The mastodon and lemmy content I’m seeing feels like 90% of it comes from people who are:
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~30 years old or older
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tech enthusiasts/workers
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linux users
There’s nothing wrong with that particular demographic or anything, but it doesn’t feel like a win to me if the entire fediverse is just one big monoculture.
I wonder what it is that is keeping more diverse users away? Is picking a server/federation too complicated? Or is it that they don’t see any content that they like?
Thoughts?
I used to play SMITE with a kid, and he didn’t really know anything computer related. It was a bit shocking to me since I always just expected that future generations would become more and more tech literate, but I think smartphones kind of screwed that.
Smartphones truly brought computing to the masses more than desktop OSs, and true, the majority of people have no idea what they’re doing. But… prior to smartphones they wouldn’t have been using a computing device at all.
Oh yeah absolutely. It just really baffled me he first time I had that sort of interaction with someone younger than me.
There will always be enthusiasts and nerds, but I rather thought that computer literacy would be more widespread than it turned out.
Me too. In the 90s, when word processing and then the internet went mainstream, I thought that that average people would finally learn basic computer concepts and stop acting like it was super-confusing… just simple things like, what is a file? What is an executable? How do I organize my system? At the most basic, how do I plug all the wires together to set a desktop up? (This one always drove me nuts because there is literally only one cord and socket that fit together for each component).
Instead we ended up with millions of people running Windows 98 with 8 viruses at once and a desktop full of icons, and nonsense like “I’m calling the Geek Squad to come to my house fix my PC!” or harassing the youngest person they know to fix it for them. I can’t count how many times I had to fix my mother or aunt’s computer, then someone would fuck it up again by downloading HottestAlbumListenNow.mp3.exe. The current situation with many people’s Android phones is about as horrifying, with 20 spyware casino apps at once, and they don’t even know where they got them from. Around 2010, I got so tired of my mother saying “my computer’s broken! can you fix it?” that I installed Linux on her machine, and it was somewhat confusing for her for a while as in “How do I get the photos from my camera?” but entirely ended the constant virus/spyware bullshit. Eventually she got a Chromebook, which had the same advantage vs. Windows.
It’s a shame to just have to dumb things down or hide complexity but I think the best choice to give the average person a system like ChromeOS or iOS that they simply can’t fuck up with viruses or spyware. People have demonstrated that they aren’t going to take the time to figure it out.
Ugh, that all sounds really familiar to me too. Boggles the mind that people can’t plug things in, it’s just a case of finding what cord goes from where, and which port it fits in. It’s really difficult to get it wrong. I think the thing I hated the most was being called over to literally read a dialogue. “I was working on my document and this popped up!!”
Like please, just read what it says instead of freaking out every time something pops up!
Ha! I have the exact same issue with people and dialogues, like “Okay… did you read it? What did it say?” Somehow they don’t seem to understand that there are words on the screen which are there to tell them information.
I tried helping my ex brother in law over the phone and he couldn’t grasp the concept of right clicking. I told him to just hold on and I would help him when I was back in town.
I know he knows how to right click but when given the instruction to right click on something he somehow forgets what a right click is.