As someone also near the border between Gen Z and Millennial, I relate a lot to this comment. I was also the family tech kid, and since like middle school I’ve always told people “I’m not good with computers, I just know how to use a search engine”
My “computer literacy” is literally just basic research skills; knowing how to formulate a web search and how to identify bad sources.
Right! This is why I say it has more to do with being stubborn than being smart. If you’re determined to find a solution and you’re half decent at research and following instructions, you can figure a lot out, but people treat it like you invented the thing with some magical knowledge that they could never possess.
You’ve just articulated a feeling I’ve had most of my life, but couldn’t have described better.
Solving trivial problems for people they could easily do themselves if they just muddled through the work of it. Then act like I’m a genius, when it’s really just ‘stubbornness’ and refusing to admit i can’t figure it out.
Thanks for that.
It’s the issue that is the most baffling to me. Learning how to search properly can be done in 10 minutes but no one does it.
If I want a recipe for a burger with onions, I’ll search for “recipe burger with onions.” When people around me search for the same recipe, they would type “I’m hungry and I’d like stuff with onions and shit” and instead of getting one of the billion web sites with recipes, they would stumble upon a weird blog about an anorexic girl who is obsessed with onions, and think that the internet contain no recipes at all.