Ok so what I suppose you would call an “elder zoomer” or whatever, born in the span of '98-'02, entering my mid-20s. Get all your geriatric chomsky emotes out of your systems, it’s fine. My parents were born in '71 and '72 respectively, meaning they just entered their 50s. My dad has always been a computer guy, played dnd back in the 80s, introduced me and my brother to pirating media growing up, etc. Basically, he’s a nerd. He’s always been a nerd. He also holds some weird contradictory views ranging from very based (like pirating and hating the US) to very chuddy but that’s unrelated for now.

My point is, my dad isn’t some tech-illiterate boomer who hates “the iphones and nintendos” or whatever. Despite this, he’s completely, and I mean completely oblivious to any and all internet culture. Hell, my mom runs circles around him in terms of being able to understand memes and me and my brother have even gotten her to start using “copium” correctly to my uncle (which is hilarious but also resulted in me having to explain to my extended family what it means during christmas dinner). It’s not like my dad didn’t get on the internet when it first came around, he was a super early adopter of both cellphones and the internet. I also know that he has spent a not-insignificant amount of time on various hobby forums and so on. He still doesn’t know what a “meme” is though, he sends me and my brother “funny pictures” which are all some rank-ass 2012 facebook-funny-page tier shit that always manages to be a bit problematic no matter how innocent the subject matter seems.

He’s also incredibly thin-skinned online. He’s tried playing online games because, well, he like playing games! He just can’t though; he gets so incredibly offended over any and all toxicity (yes toxicity is bad but he’s a grown-ass white cishet male he’s not exactly being targeted with violent slurs) that it would probably be incredibly humorous as an outsider.

His relationship to media online is also quite interesting. He’s fully aware of youtube, with the caveat that to him it’s still just the site where you “go to find a grainy video of some indian with a thick accent to fix an obscure tech problem” (paraphrased from him) or where you watch uploads of live concerts or clips from TV shows. Basically any video uploaded after 2010 doesn’t exist to him. Youtube is just for home-video amateurs, there’s no artistic merit in it, “why would you ever watch someone else play a game? are you stupid”-type-beat, etc. I think if I showed him something like a Jacob Geller essay he would just straight up not get it.

The same goes for video games. While he plays plenty of newer games, he thinks of all games as being either competitive match-based PvP games like counter strike or single player experiences where you play from the start to the end once and then the game is done. I’ve tried so many times to explain to him that the reason ESO is so weird coming from skyrim is that it’s an MMO, and MMOs are fundamentally different. He has no concept of roguelikes or other games that deviate from this standard form of a “cinematic” single-player experience. Just recently he started playing 7 Days to Die and it has been blowing his mind seeing this “super innovative gameplay loop”, but instead of contextualizing it in terms of other survival-crafty games, he thinks it’s cool because “it’s just like Fallout with the scavenging”

Idk people I don’t really have a big point to make here at the end. I love my dad even if our relationship is a bit strained, and the stuff I bring up here are not meant to be specific to him. My mom is the same minus the video games in many ways (not understanding that online videos are more than just charlie bit my finger etc). I’m also aware that framing it as a generational thing is a bit unhelpful and all that, but what can you do.

Do you people have similar stories with tech-literate people who are somehow completely out of touch in terms of internet culture? It’s somehow fascinating to me, and I think maybe talking about it could help me communicate with my parents about it better.