything to work, plus androids tended to have worse quality around the board when uploading even with better hardware think they still have lower limits for apps like tiktok
samus12345@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 362d
I was probably older than you are now when you were born. It's been interesting (in the ancient curse sense of the word) to witness firsthand a world without internet slowly becoming online, advancing, then decaying into the corporate-run AI slop hellscape we're seeing today.
007ace@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 362d
Smartphones? I remember before cellphones. How about only having to remember 4 digits to call someone? Or... How about just going to their house to see if they wanted to hang out. No phones involved. Haha. I'm 40.
frostysauce@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 362d
Wow. I'm 44 and I remember the switch from seven digit dialing to ten digits but we already moved past four digits in my area before I was born. Unless you're talking about the prefix being the same for the whole city, like everything started with 262-XXXX so you only had to remember the four at the end?
007ace@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 362d
Oh yes, for clarity, the first 3 digits were the same for everyone, so we didn't have to think about them. Haha, well after the official change from 4 to 7 digits.
frostysauce@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 362d
Ah, gotcha
percent@infosec.pub · 3 pts · 362d
Feel free to ask weird questions and rant about life! Our lives were very different 20 years ago, so it's interesting to learn from the perspectives of other generations.
Quik@infosec.pub · 3 pts · 362d
u20 here, feels like watching the retirees table at the local pub, just with better informed politics and tech savvy. Very funny, would recommend.
ruuster13@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 362d
We speak in metaphor and paradox instead of innuendo. For example: there is a before and after the internet and neither of these periods include the previous 30-40 years.
bluecat_OwO@lemmy.world · 33 pts · 363d
age: 21 hairline:31 physical age:101
Grass@sh.itjust.works · 18 pts · 363d
pot belly: 45
bluecat_OwO@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 363d
nah its at 35, I have still ways to grow
Honytawk@feddit.nl · 15 pts · 363d
mental age: 5
realitista@lemmus.org · 25 pts · 363d
Why do you suppose this is? Are we just the only generation with the minimal tech skills needed to sign up?
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 33 pts · 363d
Probably less about skill, per se, and more about interest. But the (still very low) barrier to entry probably does weed out a few kids.
cepelinas@sopuli.xyz · 11 pts · 363d
Yeah, I mean I wasn't there for old reddit and I am only on lemmy because of the reddit protests, but I couldn't see any of my classmates using anything that's on the fediverse.
realitista@lemmus.org · 5 pts · 363d
Why would our age group be the only ones interested?
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 363d
A longing for the Good Old Days(tm) of old-style forums and pre-enshittification Reddit?
realitista@lemmus.org · 7 pts · 363d
Certainly my case. But most of the enshitification of Reddit happened just in the last few years, max decade. You'd think we'd at least have some 20 and 30 somethings.
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub · 7 pts · 363d
The young want to be near the popular crowd and the popular ones want to be where the crowd is. Classic network effect. Once you get older, that need to be in the middle of the noise and excitement goes away for many and you look for the more quiet comfortable places.
SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 363d
im just here cause its not an invasion of privacy and tgere are way less fascists here
jaybone@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 363d
I found a torrent on the piracy com where I can download episodes of Matlock and NCIS.
ruuster13@lemmy.zip · 18 pts · 363d
Because we say shit like "why do you suppose this is"
gladflag@lemmy.ml · 8 pts · 363d
Got em
dontfearthereaper123@ani.social · 15 pts · 363d
I doubt it. People don't mention when they're young (except in some specific cases like this). Young people can't compare things to a time they didn't live so only older people mention their age usually. I'm 17 rn been on the fediverse since 16 or maybe 15 I don't really remember.
Edit: I personally feel actively discouraged from mentioning my age (even irl i look older) not cause of safety or anything but I js feel like I'll be treated differently when people know I'm younger. Its happened quite often to me both IRL and online where I'll notice a distinct shift in tone after they know how young I am
realitista@lemmus.org · 7 pts · 363d
I'm happy there are at least some young people here.
moseschrute@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 363d
Alright smarty pants. Let’s hear about some of your “minimal tech skills”.
realitista@lemmus.org · 7 pts · 363d
Well I studied CS, was a Unix sysadmin for a few years, then a consultant for a enterprise software company. But I've been in sales for 20 years, so that should count equally against me, although I do still have some linux servers at home. I'm probably still a bit overqualified for the task of signing up to the fediverse.
MBech@feddit.dk · 6 pts · 363d
I can open Word without blaming someone else for moving the shortcut!
Sabata11792@ani.social · 3 pts · 363d
Overqualified for most office jobs.
moseschrute@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 363d
What’s Word? /s
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 362d
I can google error codes 😅
AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space · 23 pts · 363d
Mastodon is the German nudist beach of social media. There’s a strong sense of camaraderie, but the average age is somewhere north of 50, and people under 40 instinctively cringe when they hear about it.
Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca · 22 pts · 363d
Do not cite the deep magic to me, witch, I was there when it was written.
ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 363d
As a 1,000 year old vampire, I apologise for my kind skewing the average.
humorlessrepost@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 362d
As a 2,000 year old prepubescent girl, I don’t know which direction I’m skewing it.
Afflictedlife@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 361d
As an ageless fifth dimensional being extending my influence into this world through this rotting meat sack I am confused by both of you as I still recall time as a singularity
Jerb322@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 362d
I'm nearly 50, not really sure how it all works. Just glad that I found something other than reddit.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 362d
This is it. I grew out of reddit too. And it's funny cause when I started using it was around 2012-ish, and everyone was around their 20s/30s with the occasional edgy teen # chan refugee. Yeah we told a lot of the same dumb jokes still circulating now (cause it's more than half bots now), but now every single thread is literally ALL the same exact jokes I saw a decade plus ago, again and again, day after day.
At least this lemme gives a joke a few days to rest before trying to milk that old skinny cow again.
dingus@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 362d
20 is old? Rip me then I must be a skeleton.
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 362d
I'm 35 and seem to find people older than me on here fairly often. So I don't feel on when I'm on here, until I stand up.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 362d
The whole Internet is club penguin apparently.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 361d
The pool is closed because of AIDS
Wait that was Habbo.
zeca@lemmy.ml · 13 pts · 362d
How would we know the average? I dont remember putting my age when signing up
bitjunkie@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 362d
Typical post broccolitude
meliaesc@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 362d
On the internet, everything is known.
iAvicenna@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 362d
one data point is missing, all hope of computing the true average is lost. resort to standard deviation of the mean.
zeca@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 362d
Only one point? age is not asked in the signup form
finitebanjo@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 363d
M137@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 362d
I'm just happy there aren't any, or at least many, teens and kids here. Reading the comments on Reddit, YouTube and anywhere else where they are is a fucking fever dream of stupidity, ignorance and weirdness. It's mostly fine here, and it's a nice break.
dynamoMaus@feddit.org · -2 pts · 362d
Do me a favor and look up the word "ageism".
OldChicoAle@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 362d
I take it you haven't interacted with many young people since the pandemic
mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 362d
Idunno if it counts as ageism when they're talking about stupid behavior among people with minds that are factually, biologically, not finished developing. Same reason it isn't ageist to say "ten year olds are not allowed to drive cars because they aren't smart enough to do it responsibly"
dynamoMaus@feddit.org · 2 pts · 361d
Never said it was ageism but I am sure it is at least close to it and a good reason to look it up.
I agree with the part here being a nice culture compared to other "social" medias. However repatriating general stupid behavior just on kids is definitely ageism - not sure if that was OPs intention.
Don't quite agree with your comparison: What you mention is more of skill learning process. Social media is more of a proper behavior to have - I think here the age doesn't matter nearly as much as your surrounding.
TheBannedLemming@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 362d
Is the average age of a social media user really that young? Are very young adults and legally speaking children the driving force behind the base of social media? Are even modestly older individuals not willing to try and engage with this developing type of medium?
Tired@slrpnk.net · 7 pts · 362d
Kids and trendy young people are on tiktok and Instagram and do short video clip based social media.
The people who grew up with the internet being a place where you type and read things to be social, are here and places like here.
I think folk just prefer what they know, like if you grew up with loud and bright video clips being the normal way to interact online, you'd probably not want to switch over to reading and typing- which probably also feels like more effort to these people than just performing for a camera.
Same likely goes for us text based social media people but in reverse.
twice_hatch@midwest.social · 4 pts · 361d
I think a lot of older people have jobs and real-life hobbies. When you're a kid trapped in the suburbs with no neighbors to play with, you can't drive, you can't walk to anything, the idea of being terminally online is very appealing. I'm still growing out of it in my 30s
StatisticMaple@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 362d
I'm 18, feeling like a fetus in comparison XD
Event_Horizon@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 361d
You're a fetus harry!
Especially poignant since this meme is 5 years older than you
StatisticMaple@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 361d
XD
LokiSynBernen@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 356d
Hallo, cousin
StatisticMaple@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 356d
Hoi!
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 363d
above 50 here.
foggy@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 363d
There are either a ton of 12 year olds on here or an ever larger number of 18 year olds.
Sergio@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 363d
If we're picking characters, I wanna be Uncle Iroh!
justme@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 363d
Yeah... I'm definitely Bumi
hanrahan@slrpnk.net · 8 pts · 361d
Ffs, I'm 60 this year
fin@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 362d
I remember when I created my first lemmy account on fediverse on lemmy.ml when I was like 15 or 16. 20 years old now, I'm in the elderly group...
Magnum@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 7 pts · 363d
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 363d
Nah, I'm 30. It's just a relief to be on a community where the majority of the commenters aren't literal children.
victorz@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 363d
Happy to be above the age of
20.toString()!Worstdriver@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 363d
Me, as a Gen X, just keeping under the radar...
Drusas@fedia.io · 2 pts · 362d
Get back under that radar. We have to forget you exist!
anomnom@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 361d
It’s not over 30? Or on the verge of 40? I see a lotta 40+ memes and sentiments. At least in the communities I frequent.
REDACTED@infosec.pub · 4 pts · 362d
I always somehow assumed it's lower. Around 16 if I had to guess. We need a poll
chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 7 pts · 362d
I'm curious if that's because you think people seem immature or something? I'm in my 40s, and work with people both older and younger than me. I can see comments across Lemmy that I wouldn't find unusual for here, except maybe a stronger leaning towards left leaning politics, privacy, etc.
I've seen a huge amount of immature adults.
REDACTED@infosec.pub · 1 pts · 362d
It's more about general toxicity and too quick to judge (edit: which I guess counts as immature), but I gotta say it has gotten better, likely due to said users slowly getting banned.
I noticed multiple times that the person I was arguing with was suddenly removed by moderators.
chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 362d
One of the coworkers quickest to get kinda yelly about his opinions at work was a genx guy (older than me) who had very strong "classical liberal" opinions as well as the typical belief that he was being logical, not emotional, as he raised his voice while talking to us about policies he didn't agree with. He also had the typical misogynistic view that he was rational while women were emotional. One time he and I were getting a little heated in a shared discord chat and a mutual friend who was the admin muted both of us.
I told the friend something like "fair, you did try to change the subject and we ignored you, my bad." The older guy got super pissed someone controller his speech and he left the discord forever.
I've also seen my uncle get butthurt that I tried to meditate a discussion between him and my sister (she requested my help because he and my aunt would just both say their side against her and not let them talk.) I mostly just stopped them from interrupting each other and asked them to let the other person speak, and I did it both to my sister and my aunt and uncle.
They later complained about being told what to do in their own house.
While young people can be impulsive and judgy, I find that age does not always fix that. The people it doesn't fix get entitled and think their age justifies their beliefs and that they're automatically wiser than you.
REDACTED@infosec.pub · 1 pts · 361d
I've had the same experience with some older folks, so there are of course exceptions. I borderline see myself as a young dude (~30) and nearly everyone I work with is older than me, and my communication with younger people as of lately has mostly been digital, and digital communication tends to be far different from physical one, so my experience might aswell be skewed and in the end biased.
Ostrichgrif@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 362d
I don't think many people on here are in highschool, I'm in my mid twenties and have always felt on the younger side here.
kandoh@reddthat.com · 5 pts · 362d
I think the average age is probably 35 - 40. If you're here, you're here because you want the internet from the late 00s.
otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 363d
Feels good.
Afflictedlife@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 361d
Straight up archeological in this place
capcool@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 363d
Pretty good and peaceful in my experience.
Jomega@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 363d
There is no fucking way. Some of yall are lying.
Xylight@lemdro.id · 1 pts · 362d
TheSexyMaster@feddit.uk · 1 pts · 336d
truxnell@quokk.au · -8 pts · 363d
Older average age is a feature, not a bug. I hope fedi keeps out the under 40s
Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 363d
You hate us under 40s so much?
khannie@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 363d
I don't. Ignore that nonsense.
a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 363d
some people don't age gracefully 🤷♂️ enjoy your stay whatever your age is
Septimaeus@infosec.pub · 6 pts · 363d
You sound delightful
Jankatarch@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 362d
I can see some 39 year old looking at this and going "darn it."