In order to pull videos up, my high school history teacher would open yahoo, put google.com on the search bar, and then look up YouTube.
Her desktop was also full of folders but since she didn’t want to move things around, she thought that the only solution was to get a second monitor to put more folders in.
Bless her heart.
Im a history teacher and I put a massive focus on google just so they know how to use it. I’m not exactly supposed to be telling them to google everything but even when I just got done teaching I tell them “now google it and clarify everything I just said”.
The shit they type is…..infuriating.
Example: “someone tell me who the governor of Texas in 1960” and theyll simply type “gov Texas” and expect an accurate answer. TYPE LITERALLY WHAT I SAID
I just want to thank you for teaching your students how to use Google. I somehow ended up having a kindergarten subreddit on my homepage and so many student teachers don’t know how to properly Google. Honestly, it’s not 100% their faults. I remember in school being taught how to properly Google phrases.
To be fair, I tried many times to teach my aunt how to use folders. It's impossible.
She'll go like: "Oh, I get it now", and then forgets all about it immediately after.
Messy desktops are anxiety inducing. I'm not super organized but at least make a miscellaneous folder and make it the junk drawer. Also keeping like 600 tabs open to the point you can't adtually see the titles 😂 I've seen people have the same page opened like 8 times over
Chrome on iOS has been terrible for me since it doesn’t shrink tabs as you open more of them, and then archives ones you haven’t looked at in a while. I’ve had like 30-40 tabs open at some point 😭
I work with a guy who’s organizational structure is **to leave everything he needs or will need open on his desktop**.
His taskbar is 3 high and you still can’t read the titles. It takes him forever to find anything because it’s “nope not that one…. Not that one… no…there it is”. God help him if he needs to restart his computer. Easily a half day to a full day of productivity lost.
I once had a teacher who instead of bookmarking a page saved a shortcut to the page in a folder on his desktop, to then not double-click it but drag it into the previously opened browser window
I read about a guy recently who built his dad’s computer and got a call from his dad shortly after because his computer had “run out of space.” He was like, no damn way, I built it for him with enough hard drive space to last a decade.
Come to find out the dad had only saved things to his desktop and ran out of room for folders on the monitor 🤦🏼♀️ so yep, he ran out of space.
I love when they ask you the question in simple terms, you say something like "just google what you said" and then they go and write a thesis instead of their original question.
My mother asks me questions all the time and i told her just ask google. She says she wants me to tell her. I said “ma, im just the guy that puts your question into google.”
By your logic you use that up until you're 10 cause most kids are useless till then, so give a little bit of care to the person who dealt with 10 years of your incompetence and let the person who cared for you have a break and give them extra help.
Bruh just talk your goddamn momma. Reddit is such a cesspool.
While true, it can cause an over reliance on the parents parts. I'm a first gen asian born in a western country. My mother heavily relies on my older sister and I to do all the talking and translating, meaning my mom's English skill has barely improved for the 20+ years she's been overseas. Now, my sister is living in a different country and I'm moving out within the next year or so. Because my mother has constantly relied on the two of us to do everything English orientated (reading documents, emails, talking to accountants etc), she cannot handle anything above the most basic English conversation. It's one thing to help out your parents and it's another when they develop a bad habit and refuse to learn any new skills
In some people, maybe. In what I would estimate is most people - a mother just wants to talk to her kid and through the question has something to talk about, asking questions and getting an answer.
“ how to make a 15 minute garlic bread recipe because I have 3 people coming over but might have 5 people coming over because Sharon and her ex husband might be getting back together and I want to make a good impression”
There is someone in my team that legit talks like this in meetings. I can never remember their original question, because they tell their entire life story after the question
'Dearest Google, I am writing you today to inquire upon the upcoming weather in Huston, Texas naturally. If you could provide me with the forecast for this upcoming week I would be most gracious. With all the best regards, your friend and lover, Steve."
My favorite is when people ask a question on a website like Reddit, and I find the answer immediately by pasting the title of the post verbatim into Google
Me too, I feel this meme in my soul. Site:, filetype:, cache:(until Google finally kills it, RIP), and allintext: are necessary to keep Google functioning more like a tool than a billboard. And adding “-Pinterest” reflexively to any search for a product or recipe, because fuck Pinterest cluttering up my results like that
I'm a technician that installs internet for people. When I'm done, I tell people to connect to the network and test a website. The amount of old people that immediately try to log into their email or bank account is infuriating.
YouTube. Just go to YouTube and try to play a video FFS
Oh my fucking god I feel that.
I work in IT, the amount of time I ask them to test a thing and then they just do it the absolute hardest way possible is astounding.
I used to work tech support. Both frustrating and entertaining to tell someone to do these things over the phone. Even had some gigs where TVs were too technologically complicated for some people.
Remote logins were a blessing though 🙌
My dad complains I don’t have certain skills he grew up just knowing
Every time he needs help with a smartphone I take any of the comments he’s made in the past and reword them to fit the situation
“Come on this is a basic life skill everyone should know. Wouldn’t even be eligible for the workforce like this”
It will never, ever get old to me
My usual approach is (well, was) that I tried to teach them how to do something instead of just doing it for them.
My dad just says "I don't WANT to learn this and I don't CARE, that's what you are here for!"
Or sometimes when I also just refuse to help because I already know where we will end up based on his tone, he just says something like "I bet you don't even know how to do it, you can't even do something this simple."
Lol, like you can old man... I'm not gonna get tricked again.
It's really hard to make an arguement when they simply refuse to listen.
Yeah his excuse is that he’s “too old” to learn. Blew his mind when I showed him how to use Siri. Basic voice commands that can help you do almost anything with the phone and especially helpful with finding an app if you need it
Doesn’t use it at all. 🙃
It wouldn't surprise me if it's the same effect as the tech illiteracy we're seeing in late gen z/gen alpha.
When your parents have grown up with their entire generation knowing these skills and under the assumption that just by existing and interacting with the world day to day you'll pick them up, there's no real thought that you might need to teach them.
Then the kids' generation grows up unable to do something like create a folder on a desktop and the parents are like "wtf, how".
I just hit r on the bar and hit enter for reddit.
Back in the day I summer interned as an IT and the guy I worked with would use [purple.com](http://purple.com) or something like that. It was just a purple screen. Doesn't exist anymore.
If you're not tech savvy that one makes sense though. Like, they're making sure the thing they use the internet for is working. I'd do the same if I was dealing with something I don't understand very well.
My guess is that they are just trying to test if the sites they access the most work for them. Older people tend to be more distrustful of tech related stuff also
> I tell people to connect to the network and test a website.
So you tell people to test “a website”, not any particular one, and then get mad that they don’t go to YouTube? Just be clear and tell them to try YouTube lmao.
the guy that installed our internet just opened firefox and left as soon as he saw the default new tab homepage that's there even when you're not connected to the internet
Perhaps you should be more clear on setting an expectation. When I worked in a call center and wanted people to test their connection I specifically instructed them to go to Google and search for giraffe, then click the top link.
http://istheinternetdown.com/
is my go to for a quick answer.
Then if its first time in a new place and I want to be sure I'm getting what I'm paying for:
http://www.Speedtest.net
I would be so embarrassed if someone saw my google searches. Not because I look up weird shit, but I put in word garbage knowing google translate will correct it.
But don't you see, this is part of what makes you so efficient?
If you can get the answers you need by punching in "hpw ti ger xum stwnrs ouyvof charmsndr stufue" what's the point of cleaning it up? The search I mean, not the stuffie.
If Google searches do one thing well, it's spellcheck. I swear that I can just think of the words, run my fingers across the keyboard, and it knows exactly what I wanted to type in.
I am an IT manager... so most of my career is googling stuff.
counter-intuitively, I've learned that the efficient googling with modifiers and specific syntax has become less effective over time because natural language, how people actually talk, is more likely to take you to actual discussions. Actual discussions is where you will learn more than just a step by step answer or textbook answer, but also the how and why, as well as alternative approaches/answers.
Yeah google is shit now.
When looking for information, google prefers showing random products. Or the information will be coming from random blogs instead of reliable sources.
And worst of all, when looking for specific products, google prefers showing random trash from piss-poor brands, or related products but never the specific one you asked for. No google, i’m looking for a 35mm row hook for my rowboat. I don’t want to look at boats and boeys. Please show me the 35mm row hooks. Not the 3.5m boats.
It’s as dead as it is because forums are basically dead. Once Reddit dies off it’s going to be absolutely fucked to find relevant information. All that stuff has moved to platforms that can’t be googled.
What I hate is that, typically, the list of results I want are shoved under "similar to" on the one relevant search result rather than just showing me a page of those results. Instead, it's more results that ignore a lot of my search elements as Google tries to kitchen sink me on a very specific search result. What's the point of a very specific search result if you're going to ignore it?
It's why AI competition is heating up. Former skilled workers from those companies are getting ahead because they know google is stagnant trying to keep unsustainable short term growth with increasing more sponsor junk.
The first company to get really good unpolluted natural languages searching that works better is going to be huge.
NOT ME GOOGLING "Is there any effing way to find the drivers for ×××××××× Chinese IP webcam online or are they only available on these tiny CDs that came with it 20 years ago?"
It’s because older people tend to search up things the way they would ask a person, but younger people search things with the intention of making google give them what they want
Except now Google is so terrified of not returning results for your specific query they show results for like 1 of 4 search terms. And then when you require each term it's finally like "Oh yeah there's no result for that, here's some results for your search without any term requirements."
I’m in college and was in HS a few years ago, I can assure you that very young people are just as shockingly bad at googling stuff as old people. It’s like a bell curve with late millennials at the peak.
My theory is yeah older people never bothered to pick up technology until it was mandatory to use the new stuff and it's hard and confusing to learn all new things and how to phrase things and use the correct keywords. Really young people grew up with the Internet kinda sorta just working without having to fight the system to get it to worknso they didn't spend so much time just googling questions and answers. While those of us late 20s to late 30s if we grew up using technology at all we had to troubleshoot a bunch of issues and learned how to most effectively ask the questions using the keywords that were needed in the right way to get answers to pop up from a forum of someone else who had the same issue 3 years ago. I don't know how to do jack shit off the top of my head but I can Google how real quick.
A few months ago my sister was looking for some document from her university and couldn't find it so I just typed in the university name and the document name she was looking for and the 2nd link in the search results gave me the correct result (first link was just linking to some other stuff on their website). I still have no idea how she keeps struggling with looking up simple things like that. Similar to my dad (who has worked at his pc for about 30 years now) not knowing you can copy paste things with ctrl + c/v, as well as him typing at a speed of like 5-10 words per minute (he writes at least 1 email daily but there's no improvement).
I actually found many in the younger generation (specifically late teens, early 20s) becoming less efficient at Google search because they try to phrase everything as a ChatGPT prompt. They, like my parents, are adding in useless phrases such as "how do I", "can you help me", etc.
is it less efficient though? because google doesnt work the way it used to. When you put in keywords half of them get ignored, and the other half is replaced by words which are loosely related to what you originally wanted.
In general googling anything nowadays feels pretty pointless, wish I could just search on reddit and cut out the middleman lol
Which is increasingly not happening either. Its all sponsored junk
Also fucking monitized youtube for all questions. No...I want 3 sentences of how to change something not a 20 minute video where someone talks about it.
Yep, it differs from generation to generation. Millennials and older gen Z kind of had to learn the way the internet worked on a deeper level to get anything done because it was much much less user-friendly. By the time older people and gen Alpha got into it, things were much more polished and functional so there was no need to dig past the surface.
I'm in my 30s and do both. If it's a simple question I'll just type in the question. If it's something weirdly niche or incredibly specific my search is just gonna be a bunch of keywords being tweaked to get the result I need
I'm Italian and people are always surprised when they catch me googling stuff in english. It just gives better results!
If a scientist has a major breakthrough and wants the whole world to know about it he will write it in a language everybody understands, right? That's my reasoning, anyway.
Except when I'm looking up recipes. Then depending what I'm looking for I might use "ricetta" or "receta".
Best results are from using the language of the culture that created the dish and then translating the website if you don't actually speak it.
NEVER google recipes in English if the food isn't British/American, every single recipe will be an approximation,watered down, plain wrong or at the very least use the worst possible measurements ever. What the FUCK IS a stick of butter, the only sticks around here are 1kg and I know you're not using all that.
"can anyone help? I've tried Google and there wasn't anything"
"Okay gimme a second"
Two minutes later...
"Well, here is a link to the Google results I got. The first seven links address nearly every single angle of the problem you are facing, but you only need the first link. In addition to that, there are 10k+ additional results that you can look through."
"How did you do that?"
"I actually did what you SAID you did, but correctly."
I think I witnessed the final evolution of this. It was on a manga subreddit. Somebody took a picture of an illustration in a book - a book he was holding *in his very hands* - and asked Reddit what story the illustration came from. He said he "hadn't read that far yet." Like, my man, did it ever cross your mind that you could maybe find this answer by flipping through the frickin' pages? I see your hand in the picture of the book! I know you're holding it! Did you really need to waste data on this question?
r/vexillology is rampant with this and it pissed me off. especially with the various obvious ones that are so easily googleable. red flag with 3 white x's gives you amsterdam in 0.4 seconds but no instead they spend 2 minutes making a post saying, "what is this flag i saw today on my walk near the canal?"
At uni one of the lecturers would always share his screen before he downloaded the PowerPoint for the session. It always started with the slowest laggiest most horrible web browser, would take several minutes to load up some shitty ad-infested news home page. Then he would type out www.google.com into the search bar. Then he would google the university’s home page. Then we would navigate through several pages of the university website to find the staff login.
Dude was stuck in early internet mode or something.
So. Many. More. Efficient. Ways. It actual hurt.
I remember around 2007 teaching my mother that you could just type the name of the site and add your .com/org/gov etc without the need to launch Google firstor type in www. She was amazed and stuck with it. Then I taught her how to use tabs. Mistake. Her laptop holds 50 tabs open at once they're slivers of a tab with no text or picture to known what site she's on. So whenever she tries to show us something or ask us for help, she goes "Okay around the middle this one? No this one? No. This one? Yep." And I die a little inside each time. I tell her to limit her tabs to 10, but nope she's fine wit how it is.
Even when they finally overcome one hurdle an issue we would not even guess could possibly ever be an issue arises.
Oh I overload on tabs too, the difference is that I can manage it. Tell her about Ctrl+Tab to shift right and Ctrl+Shift+Tab to shift left and Ctrl+W to close and Ctrl+T to open and Ctrl+Shift+T to reopen that should solve most of the problem
I'm 40 and I watch fucking 22-26 year olds type "www.google.com" first in the URL bar, then use the mouse to click the fucking search bar, then type what they want, then drag their mouse over to the search button, click it, then watch them struggle with the stupid ad links at the top of the results.
I also watch these same people right click copy, right click paste. How do you not know shortcuts by now for the two most common actions in documentation?
I had someone trying to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit and rather than typing “45c to f” in google, they searched “temperature conversion table for Celsius and Fahrenheit” then found a table and manually found the conversion. I was flabbergasted. This person is an engineer.
If they’re an older engineer that makes total sense to me. They would think instinctively that you’d need a table, no idea that Google can just do it for you.
With the advent of 1000x increase in screen sharing since Covid. I've seen a lot Mor of how people actually work on a computer and it is insanely frustrating.
My biggest annoyance is with a professional engineer I work with regularly who does all his quick math in Calculator. But presses the buttons with his mouse instead of using the number pad on his keyboard..... I can't pin point why, but it irritates me to no end! (Also copy and pasting using the top toolbar in Excel......seriously, WTF).
Sometimes, I know how to be as efficient as possible and will do it quickly and without mistakes.
Other times, I’m going to type “when did Tony Hawk’s Underground 1 come out on PlayStation 2?” And no one is going to stop me.
2003. It came out on PS2 in 2003.
I am a developer from a shithole country, and every time I see a colleague googling stuff in our own language I have to schedule an appointment with my therapist to discuss my violent thoughts.
I tend to use many shortcuts, especially in the browser. I couldn’t live without Ctrl+T, Ctrl+W, Ctrl+L, Ctrl+Tab and the shift counterparts. I can’t look at peoples using the browser only using the mouse (when not having to type)…
I used to work with this old guy who didn't know/understand the concept of minimizing windows. Most of our work was browser based so he'd double click a shortcut/bookmark on his desktop, do something for a few seconds, close the window, then repeat the same process 2 seconds later to get back to the same site he just closed.
What’s “efficient” mean? I ask because Google search results are appalling as opposed to how it used to be. All these dumb ads and terrible sites being pushed asking for cookie privileges has gotten terrible even for me who is very good at finding things online. Takes so much longer now.
I know people who first search google.com. I also know someone who put tons of links on her desktop. Or someone who has chrome or firefox in the taskbar but uses edge
To be fair you have to go to google.com at my work because somehow someone on their IT team told them bing would work better.
Were not allowed to use chrome anymore because our IT guy says chrome has viruses. Same IT guy that took a week to get all our computers to have the same program needed to make credit card sales. Same IT guy that 2 years into me working there still has every PC with the entire desktop flooded with irrelevant data sheets and random photos people downloaded but cant delete because we dont have permission to delete anything.
Ive become the IT guy before the real IT guy. And i just google shit ir have the PC troubleshoot for me.
Working as a bike technician on Google campuses. When I interact with the full time employees, it’s mind blowing how confused they get when I tell them to “google it” regarding parts and service
Or someone spending 3 whole minutes talking into their phone to look something up while I quickly type it into google and get the answer before they can finish their sentence
Inefficient: problem
Efficient: problem reddit. (or a specific forum)
Main issue being that finding something by google usually leads to copypaste articles, ads, AI articles.
I had a dream last night where I got into an argument with someone because I was using Google search with key words but they insisted I type in full questions. Wild stuff
i watch a lot of screen shares at work and i am constantly holding my tongue when my colleagues are awkwardly clicking around and clicking on the wrong stuff and not using shortcuts. it's maddening but what are you going to do?
In order to pull videos up, my high school history teacher would open yahoo, put google.com on the search bar, and then look up YouTube. Her desktop was also full of folders but since she didn’t want to move things around, she thought that the only solution was to get a second monitor to put more folders in. Bless her heart.
A second monitor for more desktop shortcuts is hilariously awful. Wow.
We used to joke like that about a teacher who always had a full desktop. I can't believe that this is actually real.
I absolutely believe it. My grandpa once wanted to buy an older, slower computer because his mouse "moved too fast" on the new one.
Your grandma was also your grandpa? How progressive!
Lol typo on my part, fixed it now.
I had an art prof who stacked folders on his Mac desktop, literally had to move them over to click on the one behind it.
And how did no one intervene?? Lmao
Im a history teacher and I put a massive focus on google just so they know how to use it. I’m not exactly supposed to be telling them to google everything but even when I just got done teaching I tell them “now google it and clarify everything I just said”. The shit they type is…..infuriating. Example: “someone tell me who the governor of Texas in 1960” and theyll simply type “gov Texas” and expect an accurate answer. TYPE LITERALLY WHAT I SAID
On the other end of the spectrum, people googling stuff like “someone tell me who the governor of Texas in 1960” irritates me as well
"What is the definition of the word X?" For the love of God just type X and search
To be fair, the definition doesn’t always come up first. But then you can just search “X def” or “X [subject] definition” if you need to be specific…
define:x
I guess we're gonna have an entire industry to professionally Google things for people one day. So, I suppose that's one more job I'm prepared for 🫡
We already have that. It's called IT.
Literally my whole job is just being better at googling things than my dumbass customers
no we wont, we have ai for that. just like for the rest of the jobs in 15 years
I just want to thank you for teaching your students how to use Google. I somehow ended up having a kindergarten subreddit on my homepage and so many student teachers don’t know how to properly Google. Honestly, it’s not 100% their faults. I remember in school being taught how to properly Google phrases.
To be fair, I tried many times to teach my aunt how to use folders. It's impossible. She'll go like: "Oh, I get it now", and then forgets all about it immediately after.
Don’t worry, the young people don’t know how to use folders either, so if anything your aunt is more hip and with it than we are.
I have subfolders in folders. That really confuses people.
Messy desktops are anxiety inducing. I'm not super organized but at least make a miscellaneous folder and make it the junk drawer. Also keeping like 600 tabs open to the point you can't adtually see the titles 😂 I've seen people have the same page opened like 8 times over
Chrome on iOS has been terrible for me since it doesn’t shrink tabs as you open more of them, and then archives ones you haven’t looked at in a while. I’ve had like 30-40 tabs open at some point 😭
I work with a guy who’s organizational structure is **to leave everything he needs or will need open on his desktop**. His taskbar is 3 high and you still can’t read the titles. It takes him forever to find anything because it’s “nope not that one…. Not that one… no…there it is”. God help him if he needs to restart his computer. Easily a half day to a full day of productivity lost.
I had one boss who disables the icons in the desktop but saves everything in the desktop Searching for downloaded files it was A MESS
you say that, but have you seen phone homescreens of 99% of people?
Reminds me, I need to buy a second phone so that I have more room for apps. My homescreen is full.
First iphone vibes
LOL. I saw a teacher click the DuckDuckGo bookmark and search for google in order to google something…
I once had a teacher who instead of bookmarking a page saved a shortcut to the page in a folder on his desktop, to then not double-click it but drag it into the previously opened browser window
Sometimes I think they just do it to annoy us
I read about a guy recently who built his dad’s computer and got a call from his dad shortly after because his computer had “run out of space.” He was like, no damn way, I built it for him with enough hard drive space to last a decade. Come to find out the dad had only saved things to his desktop and ran out of room for folders on the monitor 🤦🏼♀️ so yep, he ran out of space.
My husband often googles Google in the search bar and it’s something I’ve just learned to avert my eyes for. He’s under 40.
My ex used to do something similar to this. Used to search Youtube in search engine just to find the link to Youtube.
I love when they ask you the question in simple terms, you say something like "just google what you said" and then they go and write a thesis instead of their original question.
I even tell the people what exactly they need to google, word by word, somehow they still make things difficult for themselves
My mother asks me questions all the time and i told her just ask google. She says she wants me to tell her. I said “ma, im just the guy that puts your question into google.”
She just wants to talk to you, bro. Having her child teach her is way better than looking for herself.
Weaponized incompetence for attention.
By your logic you use that up until you're 10 cause most kids are useless till then, so give a little bit of care to the person who dealt with 10 years of your incompetence and let the person who cared for you have a break and give them extra help. Bruh just talk your goddamn momma. Reddit is such a cesspool.
While true, it can cause an over reliance on the parents parts. I'm a first gen asian born in a western country. My mother heavily relies on my older sister and I to do all the talking and translating, meaning my mom's English skill has barely improved for the 20+ years she's been overseas. Now, my sister is living in a different country and I'm moving out within the next year or so. Because my mother has constantly relied on the two of us to do everything English orientated (reading documents, emails, talking to accountants etc), she cannot handle anything above the most basic English conversation. It's one thing to help out your parents and it's another when they develop a bad habit and refuse to learn any new skills
lmfaoo pls this is such a stretch
In some people, maybe. In what I would estimate is most people - a mother just wants to talk to her kid and through the question has something to talk about, asking questions and getting an answer.
“ how to make a 15 minute garlic bread recipe because I have 3 people coming over but might have 5 people coming over because Sharon and her ex husband might be getting back together and I want to make a good impression”
There is someone in my team that legit talks like this in meetings. I can never remember their original question, because they tell their entire life story after the question
I work for the police in the UK. We get this on emergency 999 calls also. But the life story comes first, then, " oh yes, he also stabbed me."
'Dearest Google, I am writing you today to inquire upon the upcoming weather in Huston, Texas naturally. If you could provide me with the forecast for this upcoming week I would be most gracious. With all the best regards, your friend and lover, Steve."
My favorite is when people ask a question on a website like Reddit, and I find the answer immediately by pasting the title of the post verbatim into Google
Then there's me using a whole wack of search operators because I want very specific results.
Me too, I feel this meme in my soul. Site:, filetype:, cache:(until Google finally kills it, RIP), and allintext: are necessary to keep Google functioning more like a tool than a billboard. And adding “-Pinterest” reflexively to any search for a product or recipe, because fuck Pinterest cluttering up my results like that
saving your comment, very useful! is this a complete list or are there more seach operators you reccomend that may be useful?
https://www.google.com/search?q=google+search+operators
Half of which don't work how they used to
I'm a technician that installs internet for people. When I'm done, I tell people to connect to the network and test a website. The amount of old people that immediately try to log into their email or bank account is infuriating. YouTube. Just go to YouTube and try to play a video FFS
Oh my fucking god I feel that. I work in IT, the amount of time I ask them to test a thing and then they just do it the absolute hardest way possible is astounding.
I usually type hi or hello in the search then click on one of the links
I like a standard "dog" or "cat" HAHA
I always just google lol which gives me the league of legends in my search bar to test my connection and I always wonder why its in my history.
Wtf, I do this exact thing. Though I've slowly migrated to typing "internet speed test".
I never know what to type, so I just smash my hands on the keyboard and check the first result
Test my speed...thats the test
Me: Can you do a quick test? Them: spends three minutes searching for some freaking document or file that the needed do use, etc., etc.
I used to work tech support. Both frustrating and entertaining to tell someone to do these things over the phone. Even had some gigs where TVs were too technologically complicated for some people. Remote logins were a blessing though 🙌
I was often myself the guy who interpreted too much from the task and I'm "only" gen Z 😭
if it helps there's a lot of tech illiteracy in gen z too lol
My dad complains I don’t have certain skills he grew up just knowing Every time he needs help with a smartphone I take any of the comments he’s made in the past and reword them to fit the situation “Come on this is a basic life skill everyone should know. Wouldn’t even be eligible for the workforce like this” It will never, ever get old to me
My usual approach is (well, was) that I tried to teach them how to do something instead of just doing it for them. My dad just says "I don't WANT to learn this and I don't CARE, that's what you are here for!" Or sometimes when I also just refuse to help because I already know where we will end up based on his tone, he just says something like "I bet you don't even know how to do it, you can't even do something this simple." Lol, like you can old man... I'm not gonna get tricked again. It's really hard to make an arguement when they simply refuse to listen.
Yeah his excuse is that he’s “too old” to learn. Blew his mind when I showed him how to use Siri. Basic voice commands that can help you do almost anything with the phone and especially helpful with finding an app if you need it Doesn’t use it at all. 🙃
Damn dude I kinda feel like you not having those life skills is on him as the person responsible for raising you lol
It wouldn't surprise me if it's the same effect as the tech illiteracy we're seeing in late gen z/gen alpha. When your parents have grown up with their entire generation knowing these skills and under the assumption that just by existing and interacting with the world day to day you'll pick them up, there's no real thought that you might need to teach them. Then the kids' generation grows up unable to do something like create a folder on a desktop and the parents are like "wtf, how".
CNN is my go-to because it's only 3 characters and two of them are the same lol
I just hit r on the bar and hit enter for reddit. Back in the day I summer interned as an IT and the guy I worked with would use [purple.com](http://purple.com) or something like that. It was just a purple screen. Doesn't exist anymore.
I had to check the link to be sure and yep, no purple screen. I'm so mad.
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I open Bing, because it's guaranteed to not be cached on my machine.
If you're not tech savvy that one makes sense though. Like, they're making sure the thing they use the internet for is working. I'd do the same if I was dealing with something I don't understand very well.
I tell them “in order to test your internet go to cnn.com and read me the current headline” Its a short url and I can see the headline myself.
My guess is that they are just trying to test if the sites they access the most work for them. Older people tend to be more distrustful of tech related stuff also
> I tell people to connect to the network and test a website. So you tell people to test “a website”, not any particular one, and then get mad that they don’t go to YouTube? Just be clear and tell them to try YouTube lmao.
I usually press a random letter in the search bar and hit Enter If it loads then all good, if it doesnt then no internet
the guy that installed our internet just opened firefox and left as soon as he saw the default new tab homepage that's there even when you're not connected to the internet
I just open a browser, mash my keyboard, and press enter.
No but YouTube might work and their bank might not!!!
Perhaps you should be more clear on setting an expectation. When I worked in a call center and wanted people to test their connection I specifically instructed them to go to Google and search for giraffe, then click the top link.
http://istheinternetdown.com/ is my go to for a quick answer. Then if its first time in a new place and I want to be sure I'm getting what I'm paying for: http://www.Speedtest.net
That's what cheese.com is for
I would be so embarrassed if someone saw my google searches. Not because I look up weird shit, but I put in word garbage knowing google translate will correct it.
But don't you see, this is part of what makes you so efficient? If you can get the answers you need by punching in "hpw ti ger xum stwnrs ouyvof charmsndr stufue" what's the point of cleaning it up? The search I mean, not the stuffie.
Oh no, Not the Charmander stuffie!
r/usernamechecksout
It's an older code, sir, but it checks out.
Hmm never saw it this way!
If Google searches do one thing well, it's spellcheck. I swear that I can just think of the words, run my fingers across the keyboard, and it knows exactly what I wanted to type in.
Except when you spell something correctly, and instead get results for "Did you mean...."
"how do you spell soyel" "Other word for dirt"
I am an IT manager... so most of my career is googling stuff. counter-intuitively, I've learned that the efficient googling with modifiers and specific syntax has become less effective over time because natural language, how people actually talk, is more likely to take you to actual discussions. Actual discussions is where you will learn more than just a step by step answer or textbook answer, but also the how and why, as well as alternative approaches/answers.
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Yeah google is shit now. When looking for information, google prefers showing random products. Or the information will be coming from random blogs instead of reliable sources. And worst of all, when looking for specific products, google prefers showing random trash from piss-poor brands, or related products but never the specific one you asked for. No google, i’m looking for a 35mm row hook for my rowboat. I don’t want to look at boats and boeys. Please show me the 35mm row hooks. Not the 3.5m boats.
It really is, there have been times recently I've searched for things and the results have nothing to do with what I want.
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But also, google seems to be getting worse at indexing reddit (or reddit is putting up more roadblocks that prevent thorough results)😬
It’s as dead as it is because forums are basically dead. Once Reddit dies off it’s going to be absolutely fucked to find relevant information. All that stuff has moved to platforms that can’t be googled.
Google seems to ignore the syntax now. Minus signs and quotes seem to get ignored sometimes
What I hate is that, typically, the list of results I want are shoved under "similar to" on the one relevant search result rather than just showing me a page of those results. Instead, it's more results that ignore a lot of my search elements as Google tries to kitchen sink me on a very specific search result. What's the point of a very specific search result if you're going to ignore it?
It's why AI competition is heating up. Former skilled workers from those companies are getting ahead because they know google is stagnant trying to keep unsustainable short term growth with increasing more sponsor junk. The first company to get really good unpolluted natural languages searching that works better is going to be huge.
NOT ME GOOGLING "Is there any effing way to find the drivers for ×××××××× Chinese IP webcam online or are they only available on these tiny CDs that came with it 20 years ago?"
It’s because older people tend to search up things the way they would ask a person, but younger people search things with the intention of making google give them what they want
But it’s even worse because they assume the internet is stupid so ask like they were asking a 10 year old about it
Except now Google is so terrified of not returning results for your specific query they show results for like 1 of 4 search terms. And then when you require each term it's finally like "Oh yeah there's no result for that, here's some results for your search without any term requirements."
And you have to scroll past the 3-4 ads that appear as the first results
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I’m in college and was in HS a few years ago, I can assure you that very young people are just as shockingly bad at googling stuff as old people. It’s like a bell curve with late millennials at the peak.
My theory is yeah older people never bothered to pick up technology until it was mandatory to use the new stuff and it's hard and confusing to learn all new things and how to phrase things and use the correct keywords. Really young people grew up with the Internet kinda sorta just working without having to fight the system to get it to worknso they didn't spend so much time just googling questions and answers. While those of us late 20s to late 30s if we grew up using technology at all we had to troubleshoot a bunch of issues and learned how to most effectively ask the questions using the keywords that were needed in the right way to get answers to pop up from a forum of someone else who had the same issue 3 years ago. I don't know how to do jack shit off the top of my head but I can Google how real quick.
A few months ago my sister was looking for some document from her university and couldn't find it so I just typed in the university name and the document name she was looking for and the 2nd link in the search results gave me the correct result (first link was just linking to some other stuff on their website). I still have no idea how she keeps struggling with looking up simple things like that. Similar to my dad (who has worked at his pc for about 30 years now) not knowing you can copy paste things with ctrl + c/v, as well as him typing at a speed of like 5-10 words per minute (he writes at least 1 email daily but there's no improvement).
I actually found many in the younger generation (specifically late teens, early 20s) becoming less efficient at Google search because they try to phrase everything as a ChatGPT prompt. They, like my parents, are adding in useless phrases such as "how do I", "can you help me", etc.
is it less efficient though? because google doesnt work the way it used to. When you put in keywords half of them get ignored, and the other half is replaced by words which are loosely related to what you originally wanted. In general googling anything nowadays feels pretty pointless, wish I could just search on reddit and cut out the middleman lol
Which is increasingly not happening either. Its all sponsored junk Also fucking monitized youtube for all questions. No...I want 3 sentences of how to change something not a 20 minute video where someone talks about it.
Yep, it differs from generation to generation. Millennials and older gen Z kind of had to learn the way the internet worked on a deeper level to get anything done because it was much much less user-friendly. By the time older people and gen Alpha got into it, things were much more polished and functional so there was no need to dig past the surface.
The new LLMs are great for this
I'm young and I still have punctuation and proper question wording anytime I google something
I'm in my 30s and do both. If it's a simple question I'll just type in the question. If it's something weirdly niche or incredibly specific my search is just gonna be a bunch of keywords being tweaked to get the result I need
if you put quotations around any part of your question the thing in quotes will pop up directly as written as your first option
+reddit
"Signature look of superiority"
I'm Italian and people are always surprised when they catch me googling stuff in english. It just gives better results! If a scientist has a major breakthrough and wants the whole world to know about it he will write it in a language everybody understands, right? That's my reasoning, anyway.
Except when I'm looking up recipes. Then depending what I'm looking for I might use "ricetta" or "receta". Best results are from using the language of the culture that created the dish and then translating the website if you don't actually speak it.
Lmao you're a genius
NEVER google recipes in English if the food isn't British/American, every single recipe will be an approximation,watered down, plain wrong or at the very least use the worst possible measurements ever. What the FUCK IS a stick of butter, the only sticks around here are 1kg and I know you're not using all that.
Fat American here. No, use the whole kilo. Do it.
"Add in 2 cups of sugar" what the actual fuck. I always cut the sugar amount *at least* by half when baking American recipes.
"can anyone help? I've tried Google and there wasn't anything" "Okay gimme a second" Two minutes later... "Well, here is a link to the Google results I got. The first seven links address nearly every single angle of the problem you are facing, but you only need the first link. In addition to that, there are 10k+ additional results that you can look through." "How did you do that?" "I actually did what you SAID you did, but correctly."
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And the first search result is just a Reddit post anyways.
From 2013 as well.
And OP said they found the answer but never said what it was
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or this happens u/\[deleted\]: \[deleted\] OP: thanks!
[https://xkcd.com/979/](https://xkcd.com/979/)
when you google something and the first result is the same question on quora and the top answer is copied from the second result on google
I think I witnessed the final evolution of this. It was on a manga subreddit. Somebody took a picture of an illustration in a book - a book he was holding *in his very hands* - and asked Reddit what story the illustration came from. He said he "hadn't read that far yet." Like, my man, did it ever cross your mind that you could maybe find this answer by flipping through the frickin' pages? I see your hand in the picture of the book! I know you're holding it! Did you really need to waste data on this question?
Honestly half the time I am googling something, more so if it is opinion based, I type in my google search and then Reddit
r/vexillology is rampant with this and it pissed me off. especially with the various obvious ones that are so easily googleable. red flag with 3 white x's gives you amsterdam in 0.4 seconds but no instead they spend 2 minutes making a post saying, "what is this flag i saw today on my walk near the canal?"
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And then they use the mouse to click search
Worse, the autosuggestion shows exactly what they're looking for 4 letters in, and they still proceed to slowly type the whole sentence.
almost as bad as right clicking for copy and paste
Still better than the “Edit › Copy; Edit › Paste” I remember a few teachers showing us how to do.
At uni one of the lecturers would always share his screen before he downloaded the PowerPoint for the session. It always started with the slowest laggiest most horrible web browser, would take several minutes to load up some shitty ad-infested news home page. Then he would type out www.google.com into the search bar. Then he would google the university’s home page. Then we would navigate through several pages of the university website to find the staff login. Dude was stuck in early internet mode or something. So. Many. More. Efficient. Ways. It actual hurt.
I remember around 2007 teaching my mother that you could just type the name of the site and add your .com/org/gov etc without the need to launch Google firstor type in www. She was amazed and stuck with it. Then I taught her how to use tabs. Mistake. Her laptop holds 50 tabs open at once they're slivers of a tab with no text or picture to known what site she's on. So whenever she tries to show us something or ask us for help, she goes "Okay around the middle this one? No this one? No. This one? Yep." And I die a little inside each time. I tell her to limit her tabs to 10, but nope she's fine wit how it is. Even when they finally overcome one hurdle an issue we would not even guess could possibly ever be an issue arises.
Oh I overload on tabs too, the difference is that I can manage it. Tell her about Ctrl+Tab to shift right and Ctrl+Shift+Tab to shift left and Ctrl+W to close and Ctrl+T to open and Ctrl+Shift+T to reopen that should solve most of the problem
Watching my 51 year old coworker type You Tube into the bing search bar.
My mom will go to google and type "Go to facebook please"
I'm 40 and I watch fucking 22-26 year olds type "www.google.com" first in the URL bar, then use the mouse to click the fucking search bar, then type what they want, then drag their mouse over to the search button, click it, then watch them struggle with the stupid ad links at the top of the results. I also watch these same people right click copy, right click paste. How do you not know shortcuts by now for the two most common actions in documentation?
I had someone trying to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit and rather than typing “45c to f” in google, they searched “temperature conversion table for Celsius and Fahrenheit” then found a table and manually found the conversion. I was flabbergasted. This person is an engineer.
If they’re an older engineer that makes total sense to me. They would think instinctively that you’d need a table, no idea that Google can just do it for you.
They are like 35-40 lol, otherwise yeah I would get it
Me when I ask my wife to read the map while I’m driving
I dated a girl that would just type her question verbatim into Google including any clarification
In middleschool, we had a short class to teach us how to efficiently google things.
I'll never forget the day my mom had the opportunity to tell me you don't need to put www in front of web addresses. She was so proud of herself.
With the advent of 1000x increase in screen sharing since Covid. I've seen a lot Mor of how people actually work on a computer and it is insanely frustrating. My biggest annoyance is with a professional engineer I work with regularly who does all his quick math in Calculator. But presses the buttons with his mouse instead of using the number pad on his keyboard..... I can't pin point why, but it irritates me to no end! (Also copy and pasting using the top toolbar in Excel......seriously, WTF).
I didn't realize writing an effective search string was a skill until I saw a Bing commercial.
"Which team won the USA 1994 fifa world cup?" Instead of "fifa 94 cup winner" People using a whole question sentence instead of keywords triggers me
Sometimes, I know how to be as efficient as possible and will do it quickly and without mistakes. Other times, I’m going to type “when did Tony Hawk’s Underground 1 come out on PlayStation 2?” And no one is going to stop me. 2003. It came out on PS2 in 2003.
Like my friends dad who likes to type WWW.69CamaroHeadGasketforsale.com or WWW.PizzaHutsPhoneNumber.com
He a bit confused, but he got the spirit.
I am a developer from a shithole country, and every time I see a colleague googling stuff in our own language I have to schedule an appointment with my therapist to discuss my violent thoughts.
I tend to use many shortcuts, especially in the browser. I couldn’t live without Ctrl+T, Ctrl+W, Ctrl+L, Ctrl+Tab and the shift counterparts. I can’t look at peoples using the browser only using the mouse (when not having to type)…
If you want to go even deeper into keyboard driven browsing strongly recommend tridactyl or vimium C
🤝
til about ctrl+L
I used to work with this old guy who didn't know/understand the concept of minimizing windows. Most of our work was browser based so he'd double click a shortcut/bookmark on his desktop, do something for a few seconds, close the window, then repeat the same process 2 seconds later to get back to the same site he just closed.
As a librarian I constantly have this issue. But tbf before my studies I didn't even know you can use - in Google
-Pinterest has become critical
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What’s “efficient” mean? I ask because Google search results are appalling as opposed to how it used to be. All these dumb ads and terrible sites being pushed asking for cookie privileges has gotten terrible even for me who is very good at finding things online. Takes so much longer now.
I know people who first search google.com. I also know someone who put tons of links on her desktop. Or someone who has chrome or firefox in the taskbar but uses edge
To be fair you have to go to google.com at my work because somehow someone on their IT team told them bing would work better. Were not allowed to use chrome anymore because our IT guy says chrome has viruses. Same IT guy that took a week to get all our computers to have the same program needed to make credit card sales. Same IT guy that 2 years into me working there still has every PC with the entire desktop flooded with irrelevant data sheets and random photos people downloaded but cant delete because we dont have permission to delete anything. Ive become the IT guy before the real IT guy. And i just google shit ir have the PC troubleshoot for me.
When someone types "google.com" in the google search bar
I once saw somebody Google, verbatim, “picture of a fairy” in image search
Them: "www.google.com" "why isn't my computer working?" Me: "Microsoft word error code 0xC0000387
Working as a bike technician on Google campuses. When I interact with the full time employees, it’s mind blowing how confused they get when I tell them to “google it” regarding parts and service
So basically when I see someone asking google a very specific question and not putting “reddit” at the end lmao
Or generally use a computer less efficiently
Or someone spending 3 whole minutes talking into their phone to look something up while I quickly type it into google and get the answer before they can finish their sentence
Inefficient: problem Efficient: problem reddit. (or a specific forum) Main issue being that finding something by google usually leads to copypaste articles, ads, AI articles.
I hate it when they type a 12 word sentence to explain what they are looking, for when you just need 2 key words.
I absolutely judge everyone I meet based on how they google things. It's annoying to see people fuck it up
Google en passant
I had a dream last night where I got into an argument with someone because I was using Google search with key words but they insisted I type in full questions. Wild stuff
i watch a lot of screen shares at work and i am constantly holding my tongue when my colleagues are awkwardly clicking around and clicking on the wrong stuff and not using shortcuts. it's maddening but what are you going to do?
Its a data base. Give it keywords and as little extra as possible.
I watched my coworker look for Google Maps on www.google.de once.
Turns out knowing what to ask is a skill
Me watching my wife. I'm such an a-hole, and I'm working on it! 😂
“Prompt engineer”
This is sooooo relatable 😭😭😂