The Information Age's Facts of Life

January 23, 2011 2:02 PM

"I'm getting older, and I'm not always gonna be around the house to explain stuff to you. I know you have a lot of questions, and I want us to be open with each other. So, I think it's time you learned where blogs and tweets come from." (SLMcSweeney's)

"When a person loves a funny video very much, he or she may want to share it with someone special to them. This is called linking and if done properly, it can bring people together in a very special union of love."

posted by memebake (29 comments total)

The mean age of a mother with a twelve year old daughter is going to be around 40. So she will likely have been using the internet since before her daughter was born. I get the joke, but I don't get the joke.
posted by tigrefacile at 2:11 PM on January 23, 2011 [4 favorites]

That was surprisingly accurate and useful and even almost funny which is pretty much good as McSweeney's's humor gets so I'll take it.
posted by Rory Marinich at 2:14 PM on January 23, 2011

tigrefacile: So she will likely have been using the internet since before her daughter was born.

Of course, she will have been using the internet, but will she have been using it appropriately?

"... But it's important to be sparing when you send your links. You don't want to become the neighborhood outbox, constantly forwarding yourself around."

posted by memebake at 2:15 PM on January 23, 2011

Not that I'm sensitive about my age or anything...
posted by tigrefacile at 2:15 PM on January 23, 2011

Most people in the US were not using the Internet 12 years ago. Blogger was brand new. Nobody was using Facebook or Twitter, obviously.

That said, the article is way off; it is talking about 20- and 30-something usage patterns. I have no idea what 12-year-olds are using these days but I'm pretty sure it isn't Twitter.
posted by enn at 2:19 PM on January 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

This joke would have been funnier ten years ago.
posted by hattifattener at 2:20 PM on January 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

I think I've heard somehwere that adolescents consider Twitter the domain of fuddy-duddy old people. To which I can only say "good".
posted by Artw at 2:22 PM on January 23, 2011 [5 favorites]

I know, right? It didn't even mention Tumblr!
posted by elmer benson at 2:23 PM on January 23, 2011

Social networking under fresh attack as tide of cyber-scepticism sweeps US
posted by Artw at 2:24 PM on January 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

posted by memebake

Eponyohfuckit...
posted by hincandenza at 2:24 PM on January 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

Most people in the US were not using the Internet 12 years ago.

Maybe, but I would suggest that a large percentage of people in their late twenties were. All of my contemporaries were.
posted by tigrefacile at 2:25 PM on January 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

If you weren't using the internet before Eternal September started you are still a n00b.
posted by Justinian at 2:43 PM on January 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

margins
posted by DU at 2:44 PM on January 23, 2011

If you weren't using the internet before Eternal September started you are still a n00b.

Do I count as an oldbie if I was using the internet before then but I had no idea what Eternal September was because I was 9 at the time?
posted by Auguris at 2:54 PM on January 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

Whew, I thought that was going to be about sex.
posted by Felex at 2:57 PM on January 23, 2011

If you weren't using the internet before Eternal September started you are still a n00b.

Eternal September stopped being relevant when usenet devolved into a pile of shit- i.e. almost immediately when easier, prettier options became available. Read any newsgroups lately? Spam, spam, spam, rehashing of ongoing-since-1997-argument, spam...
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:00 PM on January 23, 2011

Think of a blog as a newspaper that people actually read.

The editor clearly overlooked the missing "don't" in there.
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:01 PM on January 23, 2011

Pah. Kids today. If you weren't using the Victorian Internet, you're a -. ----- ----- -... .-.-.-

And you only count if you got in on it at the *beginning*, mind.
posted by kyrademon at 3:06 PM on January 23, 2011

Which is funnier, this or single link Facebook discussion?
posted by fixedgear at 3:15 PM on January 23, 2011

Blogging and tweeting come from people who think they have something interesting to say... most of them are wrong...

Your parents learned this back with usenet...
posted by Nanukthedog at 3:16 PM on January 23, 2011

Eternal September stopped being relevant when usenet devolved into a pile of shit- i.e. almost immediately when easier, prettier options became available. Read any newsgroups lately? Spam, spam, spam, rehashing of ongoing-since-1997-argument, spam...

How cute, you think spam wasn't ruining Usenet before the web came along... I had never even heard the term spam until I started using Usenet around 1992 or so, and I had been on BBS's for years before that. You might not see it when looking through old archives, but that's thanks to people running cancel messages to purge the crap.

I've been online long enough to know that the "old timers" always complain about the N00bs and constantly adjust the timeframe of when the Internet "died" forward to a few years after they started.
posted by inthe80s at 3:33 PM on January 23, 2011

For a twentysomething in 1999, internet usage would be mainstream. By that date, checking your email, browsing the web, making a Geocities page, watching a funny video on Quicktime or Realplayer wasn't anything unusual. This was, after all, the height of the dot-com boom, when internet usage was common enough that people were convinced they could make zillions by selling dog food online. By the year 2000, almost 45 percent of the US population was regularly online. I couldn't find a breakdown by age, but I would be greatly surprised if the penetration in the 18-35 demographic was less than 60 percent, and nearly universal amongst the twentysomethings with a college education, since most universities would hand out student accounts and had done so for years before 1999.

The joke would have been much better with a grandmother. Considering my own grandmother still needs hand-holding when doing a Google search or finding the weather forecast, I could identify with that. Or have the twelve year old explain in somewhat tortured logic why Mum really shouldn't friend her on Facebook and list all the terrible embarrassments which would inevitably occur.
posted by honestcoyote at 3:42 PM on January 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

Most people in the US were not using the Internet 12 years ago. Blogger was brand new. Nobody was using Facebook or Twitter, obviously.

How many people were using email? Technically part of the internet!
posted by kenko at 3:53 PM on January 23, 2011

I saw MIT professor Sherry Turkle pomoting her new book Alone Together on Colbert. Allow me to summarize her arguement here to save you the time and trouble of reading it: "Get off my lawn."
posted by fixedgear at 3:55 PM on January 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

My boss is 39 and doesn't know what any of that stuff is and his eldest is only 3, so I find it very plausible that there are parents of 12-year-olds out there who would be similarly bewildered.
posted by Jacqueline at 4:41 PM on January 23, 2011

Please do keep in mind that 12 years ago was 1999. It was not that long ago. We still part like it is that year.
posted by maryr at 5:36 PM on January 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

We have invented inspiring and enhancing technologies, yet we have allowed them to diminish us. - Sherry Turkle

Speak for yourself, Turkle.
posted by Twang at 7:47 PM on January 23, 2011

The Internet is the new sex, and every generation thinks they invented it.
posted by endless_forms at 8:11 PM on January 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

By over-extending your metaphor then, my parents were conceived through snail mail. Signed, sealed and delivered.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 9:37 PM on January 23, 2011 [1 favorite]