Generation Gaffs

Y’all. I don’t understand something that it seems if you are under, say, 40; then you likely understand pretty well. My thirteen-year-old was explaining to me about how You Tubers make money. I literally could not process the words coming out of his mouth. 


Sponsors and ads, that sort of made a weird kind of sense, but that you get money from ‘likes.’ Like, what? 


Here’s what I understand- you make a wooden whistle or a gadget of some kind. You set up a stand much like a lemonade stand, maybe at a fair or something, and then you get paid various bills and maybe some loose change.


But. There’s online stuff now, money it seems, and if it wasn’t for my sainted husband I wouldn’t be able to pay for anything.  


Coworkers are always asking for my Venmo. I’m all: I don’t have venom, sure wish I did, and that I could spit it even and have it do some damage, but alas just my slightly sardonic wit and words is all I got.


An older coworker, well, than me- he’s only in his fifties so to some he’s a spring chicken- laughed when someone asked for his Venmo. He was organizing a bbq at my workplace and asked us managers to pitch in for meat for the employees. ‘No, no I do not. Cold, hard cash in my hand.’ I smiled. Now that I understood.


One joker even brought a case of Venom energy drinks after someone mistyped it- but I mean, did they? Should ‘venmo’ be a word we all just understand now? 


I can’t even begin to understand crypto currency. It still sounds made up to me. And like it has to be evil. Wasn’t a Disney villain named ‘Crypto’ at some point?


My question is, is this the new normal; just not understanding the words being used even if given abundant context clues? 


The other day I heard a kid ask her mom, in all seriousness, ‘what is a fax?’ Her confused little face was priceless as the mother struggled to explain it. I lost it but I am also the reverse of that kid. We actually still use faxes for a few secure items that for some reason the end users don’t have encrypted emails, but I could see where she was confused. 


I told the mom to check out the YouTube videos about kids trying to explain old stuff. I love the one where they try and figure out how to text on a rotary phone. Makes me wonder if there are ones of old people trying to explain young stuff. Ok I’m back, that was cute, although what that video of kids teaching old people the internet has to do with that movie I have no idea. 


Probably the biggest gut check is those blasted progressive commercials. They have my number man. My kids crack up and stare, pointedly, at me every time they come on. 


I was texting my sister in law who is a few years older than me and she said that she feels like those of us at the tail end of Gen X and before whatever is next sort of missed out as computers were not big until we were young adults. I even had a typing class using a blasted typewriter. So we were in our twenties trying to figure it out on our own. In hindsight I should have just gone back to a community college and enrolled in some stuff. Cause other than typing fast I’m usually lost. 


Hopefully you don’t Facebook live yourself in the toilet (I swear I thought I did this once, and I about had a panic attack.) I called my husband frantic to get him to fix my phone from afar and he casually remarked that he was sitting in his underwear scratching something in said underwear and had been trying to Facebook live it the whole time to no success. His point was that it was harder to just ‘do’ than I thought. Oh to be him!


Not gonna be able to tie a bow around this one, so I’ll just end with: good luck, may the electronic beings not trick you too much today. 

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