this post was submitted on 21 May 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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Wondering if your typical/average/normie person (millennials and younger) know it or know about it. It’s enabled on reddit and discord?

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[–] squirrel@discuss.tchncs.de 68 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] SpicyTaint@lemmy.world 57 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I think less than 50% of people with access to technology are tech literate enough to know what markdown is. I don't think age really applies here so much as interest in technology.

Just because I drive a car doesn't mean I know or care about how it works. It's just a tool.

[–] Knuschberkeks@leminal.space 37 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I would even say less than 5%

[–] SpicyTaint@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

Lol, yeah. I'm probably being too optimistic.

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[–] Asafum@feddit.nl 5 points 2 days ago

Are you telling me you can't identify some of the common symptoms of a failing alternator!? Pshhhh...

:P

[–] kambusha@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] SpicyTaint@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

...could you please elaborate?

[–] kambusha@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Dumb joke that's from South Park. There's a towel, and any time someone calls him a towel, he retorts with, "you're a towel".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W5lLHWeg3o

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[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 31 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 16 points 2 days ago
[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Most people are probably at least aware that there are contexts where their basic plain-text formatting (like asterisks for bullets) will get cleaned up to a prettier format when they post it.

They may not know the name of the format or all the available features.

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 24 points 1 day ago

Nope. Most tech people don't know what markdown is.

[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 22 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Elder Millennial here. All I know about markdown is:

  1. To make a hard copy of a thought or conversation. "Mark that down in your notes, so we don't forget."

  2. A discount or sale. "Did you see the 30% markdown on three legged jeans?"

[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 10 points 2 days ago (3 children)

And yet you just used it! Some parts of markdown were made to be intuitive and natural like:

  1. Numbering your items
  2. will automatically format them
  3. into ordered lists
  • and if you use - it's an unordered list
  • same with asterisk
[–] Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Markdown is 100%[^1] intuitive.

[^1]: for certain definitions of 100%.

[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Still don't have any idea what you're talking about.

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[–] Zero22xx@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Some parts of markdown were made to be intuitive and natural like

And then other parts of it are just infuriating. Like how if you try to post song lyrics or something, the markdown just mashes every sentence together in one line for some reason. So you have to know the secret code just to make gdamn new lines. I actually pressed enter to go to a new line 5 times in this paragraph but it comes out all jumbled together after posting.

As far as I'm concerned, I shouldn't need to know some special formatting just for return to work properly.

[–] aasatru@kbin.earth 3 points 2 days ago

And then you're on your phone, and typing two spaces at the end of each line is a mess because your keyboard insists you really want punctuation and a space. Because why would you end a sentence with two spaces. Gah.

[–] edgemaster72@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

30% markdown on three legged jeans? Damn, that's almost one whole leg for free!

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[–] JASN_DE@feddit.org 20 points 2 days ago
[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

No, they use the WYSIWYG editor it has.

I am a big fan of markdown though.

spoiler Did you know you can nest these?

That's right, someone could make a choose your own adventure game this way

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[–] AtariDump@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago

Yes, no, maybe.

I don’t know.

Can you repeat the question?
[–] JoseALerma@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The issue for a long time was that there is no markdown standard, so everyone had their own version of it.

CommonMark is gaining ground, so hopefully markdown will be the same everywhere soon

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)
[–] Allero@lemmy.today 15 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Not Markdown as a whole, but I guess they commonly know to use asterisks for italics and bold. Some also know how to ~~cross~~ the text. Not much more for a normie, though.

[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I guess they commonly know to use asterisks for italics and bold

I wouldn't guess that at all. Pretty much everyone I know in the "normie" world would AT BEST use ctrl-i and ctrl-b if they're not just pressing the icon in the gui.

Hell, most of them look at me like I'm a goddamn morlock when I tell them to Shift-delete in order to skip the recycling bin.

[–] ChexMax@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, I'm a normie, I'm tech literate adjacent-adjacent, by which I mean I'm here on lemmy rather than Facebook, but no. Me and my peers are not pressing ctrl anything. I don't even know what gui means. Something user interface? I'm not proud to be this dumb, but I'm pretty sure most "regular" people are in this boat with me. I was the third most tech literate person in my entire office last year with a bunch of millennials simply because I was willing to Google things.

[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

Most IT nowadays is just simply the ability to google. What sets a professional IT person apart from an amateur is that the professional has an educated guess as to what to google in the first place.

Non-professional: "My computer is making a weird buzzing noise"

Professional: "What are the symptoms of a bad cooling fan?"

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No, and they don't want to

[–] steeznson@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

No, the average person struggles with WYSIWYG editors

[–] BlindFrog@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago
[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 10 points 2 days ago
[–] Littux@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

I hate it when someone dumps their log file without using a code block. Even seen some Arch Linux users do it, which is, unsurprising really.

[–] pogodem0n@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Nope, no chance.

[–] scheep@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

I would guess they know a bit about lists using “-“ and a few people might know about using asterisk to bold stuff, but other than that probably not.

[–] SatyrSack@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 2 days ago
[–] Jarix@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

They do not imho

[–] chigityk@lemmy.chigityk.com 4 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I’m gonna go with no. I don’t think enough platforms use it natively.

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[–] kaeurenne@kadaikupi.space 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I only know some characters

like this one

Like this one

Does anyone know the best markdown-learning platform?

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[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I know enough to get by, but the thing is the syntax isn't always the same between platforms. Sometimes I make an Empty Hyperlink just to have colorful text and people ask me "Woah how'd you do that?" and I explain it to them but I can't always show them without it auto formatting so they just never figure it out lol.

Looks like Lemmy formats empty hyperlinks as loops back here.

[–] Yermaw@lemm.ee 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I fucking clicked it. I don't know what i was expecting.

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[–] TheRedSpade@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Another millenial here. I've known about markdown forever, but I also LIVED online as a teenager. I suspect most people I know would think similarly to the other commenter if asked.

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

.llɐ ʎɐ ʇou

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