memes

Thats above 20, so you're key demographic and not at all an outlier

Yeah, this doesn’t make me feel like the Fediverse is full of olds at all. Im old enough to be the average user’s parent.

It's okay--we old folks can benefit from having a few younguns around.

Eh, don't sweat it. I'm 41, and I still find myself feeling the same way when my manager is talking.... and he's younger than me. I've been told you reach a point where you just don't care anymore but my supervisor is 52 with two grown children and says she still gets that feeling from time to time, so who knows how true it is.

Now for the "get off my lawn" portion of the reply. I can remember in 1991 my aunt was working for a legal firm and running documents around for them, they needed instant contact so they paid big bucks to have a mobile phone installed in her car. It cost a ridiculous amount per minute to talk on. One day she was talking me to McDonald's and I asked why she had a phone in her car since she couldn't plug it in, after she explained it to me I asked if I could call my dad, she said yes but make it quick. She dialed his number at work and handed me the phone. When he answered I blurted out "hi dad I'm calling from Aunt Juanita's car! Have to be quick, bye" and before she could stop me I hung up the phone.

She called him back to apologize and let him know everything was ok, then handed the phone to me so my dad could lecture me about phone etiquette and tell me to be good for Aunt Juanita.

Also I remember being excited to get to go to the school library to play Oregon trail on the green screen computer and having to swap out 5 inch floppy disks throughout the game to move to the next part.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to take some ibuprofen as all this typing is aggravating my joints. LoL.

back in my day, there weren't smartphones

We of the fabled Oregon Trail Generation had the unique experience of an analog childhood and an adulthood in the digital hellscape we all know and love.

So when we wandered off into the woods for hours, or even once I could borrow a car and head over to a friends' place? Completely unreachable. The only exception was the house phone at a friend's place if we were there.

When I was in college, Wi-Fi was just becoming popular. The equivalent to walking down the sidewalk with your face in your phone was the couple grad student TAs who were busy or nerdy enough to walk between buildings holding their laptop open in front of them. Wi-Fi was not built in of course. It was a PCMCIA card sticking out of the side.

When we were home or in our dorms, we didn't sit on our phones, we sat on our PCs! And now decades later I've transitioned back to sitting on my PC at home and it's great, lol.

My first personal cell phone of any kind was my dad handing me down his old work phone when I finished college and moved a couple hours away. It was a Motorola Startac motherfucker! Look it up and be jealous!

It's funny because I'm only in my mid 40s and have very little gray hair. I don't feel like an old, but I have absolutely hit the point of the "back in my day" attitude. I usually don't actually say anything unless I see a good joke in it, because that would be cliched and obnoxious.

I bet there's something about being the age where you could be a grandparent. There's something pretty damn wholesome about watching people who are young enough to be your children having their own families and careers and stuff. We had our kid about a decade later than we wanted, so I think my son gets to benefit from me being half chill grandpa and not 100% frantic young parent.

Early 30 here. Mobile phones only started being accessible when I was like in 5th year of school, smartphones, like proper ones, android/ios - that was closer to my university days. Before that we had different phones with good displays but controlled by buttons, you could play games on those too, but lot simpler ones.

What I'm trying to say, your gen is about the first one to experience "smartphone was here always" vibe.

pot belly: 45

mental age: 5

Probably less about skill, per se, and more about interest. But the (still very low) barrier to entry probably does weed out a few kids.

I doubt it. People don't mention when they're young (except in some specific cases like this). Young people can't compare things to a time they didn't live so only older people mention their age usually. I'm 17 rn been on the fediverse since 16 or maybe 15 I don't really remember.

Edit: I personally feel actively discouraged from mentioning my age (even irl i look older) not cause of safety or anything but I js feel like I'll be treated differently when people know I'm younger. Its happened quite often to me both IRL and online where I'll notice a distinct shift in tone after they know how young I am

Because we say shit like "why do you suppose this is"

I'm 35 and seem to find people older than me on here fairly often. So I don't feel on when I'm on here, until I stand up.

Kids and trendy young people are on tiktok and Instagram and do short video clip based social media.

The people who grew up with the internet being a place where you type and read things to be social, are here and places like here.

I think folk just prefer what they know, like if you grew up with loud and bright video clips being the normal way to interact online, you'd probably not want to switch over to reading and typing- which probably also feels like more effort to these people than just performing for a camera.

Same likely goes for us text based social media people but in reverse.

Nah, I'm 30. It's just a relief to be on a community where the majority of the commenters aren't literal children.