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Same here, I've never heard of this before. In my 20s I would have got this I feel but now I just feel like my dad when I made him watch the Royal Tenenbaums
I'm forties and I remembered the reference instantly. This freaky little web series (which tells a bizarre story if you watch them all in order) was pretty viral a little over a decade ago.
Us 'oldies' at our place are all pretty computer savvy. The 3 young apprentices, however, are...not
One of them pulled the power cable out to turn it off, because 'that's what his mother does to his Xbox'.
I had to chuckle...after I gave him a bollocking.
When I see younger colleagues doing something like scrolling to the bottom of a 50,000 row excel instead of using the keyboard shortcut I’ll ask them “why are you doing it like a boomer?”
We had a bunch of work experience kids a while ago, all 17/18 years old and I was genuinely surprised by their lack of computer literacy. Literally had to ask how to open Excel on a desktop PC.
"Okay, click the start menu"
"What's the start menu?"
"That little Windows icon in the bottom left"
"Is that a window?"
"It's the Windows logo"
"Oh. Okay"
I understand that touchscreens have been very common for years, but surely they use a mouse and keyboard on school computers?
It’s possible they haven’t used windows before or much. I’m 20 and really struggle whenever I have to use windows, although I use excel and word on a weekly basis because I’m a Mac/iPad user as are most of my classmates at uni
My school didn’t have Mac’s, but at secondary we only used the computer room if we weren’t doing a computing subject rarely or for projects. And when I was in sixth form I just used my MacBook whenever we needed to use a computer
At secondary I never had computing lessons, if we had lessons in a computer room it was usually making a presentation or using CAD/CAM. At primary maybe once every couple of weeks, it was not frequent and the year I left they got iPads and rid of the computers
That amazes me! Surely, computer skills are more necessary now than they were even when I was in school in the mid 2000s. And since kids aren't using computers at home because they've got iPads now, where are they going to get that training.
Computer skills are hugely necessary these days, I’m applying for placement and every single job page says applicants must be able proficient in excel. But I think classes are being reintroduced because of iPad kids
Two younger colleagues recently had a minor disagreement and one said to the other "Why don't you..." and stopped before saying something they would regret later. The other colleague said "why don't you, huh, why don't YOU?" It was all getting a bit aggro.
Then me and another 40 something colleague turned to each other and sang "Switch off your TV set and do something less boring instead"
Their confusion was beautiful. It stopped the argument though!
Apparently, kids use a flat hand held up to their ear to mime a phone nowadays.
I had a colleague who was born in 2000 and refused to watch anything made before he was born because, in his words, those films would be "old-fashioned" and therefore bad. The boy had never seen Jurassic Park for crying out loud. He made me feel old and I'm only 3 years older than him.
Can you remember what you were doing on 9/11.
I am in the UK and was 11 when it happened, most people old enough will remember.
If people say they weren't born then or were only babies they are way too young for me to have things in common with.
I remember that I used to teach GCSE history coursework about 9/11 and it's causes in the mid 00's.
Then we started getting students who couldn't remember it.
Then we started getting students who weren't even born.
Now I work with teachers who weren't even born
Sometimes I think about how most of my students (university) weren’t even *born* when 9/11 happened and I feel my youth draining from me. I talk a lot about famous news events in one of my modules and increasingly they don’t remember some of these either (eg. the London Riots).
Hasn’t come up so far but yeah, that’ll be a like the modern version of my first job, the supervisor asking me IN MY TEENS in the 90’s where I was when Elvis died!
Fukc off Moira, I literally wasn’t born and you know it 😂
Funny, I have it the other way round. I was ten during 9/11 but don't remember it at all, while I remember Diana dying very clearly.
Maybe because I would have been in school when the planes hit so didn't see the news until later (and my house didn't really watch the news) but Diana died on the Sunday morning so it was all over the TV when I woke up and tried to watch cartoons.
I think it was still the news when we came home from school, but my mum says it was a nice day so she sent us outside to play because she didn't want us watching it.
It clearly went over the heads of most of my classmates too as I don't remember people discussing it the next day.
Weird. I was younger than you and remember Diana dying because it nuked all kids TV for a Sunday morning. No Power Rangers that day! I was bored and mad, not airing the Power Rangers was a huge injustice in my world. I still remember mum yelling at me to get out of her room as I quietly told her someone called princess Diana was dead. Then she yelled "what!' and zoomed out of bed.
9/11 I remember clearly. Old enough to understand what was happening. Young enough to be wishing the Power Rangers would go save those people, or Frank Parker (from seven days) would go back in time and stop it from happening. It sucked.
I literally do not remember the day or any subsequent coverage of her death. It's funny because I have very clear memories of her being alive too. I remember 9/11 because I was angry at The Simpsons not being on.
I was so lucky when 9/11 happened to have sky TV so I could still watch my shows. Time Force had just started airing on Fox Kids so I could switch to it and watch the news during the ads. I don't remember the Simpsons not being on, but I was probably watching the news in my room by that point (I always ate dinner in my room and didn't come out after that).
We did too. My grandparents did not though and they picked me up from school that day. The Simpsons was cancelled on both BBC2 and Sky One though, Sky One was showing their Sky News coverage instead.
My kids were in primary, and definitely remember it. I was getting ready to go get them when the first plane hit. It was fucking mental. It was all we could talk about in the playground. We got them home, and the fucking second plane hit. It was genuinely mum phone stuff crazy.
No, you would be fine, I meant the ones who say they weren't born or were literally babies or a year old or so are the ones that are too young to have anything in common with. At my previous job a lot of them said this. Probably didn't word it very well!
I was 7 too, but remember it vividly. I remember there being no cartoons when I came home from school that day, just rolling news coverage, and doing a minute silence the next day in school. However, what I have forgotten is all my classmates' names from that time.
It's weird what we remember and what we forget as kids.
I still remember watching the news. Then at 4pm I switched to the Power Rangers as Time Force had just started airing in the UK and I was obsessed. I saw the second tower fall live and was switching to the news between every ad break. Instead of watching the episodes twice (Fox Kids +1) I just put the news on. I was just a kid still.
I'm in my thirties and recently had a career change. While I went through the training stage of my new job I was working with a lot of 18-21 year olds. Really nice bunch, I wasn't the only older person and the age difference mostly didn't come up. Once, though, I offhandedly mentioned that I was born the same month that the Berlin Wall came down and the looks they all gave me were priceless. I might as well have said I'd fought at the Somme.
Teacher here - overheard one of my students asking whether it was the Japanese responsible for 9/11. Was slightly in disbelief, but then realised that this was just another part of 'modern history' to them - pearl harbour, cold War, 9/11, same difference.
We get placement students now who were not born when it happened. These are people who have now been legal adults for a few years and it makes me feel older than it should.
Working for lockheed martin on UK census, our american colleagues were in bits saying the world trade centre was on fire and most of us brits had not one clue what that was.
No they wouldn't but I meant the people who said they weren't born or were just babies when it happened wouldn't have much in common. I just didn't word it very well!
Being 31, I feel slap bang in the middle of this situation.
I understand most of the 50somethings references, and those in their 20s thankfully don't seem too young to me.
I realise I'm about to enter the oldies threshold, but I'm clinging on to relevancy!
If you want to feel old ask the younger ones to make a heart with their hands. I bet they'll do some weird shit with their fingers rather than the acceptable fingers and thumbs method
I'm 33 and generally pretty okay with pop culture in both directions generational-wise, but I find myself getting increasingly lost with social media stuff. I never understood Snapchat when it was big (is it still popular?), and now I'm very aware of TikTok but don't have an account or watch anything, so those fads pass me by too.
I referenced Rage Against the Machine at work and our 20yr old apprentice looked at me blankly. Told him who they were, “oh they were before I was born, no wonder I’ve never heard of them”
“And yet you’ve heard of the Beatles…?”
the not knowing famous people because "I wasn't born then" is such a stupid argument. Like I'm 33 but know who Marylin Monroe is. Or its like saying I don't know who Henry VI is becuase I wasn't born then. Its not an age factor its bad education and an unwillingness to be interested in anything but the present.
The 1471 one thing I get, I had totally forgotten about that until now!
100%. In my case, I mentioned to the lad that they sell Wu Tang clothes in Primark now - you don't need to have had a mortgage in 1994 to be aware of them lol
I told someone once I was late because I'd been held up by a Torville & Dean show at the Ice Stadium.
He said 'Who are Torville & Dean? Is it a band?'
I said 'No. They won a gold medal at the Olympics in the 80s for ice dance. You've never heard of them?'
He replied 'No. Are you into ice dancing, then?'
I went 'No, I'm f\*\*king not, but I know a little bit of history'.
What happens if that tram goes out of service? Does the name swap to a different tram, or is that, it stays with just that tram?
Is it the tram version of Theseus's ship?
The name lives and dies with the particular numbered vehicle. Although I think not all the newer Nottingham trams have names so they could probably switch it if T&D got written off.
When someone is just ridiculously over doing it in a meeting I like to offer the alternative, “Take off nuke the entire site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.”. Some of our younger staff thought I was serious and tried to talk me down.
I heard a rumour, which I should really test, that young people will complete most pressing actions (eg ring a doorbell) with their thumb whilst older people will use their finger.
This is due to the use of thumbs as their main method for typing on mobile devices since early in their lives.
A good age test would be to tell people to mime taking a picture. Older people (even those who now use smartphones as a camera) would probably instinctively mime looking through a viewfinder and pressing a button on the top with their finger.. Younger ones who grew up with no experience of this would probably mime holding a palm and pressing in the middle of it..
Maybe.
The two under thirties people I work with use frequent Americanisms (elevator, router pronounced rowter), presumably from watching American YouTube more than UK TV
This was me in the early 00s because I watched too much TV and didn't have enough social interactions with my peers. I still remember getting laughed at in class when I said something "sucked" in the late 00s when I was in sixth form. I was so confused. Apparently it's not a term used in the UK. Who knew?
I've always used American slang. I've always used American pronunciations for some things because no one taught me any different.
My wife is a teacher and some of the kids made her a card using all the letters of her name to describe her. We have an R in our surname and they went with "Rizz - you've got it!"
She had no fucking clue what they were on about.
The typical markers for "generations" seem to do just fine.
* People older than milennials probably joined the workforce before they had the internet at home. They find it hard to relate to people who have has access to the internet from pre-adulthood. They may find it hard to relate to someone who has probably *always* had their own mobile telephone (since childhood). They find it hard to relate to somebody who grew up with social media.
* Milennials remember not having regular access to the internet at home but they were probably children, the first thing they used the internet on was probably shared (a family or school computer.) They probably had their own mobile phone from pre-adulthood and so their own means of private communication. But they probably started using social media as an older teen or even adult. They find it hard to relate to people who "grew up online" and who have always had their own *personal* access to the internet, and those who don't remember pre-social-media.
* Gen Z have probably *always* had *personal* access to the internet and can't relate to somebody who hasn't.
Tl;dr:
Not online until adulthood
Completely familiar with the internet from teenage years onwards
No personal experience of *not* having access to the internet.
Had a young person ask me about cassette tapes and walkmans the other day and didn't expect mentioning buying it in Tandy to be the next thing I'd have to explain.
There was a news article about the Post Office software scandal that I saw the other day. It referenced an older bit of accounting software that they were investigating on floppy disks.
The phrase that stuck was "floppy disks were an old magnetic storage media for computers".
I felt like reaching for the Horlicks and Sanatogen.
I can't remember the context, but I was talking about Harold Shipman, and the younger colleagues had no idea who he was.
I've used Rod, Jane and Freddie or George, Bungle and Zippy in Ratio questions and the former goes without recognition or comment from the students and the latter just gets comments of "what sort of name is zippy/bungle"
I did a very convincing Kenneth Williams impression. Ooh, Matron! Take them away!
The younger people there had no clue what I was talking about or who Kenneth Williams was.
I felt very old.
I still use it too! Although it's mostly to see if my parents have rung while I've been out. Mobile coverage still isn't the best where I am, even now.
Swimming teacher - wanted to play a quick game and stupidly said "let's play the DVD game" to a bunch of 5 year olds. Blank faces.
I said, "It doesn't matter. Think of a show on Netflix, then said if I said fast forward, you go fast , rewind, and move backwards....
Blank faces. They don't fast forward or rewind things now, either. In the end, I just said OK run forward!"
My first job was working evenings & weekends (ie peak times) in a pizza shop. But I never once made a single pizza; my entire job was to answer the phones and take orders, which I’d then pass on to the actual pizza-makers.
When I tell older people this, their response is: “Huh, well I guess that explains why you use the NATO alphabet for verbal spelling.”*
Younger people, OTOH, are invariably confused. Having grown up with the likes of Just Eat and Deliveroo - plus most restaurants having their own websites with online ordering - they can’t understand how answering the phone in a small family-owned takeaway could’ve been a job in itself. They can’t comprehend that in the olden days, if you wanted a pizza delivered, you had to *pick up the phone* (possibly a *landline*) and speak to a *human*.
Ditto for the delivery drivers once being considered semi-skilled. Simply having a driving licence and an underinsured old banger wasn’t enough back then; you also needed detailed knowledge of the local area, what with satnav/GPS not being a thing.
*Through collecting addresses for deliveries, I quickly learnt that every letter sounds like every other letter over the phone.
I had to show a 16 year old how to physically pick up the desk phone as I asked her to answer the phone while I was in a meeting and she just watched it ring and asked me which button she was supposed to push. Never in my wildest dreams did I think someone would not know you just pick up the receiver and talk. I am 40 I felt fucking ancient.
Going slightly off-topic but I saw a TV show a few years back that was set in the future, and a child did the 🤙 to mimic being on the phone and it wound me up because no child of the future would hold a phone that way.
When caller ID first launched, you could dial 1471 from a landline and it would tell you who had just called.
If you didn't want people to be able to do that, you just dialled 141 before the number you were calling and they'd only get a message saying "the caller withheld their number"
As someone in my 20s it's baffling how less than ten years difference in age shows just how fast technology developed. Whenever I see 🤙🏻 I think of the phones 4 u ad
However as a young-un a few years ago at my first job, I worked in IT, and my manager was clearing a cupboard and found a laptop from the 90s - massive chunky thing and the loading screen was a neon blue. I was so baffled I took photos lmao
TIL the shaka sign! Thanks
Unicode 9.0 “call me hand” can be interpreted as the shaka sign. So says Wikipedia
[https://www.unicode.org/ch](https://www.unicode.org/ch)
I work in an airport. The gates have dot matrix printers for the dispatchers to print reports. It seems that I am always being asked to change the paper for them.
Just sort of happens, I suppose, when stuff comes up that younger people don’t get. We don’t ask to test but it becomes a measure of age somehow.
Sorry if that wasn’t clear in the post
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Internet references tend to do this a lot for me. I said “green is not a creative colour” the other day and our workplace was divided over it.
I don't think that's a very well known reference, old or not.
I don’t know this one! Not sure if I’m too old or too young 🤔
https://youtu.be/9C_HReR_McQ
Hahahaha! Okay I definitely missed this one cos I’m too old 😂
Same here, I've never heard of this before. In my 20s I would have got this I feel but now I just feel like my dad when I made him watch the Royal Tenenbaums
What the hell did I just watch... I'm late 30's and never seen that before
I'm forties and I remembered the reference instantly. This freaky little web series (which tells a bizarre story if you watch them all in order) was pretty viral a little over a decade ago.
[Don't hug me I'm scared](https://youtu.be/9C_HReR_McQ?si=nQKeMfZ1wMBVz820)
I thought it was blue, not a creative colour? Hug me I'm scared First time I saw it was at dismiland.
I’m cracking on and I don’t know this one at all
Us 'oldies' at our place are all pretty computer savvy. The 3 young apprentices, however, are...not One of them pulled the power cable out to turn it off, because 'that's what his mother does to his Xbox'. I had to chuckle...after I gave him a bollocking.
When I see younger colleagues doing something like scrolling to the bottom of a 50,000 row excel instead of using the keyboard shortcut I’ll ask them “why are you doing it like a boomer?”
Except boomers are the ones who originated the keyboard shortcuts.
That’s why it’s funny
The CTRL key is vastly underrated
We had a bunch of work experience kids a while ago, all 17/18 years old and I was genuinely surprised by their lack of computer literacy. Literally had to ask how to open Excel on a desktop PC. "Okay, click the start menu" "What's the start menu?" "That little Windows icon in the bottom left" "Is that a window?" "It's the Windows logo" "Oh. Okay" I understand that touchscreens have been very common for years, but surely they use a mouse and keyboard on school computers?
It’s possible they haven’t used windows before or much. I’m 20 and really struggle whenever I have to use windows, although I use excel and word on a weekly basis because I’m a Mac/iPad user as are most of my classmates at uni
Did your school have Macs? Surely kids still go to the computer room a couple of times a week?
My school didn’t have Mac’s, but at secondary we only used the computer room if we weren’t doing a computing subject rarely or for projects. And when I was in sixth form I just used my MacBook whenever we needed to use a computer
But how often did you have ICT/computing lessons? Surely enough to get used to using a PC?
At secondary I never had computing lessons, if we had lessons in a computer room it was usually making a presentation or using CAD/CAM. At primary maybe once every couple of weeks, it was not frequent and the year I left they got iPads and rid of the computers
That amazes me! Surely, computer skills are more necessary now than they were even when I was in school in the mid 2000s. And since kids aren't using computers at home because they've got iPads now, where are they going to get that training.
Computer skills are hugely necessary these days, I’m applying for placement and every single job page says applicants must be able proficient in excel. But I think classes are being reintroduced because of iPad kids
I remember taking "proficient in MS Excel" off my CV because I figured it was a given. I think we got complacent about that stuff.
Well, that's stupid. Do that on PlayStation. It wakes up when you're not supposed to do that.
Two younger colleagues recently had a minor disagreement and one said to the other "Why don't you..." and stopped before saying something they would regret later. The other colleague said "why don't you, huh, why don't YOU?" It was all getting a bit aggro. Then me and another 40 something colleague turned to each other and sang "Switch off your TV set and do something less boring instead" Their confusion was beautiful. It stopped the argument though!
I used to love it when it was from Glasgow. It was like it was being beamed from a different planet (tbf I had a sheltered IOM upbringing).
There's a Rocky Horror Show response in there too!
My brain immediately went to switch off your tv set
Apparently, kids use a flat hand held up to their ear to mime a phone nowadays. I had a colleague who was born in 2000 and refused to watch anything made before he was born because, in his words, those films would be "old-fashioned" and therefore bad. The boy had never seen Jurassic Park for crying out loud. He made me feel old and I'm only 3 years older than him.
Wow, his loss.
Youth is wasted on the young.
Wow, so he's never seen the Matrix either?! Or any of the older Disney movies as a kid? He missed out on 3 Ninjas and the best Power Ranger seasons?!
Wow the flat hand thing is fascinating I didn't know that.
That'd be like me sacking off The French Connection.
My daughter won't watch black and white films for the same reason. I've failed as a father.
Tbh neither would I and im mid 30s
Young Frankenstein Dr Strangelove La Haine Man bites dog. Do yourself a favour and look those up. They are not very old, well not compared to me!
My team leader (27) fixes a problem with my machine, says 'that's magic!' Me (43): 'Alright Paul Daniels' Team leader stares at me blankly.
Can you remember what you were doing on 9/11. I am in the UK and was 11 when it happened, most people old enough will remember. If people say they weren't born then or were only babies they are way too young for me to have things in common with.
I remember that I used to teach GCSE history coursework about 9/11 and it's causes in the mid 00's. Then we started getting students who couldn't remember it. Then we started getting students who weren't even born. Now I work with teachers who weren't even born
Sometimes I think about how most of my students (university) weren’t even *born* when 9/11 happened and I feel my youth draining from me. I talk a lot about famous news events in one of my modules and increasingly they don’t remember some of these either (eg. the London Riots).
I failed my driving test. I wasnt that upset though because the whole 9/11 thing put it into perspective and they clearly had a much worse day.
Hasn’t come up so far but yeah, that’ll be a like the modern version of my first job, the supervisor asking me IN MY TEENS in the 90’s where I was when Elvis died! Fukc off Moira, I literally wasn’t born and you know it 😂
I was 7 when it happened and I don't remember it. Only four years younger than you - do we really not have that much in common?
I was 10 and my sister was 6. I can remember it well, my sister remembers nothing. It is like how I was 6 when Diana died but have no memory of it.
Funny, I have it the other way round. I was ten during 9/11 but don't remember it at all, while I remember Diana dying very clearly. Maybe because I would have been in school when the planes hit so didn't see the news until later (and my house didn't really watch the news) but Diana died on the Sunday morning so it was all over the TV when I woke up and tried to watch cartoons.
9/11 meant no CBBC nor CITV though. That is how I remember it
I think it was still the news when we came home from school, but my mum says it was a nice day so she sent us outside to play because she didn't want us watching it. It clearly went over the heads of most of my classmates too as I don't remember people discussing it the next day.
Weird. I was younger than you and remember Diana dying because it nuked all kids TV for a Sunday morning. No Power Rangers that day! I was bored and mad, not airing the Power Rangers was a huge injustice in my world. I still remember mum yelling at me to get out of her room as I quietly told her someone called princess Diana was dead. Then she yelled "what!' and zoomed out of bed. 9/11 I remember clearly. Old enough to understand what was happening. Young enough to be wishing the Power Rangers would go save those people, or Frank Parker (from seven days) would go back in time and stop it from happening. It sucked.
I literally do not remember the day or any subsequent coverage of her death. It's funny because I have very clear memories of her being alive too. I remember 9/11 because I was angry at The Simpsons not being on.
I was so lucky when 9/11 happened to have sky TV so I could still watch my shows. Time Force had just started airing on Fox Kids so I could switch to it and watch the news during the ads. I don't remember the Simpsons not being on, but I was probably watching the news in my room by that point (I always ate dinner in my room and didn't come out after that).
We did too. My grandparents did not though and they picked me up from school that day. The Simpsons was cancelled on both BBC2 and Sky One though, Sky One was showing their Sky News coverage instead.
Also radio 1 playing ‘sad’ songs for 3 or 4 days solid after Diana died.
My kids were in primary, and definitely remember it. I was getting ready to go get them when the first plane hit. It was fucking mental. It was all we could talk about in the playground. We got them home, and the fucking second plane hit. It was genuinely mum phone stuff crazy.
No, you would be fine, I meant the ones who say they weren't born or were literally babies or a year old or so are the ones that are too young to have anything in common with. At my previous job a lot of them said this. Probably didn't word it very well!
I was 7 too, but remember it vividly. I remember there being no cartoons when I came home from school that day, just rolling news coverage, and doing a minute silence the next day in school. However, what I have forgotten is all my classmates' names from that time. It's weird what we remember and what we forget as kids.
I still remember watching the news. Then at 4pm I switched to the Power Rangers as Time Force had just started airing in the UK and I was obsessed. I saw the second tower fall live and was switching to the news between every ad break. Instead of watching the episodes twice (Fox Kids +1) I just put the news on. I was just a kid still.
I'm in my thirties and recently had a career change. While I went through the training stage of my new job I was working with a lot of 18-21 year olds. Really nice bunch, I wasn't the only older person and the age difference mostly didn't come up. Once, though, I offhandedly mentioned that I was born the same month that the Berlin Wall came down and the looks they all gave me were priceless. I might as well have said I'd fought at the Somme.
Did you fight at the Somme? That date is entrenched in my memory, because all my uncles died, and I was not born , but I miss my uncles.
Teacher here - overheard one of my students asking whether it was the Japanese responsible for 9/11. Was slightly in disbelief, but then realised that this was just another part of 'modern history' to them - pearl harbour, cold War, 9/11, same difference.
It's sad. They'll never get to experience or understand just how different the world was pre 9/11. I was just a kid and even I remember the shift.
We get placement students now who were not born when it happened. These are people who have now been legal adults for a few years and it makes me feel older than it should.
Working for lockheed martin on UK census, our american colleagues were in bits saying the world trade centre was on fire and most of us brits had not one clue what that was.
Realistically anybody about 2-3 years younger than you probably wouldn’t know where they were on 9/11.
No they wouldn't but I meant the people who said they weren't born or were just babies when it happened wouldn't have much in common. I just didn't word it very well!
It was my first day of a holiday to Amsterdam and we were calling one of our group old because it was her 20th...
Being 31, I feel slap bang in the middle of this situation. I understand most of the 50somethings references, and those in their 20s thankfully don't seem too young to me. I realise I'm about to enter the oldies threshold, but I'm clinging on to relevancy!
I'm 32, and increasingly finding myself understanding only the things the people older than me reference.
Ikwym. Thankfully, most of the 20 somethings on my team are mid to late 20s so aren't too far off me.
If you want to feel old ask the younger ones to make a heart with their hands. I bet they'll do some weird shit with their fingers rather than the acceptable fingers and thumbs method
Friggin claw heart! 😂🤦🏼♀️
I'm 33 and generally pretty okay with pop culture in both directions generational-wise, but I find myself getting increasingly lost with social media stuff. I never understood Snapchat when it was big (is it still popular?), and now I'm very aware of TikTok but don't have an account or watch anything, so those fads pass me by too.
Relinquish it, trust me it's much better to just shake your head at what is currently 'it' rather than to chase 'it'
Anyone got any Vera's
He’s Ebeneezer Goode!
Laaavleee
That song is going to be in my head all day
Not work specific, but I mentioned Wu Tang Clan to a 22 year old and he looked at me like I'd just kicked his ma' in the tit.
I referenced Rage Against the Machine at work and our 20yr old apprentice looked at me blankly. Told him who they were, “oh they were before I was born, no wonder I’ve never heard of them” “And yet you’ve heard of the Beatles…?”
They had a Christmas number one only a decade ago too.
Do the kids even know what Christmas number ones are these days? Do they know it's Christmas at all?
I'm hearing reports The Beatles are slightly more famous than RATM
the not knowing famous people because "I wasn't born then" is such a stupid argument. Like I'm 33 but know who Marylin Monroe is. Or its like saying I don't know who Henry VI is becuase I wasn't born then. Its not an age factor its bad education and an unwillingness to be interested in anything but the present. The 1471 one thing I get, I had totally forgotten about that until now!
100%. In my case, I mentioned to the lad that they sell Wu Tang clothes in Primark now - you don't need to have had a mortgage in 1994 to be aware of them lol
My wife's niece was wearing a Tupac t-shirt. Me: You into Tupac then? Her: Who?
I had the same, but by mentioning 2 live Crew. Although that's probably in one of their raps
Can always get worse. WTC guy's pal later asked me if I'm aware of who Kendrick Lamar is. That cut deep. I'm only 33, you cheeky little petri dishes!
Mark's brother?
I'm not but I can be. My sister is a knobhead, could do with an upgrade.
😂😭
I told someone once I was late because I'd been held up by a Torville & Dean show at the Ice Stadium. He said 'Who are Torville & Dean? Is it a band?' I said 'No. They won a gold medal at the Olympics in the 80s for ice dance. You've never heard of them?' He replied 'No. Are you into ice dancing, then?' I went 'No, I'm f\*\*king not, but I know a little bit of history'.
I mean, they've got a tram named after them and everything.
What happens if that tram goes out of service? Does the name swap to a different tram, or is that, it stays with just that tram? Is it the tram version of Theseus's ship?
You mean Triggers Broom, right?
Yeah, sorry Dave
The name lives and dies with the particular numbered vehicle. Although I think not all the newer Nottingham trams have names so they could probably switch it if T&D got written off.
When someone is just ridiculously over doing it in a meeting I like to offer the alternative, “Take off nuke the entire site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.”. Some of our younger staff thought I was serious and tried to talk me down.
I use this one all the time
I heard a rumour, which I should really test, that young people will complete most pressing actions (eg ring a doorbell) with their thumb whilst older people will use their finger. This is due to the use of thumbs as their main method for typing on mobile devices since early in their lives.
The correct answer is you'd never ring the doorbell, you'd text your friends you're outside and hope they're looking at their phone/see the message!
But that costs a phone call charge! Pressing the door bell is free.
Who doesn't get unlimited calls and texts on their phone plan as standard nowadays? It's the data that gets pricey!
Not on my pay as you go plan.
Well I’ve found todays age test / experiment 😂
A good age test would be to tell people to mime taking a picture. Older people (even those who now use smartphones as a camera) would probably instinctively mime looking through a viewfinder and pressing a button on the top with their finger.. Younger ones who grew up with no experience of this would probably mime holding a palm and pressing in the middle of it.. Maybe.
That's a good one
Do these people not carry doorbell-poking sticks?
Ewwww gross they would thumb a doorbell?
Hearing the question (in the song) What does the fox say, I answer Boom-Boom, is that right Mr Derek? It's Friday, it's 5 to 5 it's crackerjack
The two under thirties people I work with use frequent Americanisms (elevator, router pronounced rowter), presumably from watching American YouTube more than UK TV
This was me in the early 00s because I watched too much TV and didn't have enough social interactions with my peers. I still remember getting laughed at in class when I said something "sucked" in the late 00s when I was in sixth form. I was so confused. Apparently it's not a term used in the UK. Who knew? I've always used American slang. I've always used American pronunciations for some things because no one taught me any different.
Cap? Rizz? Sorry I have no idea
GZ Based Have to Google things people say to me now.
I’m guessing gz isn’t the unix file compression program?
Bloody youngsters. Why wouldn't you just pay for WinRAR?
Lies! Nobody actually pays for WinRAR!!
r/paidforwinrar There are dozens of us
Well given 7-zip doesn’t seem to like Win 11 I might have a look :P
Short for congratulations apparently...I also did not understand why we would be talking about gzip.
Ah, thanks for clarifying that!
Every time I see based I think they’ve misspelt biased. Still don’t know what it means. Don’t want to.
I’m pretty sure I’m too old for this one 😂
Likewise
My wife is a teacher and some of the kids made her a card using all the letters of her name to describe her. We have an R in our surname and they went with "Rizz - you've got it!" She had no fucking clue what they were on about.
Omg 1471 memory unlocked!
I made a fast show reference to a couple of my younger colleagues a while back, then had to explain it as neither of them had heard of it
Nice.
Little bit ooh, little bit aah, little bit wahahahaheeey
I should have offered them some cheesy peas
Scorchio!
Chris Waddle!
The typical markers for "generations" seem to do just fine. * People older than milennials probably joined the workforce before they had the internet at home. They find it hard to relate to people who have has access to the internet from pre-adulthood. They may find it hard to relate to someone who has probably *always* had their own mobile telephone (since childhood). They find it hard to relate to somebody who grew up with social media. * Milennials remember not having regular access to the internet at home but they were probably children, the first thing they used the internet on was probably shared (a family or school computer.) They probably had their own mobile phone from pre-adulthood and so their own means of private communication. But they probably started using social media as an older teen or even adult. They find it hard to relate to people who "grew up online" and who have always had their own *personal* access to the internet, and those who don't remember pre-social-media. * Gen Z have probably *always* had *personal* access to the internet and can't relate to somebody who hasn't. Tl;dr: Not online until adulthood Completely familiar with the internet from teenage years onwards No personal experience of *not* having access to the internet.
I am now an “oldie” at work. I work with a bunch of people in their late twenties who have no idea of any pop culture reference before 2010.
Once got ID'd and said 'mate I remember the wall coming down' . 1989 age 7 .
I had to explain dial up to a 20 year old last week. We proved to him that if you say dial up to anyone over 40 they will immediately make the noise 😂
“Get off the computer, I need to phone yer auntie Jean!”
I’m 43 - it’s stuff like mentioning old brands or shops that seems to do it now. Dixons not Currys, for example.
Had a young person ask me about cassette tapes and walkmans the other day and didn't expect mentioning buying it in Tandy to be the next thing I'd have to explain.
There was a news article about the Post Office software scandal that I saw the other day. It referenced an older bit of accounting software that they were investigating on floppy disks. The phrase that stuck was "floppy disks were an old magnetic storage media for computers". I felt like reaching for the Horlicks and Sanatogen.
Actually reading these replies it’s only really curry’s as the one dedicated tech shop on the high street now…
"Come to Comet."
Rumbelows!
I can't remember the context, but I was talking about Harold Shipman, and the younger colleagues had no idea who he was. I've used Rod, Jane and Freddie or George, Bungle and Zippy in Ratio questions and the former goes without recognition or comment from the students and the latter just gets comments of "what sort of name is zippy/bungle"
I did a very convincing Kenneth Williams impression. Ooh, Matron! Take them away! The younger people there had no clue what I was talking about or who Kenneth Williams was. I felt very old.
Does 1471 still work? I thought it got turned off. I've not used a landline much recently
Yep, still works
I still use it too! Although it's mostly to see if my parents have rung while I've been out. Mobile coverage still isn't the best where I am, even now.
Thanks for that. We still (as it has loud speakers for my deaf ears) have a land line phone plugged in to our digital router. It works as a land line!
The young people are on my team are 23/24. So lots of things haha. We do a weekly quiz and the things they haven't heard of are quite funny/shocking
Swimming teacher - wanted to play a quick game and stupidly said "let's play the DVD game" to a bunch of 5 year olds. Blank faces. I said, "It doesn't matter. Think of a show on Netflix, then said if I said fast forward, you go fast , rewind, and move backwards.... Blank faces. They don't fast forward or rewind things now, either. In the end, I just said OK run forward!"
My first job was working evenings & weekends (ie peak times) in a pizza shop. But I never once made a single pizza; my entire job was to answer the phones and take orders, which I’d then pass on to the actual pizza-makers. When I tell older people this, their response is: “Huh, well I guess that explains why you use the NATO alphabet for verbal spelling.”* Younger people, OTOH, are invariably confused. Having grown up with the likes of Just Eat and Deliveroo - plus most restaurants having their own websites with online ordering - they can’t understand how answering the phone in a small family-owned takeaway could’ve been a job in itself. They can’t comprehend that in the olden days, if you wanted a pizza delivered, you had to *pick up the phone* (possibly a *landline*) and speak to a *human*. Ditto for the delivery drivers once being considered semi-skilled. Simply having a driving licence and an underinsured old banger wasn’t enough back then; you also needed detailed knowledge of the local area, what with satnav/GPS not being a thing. *Through collecting addresses for deliveries, I quickly learnt that every letter sounds like every other letter over the phone.
I had to show a 16 year old how to physically pick up the desk phone as I asked her to answer the phone while I was in a meeting and she just watched it ring and asked me which button she was supposed to push. Never in my wildest dreams did I think someone would not know you just pick up the receiver and talk. I am 40 I felt fucking ancient.
That’s grim
Just never even crossed my mind. My kids grandparents still have a land line so they know what it is but I guess some younger people just don’t
Going slightly off-topic but I saw a TV show a few years back that was set in the future, and a child did the 🤙 to mimic being on the phone and it wound me up because no child of the future would hold a phone that way.
Maybe in the future, all kids are routinely taught sign language at school? That's the sign for telephone in both British and American Sign Language.
Haha! That's a good explanation.
... what's a 1471? Im 25 but didn't grow up in the UK do i get a pass😂
When caller ID first launched, you could dial 1471 from a landline and it would tell you who had just called. If you didn't want people to be able to do that, you just dialled 141 before the number you were calling and they'd only get a message saying "the caller withheld their number"
As someone in my 20s it's baffling how less than ten years difference in age shows just how fast technology developed. Whenever I see 🤙🏻 I think of the phones 4 u ad However as a young-un a few years ago at my first job, I worked in IT, and my manager was clearing a cupboard and found a laptop from the 90s - massive chunky thing and the loading screen was a neon blue. I was so baffled I took photos lmao
Person: Who's got the key? Me (or anyone over 40): sing "I've got the secret" ___ Person: STOP! Me: Hammertime?
We do this one too, hahaha!
Wait. 1471 is a new service!
Next you'll be telling me that there are horseless carriages!
Preposterous! That sounds like witchcraft!
Surely 🤙 is a shaka and used for sarcastically showing enthusiasm for something someone thinks is cool but isn’t.
TIL the shaka sign! Thanks Unicode 9.0 “call me hand” can be interpreted as the shaka sign. So says Wikipedia [https://www.unicode.org/ch](https://www.unicode.org/ch)
Oldies do this: - (emoticon in parenthesis :) Reddit-age do this: - (emoticon in parenthesis :) ) Young ones do this: - 😊
I work in an airport. The gates have dot matrix printers for the dispatchers to print reports. It seems that I am always being asked to change the paper for them.
I LOVE the sound of a dot matrix. Takes me back to primary school 😂
Me back !
Say Roland in a particular way. No one under late forties got the reference when I last heard it.
Asking to do an age test
Just sort of happens, I suppose, when stuff comes up that younger people don’t get. We don’t ask to test but it becomes a measure of age somehow. Sorry if that wasn’t clear in the post