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oopsabird:
tough-girl9:
I recently saw a meme on Facebook that said something along the lines of “how to make a millennial panic: lock them in a room with only a phone book and a rotary phone and write the instructions in cursive!” It had this smug “aha, gotcha” vibe oozing out of it, and it…just sort of made me laugh. Like, really? Really? But it also made me think…
Beyond the fact that I know how to use both a phone book and a rotary phone and can read cursive (as long as it’s not too horrifically messy), I think it was the attitude of “Oh no, we’ve got you because you couldn’t possibly figure out how to use something that’s new to you” that really made me snort. But I think that’s the key to this and similar memes that I’ve seen.
They don’t think we could figure out how to use something new to us, because they can’t do it.
Like, if you presented a millennial with a rotary phone or a phone book and they had never, ever used one or seen one used before, I can guarantee pretty much any millennial could figure out how to use it. Because that’s what we do: we adapt. We’ve been through so many variations of technology and seen so many new forms of technology emerge that we’ve had to learn to adapt swiftly and fluidly. It’s second nature to us.
Put a boomer in a room with a smartphone, laptop, and tablet however, and well…different story.
I’m not sure if they literally don’t understand that presenting a millennial with something they haven’t encountered before would not be an obstacle and certainly not a panic-inducing one, or if they just say things like that to make themselves feel better that they couldn’t do the equivalent, or if it’s a combination of the above.
I just realized that the original meme is also, quite accidentally, basically describing the principle behind….. escape rooms.
You know, the recent popular trend in participatory entertainment in which thousands of millennials literally go out and pay money to voluntarily be locked in a room where they have to solve puzzles under a time pressure, often using antiquated or analog technology, secret codes, and mechanisms they don’t yet understand, all without using their phones/the internet. For fun.
For many of us, that’s not panic-inducing, that’s just our idea of an enjoyable Saturday night out with some friends!
Now I’m just laughing even harder.
oh my gosh this just made me think of an old joke. it’s probably a racist joke about Irishmen, actually, now that I think on it, and I’m not sure why I’ve been exposed to so many of those in my life that I have an entire like mental index file of them, but whatever.
So the gist of it is, there’s this wealthy landowner whose best field is being all destroyed and dug up by a mole, and he pays an Irishman to catch the mole for him. (I don’t think the Irishman has to at all be Irish for this joke; you’re just supposed to assume he’s not very bright, is the punchline, I’m spoiling it here, sorry, it’s pretty stupid anyway.)
Anyway. The Irishman finally triumphantly catches the mole, and the landowner says “well what did you do with it after?” and the Irishman says some racist nonsense syllables a la begorra and suchlike to make him seem earthy and simple, and in the end says “I gave him the worst death I could think of”, and the guy’s like well what did you do and the punchline is that the Irishman, to punish it, buried the mole alive.
HA, she writes, in the current Internet shorthand for an eyeroll.
so that’s the above joke. Like, Millennials love escape rooms, right, so to punish one, you just– and I’m just going to stop here and let you draw any dotted lines you need to, or not, this post is not my finest work but it amused me enough to try to write it, so i’m leaving this here.
oopsabird:
tough-girl9:
I recently saw a meme on Facebook that said something along the lines of “how to make a millennial panic: lock them in a room with only a phone book and a rotary phone and write the instructions in cursive!” It had this smug “aha, gotcha” vibe oozing out of it, and it…just sort of made me laugh. Like, really? Really? But it also made me think…
Beyond the fact that I know how to use both a phone book and a rotary phone and can read cursive (as long as it’s not too horrifically messy), I think it was the attitude of “Oh no, we’ve got you because you couldn’t possibly figure out how to use something that’s new to you” that really made me snort. But I think that’s the key to this and similar memes that I’ve seen.
They don’t think we could figure out how to use something new to us, because they can’t do it.
Like, if you presented a millennial with a rotary phone or a phone book and they had never, ever used one or seen one used before, I can guarantee pretty much any millennial could figure out how to use it. Because that’s what we do: we adapt. We’ve been through so many variations of technology and seen so many new forms of technology emerge that we’ve had to learn to adapt swiftly and fluidly. It’s second nature to us.
Put a boomer in a room with a smartphone, laptop, and tablet however, and well…different story.
I’m not sure if they literally don’t understand that presenting a millennial with something they haven’t encountered before would not be an obstacle and certainly not a panic-inducing one, or if they just say things like that to make themselves feel better that they couldn’t do the equivalent, or if it’s a combination of the above.
I just realized that the original meme is also, quite accidentally, basically describing the principle behind….. escape rooms.
You know, the recent popular trend in participatory entertainment in which thousands of millennials literally go out and pay money to voluntarily be locked in a room where they have to solve puzzles under a time pressure, often using antiquated or analog technology, secret codes, and mechanisms they don’t yet understand, all without using their phones/the internet. For fun.
For many of us, that’s not panic-inducing, that’s just our idea of an enjoyable Saturday night out with some friends!
Now I’m just laughing even harder.
oh my gosh this just made me think of an old joke. it’s probably a racist joke about Irishmen, actually, now that I think on it, and I’m not sure why I’ve been exposed to so many of those in my life that I have an entire like mental index file of them, but whatever.
So the gist of it is, there’s this wealthy landowner whose best field is being all destroyed and dug up by a mole, and he pays an Irishman to catch the mole for him. (I don’t think the Irishman has to at all be Irish for this joke; you’re just supposed to assume he’s not very bright, is the punchline, I’m spoiling it here, sorry, it’s pretty stupid anyway.)
Anyway. The Irishman finally triumphantly catches the mole, and the landowner says “well what did you do with it after?” and the Irishman says some racist nonsense syllables a la begorra and suchlike to make him seem earthy and simple, and in the end says “I gave him the worst death I could think of”, and the guy’s like well what did you do and the punchline is that the Irishman, to punish it, buried the mole alive.
HA, she writes, in the current Internet shorthand for an eyeroll.
so that’s the above joke. Like, Millennials love escape rooms, right, so to punish one, you just– and I’m just going to stop here and let you draw any dotted lines you need to, or not, this post is not my finest work but it amused me enough to try to write it, so i’m leaving this here.
