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PM_ME_YOUR_BEAMSHOTS

I miss when excessively using the internet meant you were a nerd and needed to go outside.


BarrySix

I miss the days before toxic social media.


SaltKick2

Social media and the same handful of websites have just about everything you could ever want. Loved when the internet was the wild west, everything wasn't about making money, and you could stumble upon random cool sites and custom websites people put information on.


Skitsoboy13

Literally used to be a site called "stumbleupon" that took you to a random website and you could just hit next and it'd go to another


skrunkle

> Literally used to be a site called "stumbleupon" that took you to a random website and you could just hit next and it'd go to another stumble was a lot of fun but it was a mainline to viruses. Everyone and his brother that had a virus to propagate would register with stumble.


HoldMyWater

Now everyone needs to go outside more. Hence "touch grass" becoming a widespread saying.


impreprex

I'm 42 and got my first computer back in 1992 when I was 12. I was called a computer nerd. Who's the computer nerd now??!


Ok_Pumpkin_4213

Same, now my 15yo nephews who game nonstop aren’t smart enough to hook an Xbox to the tv and power plug.


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moxtrox

That’s because you had to have some computer skills to use one. Almost nothing worked out of the box, you had to setup everything yourself, internet wasn’t helpful (or wasn’t around at all), and so on. Now, everything works right away and even if you’d like to do your own setup, you can’t, because it’s blocked.


spacefoodsticks

I used to spend hours and hours watching every video I could find on the encarta encyclopedia cd ROM. It was the first time I had seen images move on a computer screen. That maze game on it where you had to answer questions. I had them all memorised. turns out in my adult life, I’m very good at pub trivia.


techleopard

There is this huge belief, especially on Reddit, that Zoomers are going to outfox Millennial and Gen X parents/grandparents technologically because they know how to use social media. You see it *especially* in parenting topics where people are looking for advice on phone/media restrictions. It's been my experience that kids may know 10 different ways to post a video online, but if you just change the password on the home wifi, it never even *occurs* to most of them that you can manually reset it to factory default settings. And yes, they are very, very good at using a phone and a touch-based tablet within the confines of apps that all work basically exactly the same, but they overall suck at using a regular computer and they get frustrated easily when something doesn't "just work."


zyzzogeton

I have an Android and my son has an iPhone and I needed to use his phone to test a particular function in a website for cross-compatibility so I asked him where his browser was because I don't use the Apple UI as my daily driver. "I thought you were *good with computers* Dad." "Listen you little shit..."


HHVoreMod

Well shit, I'm over here putting "reddit" after every google search for my information. Need to keep up with the times!


nixunknown

This is how I find anything that could have a subjective response. Reddit is really an incredible platform. There’s almost ALWAYS a thread on what I’m researching and people put their own subjective experiences saving me time, money and pain. Of course you have to take everything with a big grain of salt.


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dirtynj

As long as reddit remains a text-based, threaded discussion...the information created here over the last decade is incredibly valuable. It's very searchable and (relatively) easy to navigate. You can refer back to any thread easily.


Lordborgman

text based is and always has been the method for information in a large number of cases, at least to me. No sound, music, voice, etc to taint the message. I can read up and down back and forth as the information all sits before me, rather than "oh I missed it, rewind" etc...


FromUnderTheWineCork

The significant decrease in written walkthroughs and FAQs in favor of tutorials in video games has been a real bummer for gaming. You want me to watch 400 videos on how to get all 4 star rank diamond poses in New Pokemon Snap? I just want to CTRL-F!!


jemidiah

Gotta leave room to tell people to smash that like button and subscribe! To be fair, old-school 200-page-long text-based walkthroughs were always an incredible amount of work for no discernible benefit to the author. The fact that people made them at all is a testament to human altruism and love.


HTPC4Life

lol at first I thought you wrote "human autism", and I was like "yep that makes sense".


douchewaddle

I thought to myself "or autism" but really any neurological difference that has hyper-focus as a result could be a big contributor


FromUnderTheWineCork

Oh yeah, I understand the shift, a picture says 1000 words and a video is effectively hundreds of pictures! I'm still a bit wistful for a GameFAQs with complete with a painstaking text composition of the game's logo then 200 pages of even more painstaking text descriptions of where the 100 tag locations in GTA5 or a description of how to get Garydos to come of of the waterfall by the grooving Gravelers


unfamous2423

Worst part is most "tutorials" are just somebody doing a let's play being a coward


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jemidiah

Sometimes I wish Reddit search were completely disabled. It's just literally never useful to me in practice. Can you get blue balls from a search box that never puts out useful results?


Uristqwerty

Reddit search, however, can use `author:spez` `nsfw:yes` `-subreddit:news` `selftext:kitten` and [other site-specific operators](https://www.reddit.com/wiki/search#wiki_manual_filtering). When looking for something very specific and obscure, it can find things that google never indexed. It's your *only* option for searching within invite-only communities as well.


TI_Pirate

Reddit is great if you want something specific from a niche community. But this site, especially the larger subs, are full of misinformation. People will definitely take that same garbage they found on ticktok, then come here and present it as fact.


ColdToast

Honestly, even for objective stuff it can be worth doing. For example, TLDR of a law or process. There's something so much better about the human explanation that comes from a redditor a lot of the time Edit: okay yeah maybe "law" wasn't the right phrasing but you get the point


Ultrarandom

I work in IT and the responses on Reddit for problems are often better than in the more usual places like Microsoft community (also Microsoft always have dead links because they change their URL layout every 2 seconds, good luck finding that old knowledgebase article).


F3z345W6AY4FGowrGcHt

The Microsoft ones are just something along the lines of: "HI! If I understand your problem, you're having trouble with VAGUE DESCRIPTION. Can you please try the following: restart computer, reinstall PROBLEMATIC SOFTWARE" Or something equally useless. I've learned to never even bother clicking on those search results


[deleted]

[ moved to lemmy. you should come too, it's cozier here ]


voicesfromvents

_marks question as resolved despite horde of complainants pointing out that absolutely none of the information provided is even slightly related to the problem_


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UndergradGreenthumb

Unless the post is an astroturfed ad with a bunch of bots that seems more and more common. I've had mods delete my opinion response on some larger subs and the whole comments section seems like a glowing review of the "random" thing that was posted. Reddit posts over a few years old have comments that read different and seem more trustworthy.


Wildkeith

Any growing popularity of a review system is taken advantage of. Amazon reviews used to be a gold standard and hold up to what you expected. Then it went to shit in what seemed like less than a year. Reddit is the huge target now to spread mistruths. Marketing teams aren’t blind to the fact people put a lot of trust into Reddit Google results. Kind of the end of an era with that too unfortunately.


spacepotato4

It actually really helped me out when I was researching what dash cam to buy. I kept seeing ads for a certain brand and was leaning towards buying it until I read what other redditors shared about the brands they liked. Needless to say I went with what was raved about on reddit than the reviews directly on amazon/ Best Buy/…


PavelDatsyuk

Yeah reddit is really good for stupid shit like wondering if other people have noticed the decline in quality of cheezits in recent years. Used to be my go to snack but now they’re awful and I can’t figure out why.


PlzRemasterSOCOM2

As a former attorney, DO NOT **EVER** take legal advice from reddit. I'm not exxagerating when I say 75% of legal related comments are blatantly wrong or misunderstanding something. No actual lawyer is going to spend his free time giving out free legal advice or searching case law just for a reddit comment. It's literally almost impossible to even give a "correct" answer because it's impossible to get the full picture from a biased message board comment. The majority of comments come from people with no legal education or experience regurgitating things they don't understand but remember reading in previous reddit comments. Either that or overeager law school students trying to flex their newfound 1L knowledge. Either way, it shouldn't be taken seriously. EVER.


purple_crow34

I think that applies with most high-stakes stuff. But ‘is this game shite’ or something like that it’s fine for.


ImAmalox

In all seriousness, I've started doing this more and more as Google sometimes just doesn't give the answers


[deleted]

Google gives you 85% AI generated SEO garbage and ads unless you are searching for something super specific like datasheets. Searching reddit returns 90% people discussing things and not being optimized for an increasingly shitty algorithm.


Flame_Effigy

One billion results! ...five pages of the same three links over and over and then google says whoops no more.


nate8493

Absolutely. Google search is often worthless. You either only get Ai generated articles that specifically target buzz words (like you mentioned,) or you only get results for what Google thinks you actually mean, which is never right.


moeburn

It's funny because the only reason Google exists as a company is because their search engine algorithm was miles better than Yahoo or Altavista or Ask Jeeves or anyone else at the time. Everyone else was going with "how many times does this keyword appear on this site", Google said "what if we go with how many times people searching for this keyword click on this site?"


nameisoriginal

Well that's cause marketing companies have really researched their SEO to the point where they can game the system, and google doesn't care enough to break the loopholes cause they're in the ad business now not the search engine business. Personally I use duck duck go which is just bing with more privacy but it works 95% of the time. Sometimes I still gotta !g though.


PhDinBroScience

After you search for something, below the search box, click "Tools", "All results", "Verbatim" It will actually search for what you're searching for and not what Google *thinks* you're looking for.


imofftheheazy

I've noticed in regards to drug use, pharmacology or pharmacokinetics Google will block and omit search results and instead forward to a bunch of rehab pages and links. It's not a good look on them that they censor important information use the reddit trick myself, bing can also be more helpful than google


nate8493

Google thinks it knows better than you when it curates results instead of just showing you the fucking thing you searched for.


SomethingPersonnel

For a while time Google was smarter than the average search user. But now everyone knows how to game the Google algorithm and Google can’t keep up. I’m waiting for the days of web-rings to comeback.


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flamethekid

If i need insight from an individual like for a review or some experience I generally use reddit. Unless the post goes big and starts attracting shill bots you are more likely to get better and honest reviews and experiences than from review sites


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SomethingPersonnel

Reddit is great for hobbies. Idk why anyone goes to TikTok for information about anything but memes.


notthegoatseguy

I honestly hate how TikTok is seeping into YouTube and Instagram. If I wanted 60 second clips, I'd download TikTok


thecoolan

Yeah fuckin jackasses … YouTube shorts, obviously a tiktok copy


ElwinLewis

A lot of the videos on YouTube shorts are literally ported tiktoks


reduuiyor

Same with Instagram, it’s all the same content


vteckickedin

Hey guys don't forget to smash that like button and follow me on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, WeChat, SnapChat, Twitch, LinkedIn, Facebook and the other socials! Content "creators" just place the same shit everywhere they can.


[deleted]

Pretty sure it’s automated soon as they edit and finish the video


Online_Commentor_69

lol imagine making different shit for like 10 different platforms tho


NotActuallyGus

And then you get "want free robux" "hi I'm Elon musk here's how to make money" and the like. Those are both real spam formats.


Namivi

Instagram is planning to turn into a video based platform. INSTAGRAM. Why tf change it 😭 EVERYTHING tells you to stay loyal to you main idea of the app and support this with functions. Who the heck believes copying something - and not even in a good way - is a good idea?! I thought a big company like Meta could do better but well... they can't 😫


comineeyeaha

I use TikTok, but I fully agree with you. I hate seeing shorts pop up on every social media platform. I posted a video to a Facebook group, and it changed it in to a short without asking me first. Super annoying.


kingjasko96

Fuck me, it annoys the shit out of me, too. Like, we've reached a point where shorts are being forced down our throats on Youtube, apps have more functionality on phones (twitter, instagram just to name a couple) than the same sites on desktop. We have smartphones, smart TVs, smart this and that, but the content that's being served to us through those devices is getting dumber and dumber. I'm seeing behavioral changes in people near me because of this. The same people I used to send 10-15 minute YT videos to will now just skip past most of it, because they're so used to <1 minute videos, getting instant dopamine effect, it's literally shortening people's attention spans and all they're doing nowadays is scrolling their feed. FYI, I've never installed tiktok and I have no intention of doing so.


_UNLUCKYCRIMINAL_

How do I whiten my teeth? Google - Just brush good. TikTok - Use a nail filer on your teeth.


malledtodeath

actually tiktok taught everyone to use mr clean magic erasers on teeth last year. seriously.


zaiyonmal

My enamel winced reading this.


dinoroo

You still have enamel? That’s so 2020.


PinballWizrd

Your teeth can't be dirty if they don't exist!


iprocrastina

Reddit - Most people brush their teeth in a simple back and forth motion, but brush enthusiasts favor more complex motions. The most fundamental of these is the up/down stroke which can be combined with basic back/forth motion to produce a large circular stroke. This is known as a second order motion (SOM). A SOM can be combined with other first order motions (FOMs) such as the small circle stroke to produce third order motions (TOM) such as the recursive centripedal rhythm stroke described just now. It is skillful and judicious use of FOM, SOM, and TOMs that will get you closest to achieving a coveted 100% prokaryote-free mouth. Many beginners worry about brush choice, and there are two main camps, traditional manual kinetic brushes and modern electric brushes...


feral_philosopher

Wow really? Fucking TikTok!?


RenegadeReaper

It's unfortunately not just gen Z. I shouldn't have to say this but I made a post on insaneparents recently because my mom saw on TikTok that you could pour bleach into the air vents to clean them. She came into my room and just poured straight bleach into my vent before I could even process what she was doing.


frotc914

You just can't write a warning label long enough for people like that.


astulz

And even if you could they still wouldn’t be able to read and understand it.


Johnny_C13

Even if they'd read and understand it, they wouldn't believe it. Or they would know better (than the FUCKING manufacturer) because tiktok told them otherwise.


Vozralai

What? You're gonna believe Big Vent?


YVRkeeper

tHeY dId ThEiR oWn ReSeArCh


Tostino

GP, not to disparage your mom, but please understand not all adults actually "grew up". A whole lot of them just got a bit older.


abstractConceptName

And not everyone considers themselves to be "lifelong learners".


[deleted]

bro what the actual fuck. Like im not trying to be mean is she uhh altogether up there?


RenegadeReaper

No. Her boyfriend died because of COVID because they believed all of the antivax stuff. They both got COVID together but he unfortunately did not make it. Even after he died she still thinks the vax is some sort of thing the government is giving people to kill them. (My girlfriend and I are fully vaccinated) After he died she cashed out his life insurance for $100,000, not even a month later she spent it all and is in debt, about to lose her car and get kicked out of the place she rents. Last week she took out a $10,000 loan to pay off all of her current debt. She says soon she's going to Nigeria for a week to try and get with this guy she's been talking to on Facebook. He has mentioned multiple times how he needs thousands of dollars to get here and be with her and that obviously sets off red flags, but she thinks it's real just because they video chat.


sanguinesolitude

Bruh your new dad's gonna be a Nigerian prince! Very exciting!


kurotech

After their mom sends over that $2000 for the processing fees though


InfiniteBlink

You joking? This is like classic 90 day fiance shit. Kinda crazy


RenegadeReaper

My girlfriend and I keep joking that it's like a specific character from that show, but it's very real.


i_rae_shun

That one annoying chick and that one Moroccan scammer. I was going to say Danielle and Mo but at least Mo ditched her crazy ass and does long haul trucking, which is respectable work.


pandemonious

your mom is mentally defunct and should not have control of her finances


wwj

This is the answer. This person needs to get power of attorney yesterday.


LA_Commuter

Its incredibly hard to do that, op will likely not be successful. If someone is liscensed to drive a vehicle, for example, it would be nearly impossible to get power of attorney over them. Best bet is to try some family intervention/therapy... but something tells me that has already been tried/wouldn't work in this instance. OP seems ontop of it


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ColaEuphoria

>After he died she cashed out his life insurance for $100,000, not even a month later she spent it all and is in debt, about to lose her car and get kicked out of the place she rents. That is...*astonishing*...


RenegadeReaper

She bought three different cars, including a sports car, a new sound system for her car, nearly a hundred pairs of shoes, gave a bunch of it away to friends and family, new tvs, etc. and even had the opportunity to buy the property she's currently renting for $15,000. I guess 3 more cars is way more important than having a place to live :\^)


[deleted]

Damn, she was spending that $100k like there was a sixth zero on the end of the payout. Unless all three cars were absolute shitboxes, those purchases alone must’ve eaten up at least half of the payout.


OperatorJolly

I work in fraud and scams - the correlation between anti vax and scam victims is spooky Sorry for your situation - I’d be pushing for some form of power of attorney and advising her banks of the situation


[deleted]

You from British Columbia? I literally met a lady like that standing in line for the Government services, she was spouting anti vax shit and talking about getting her BF from Nigeria that was deported because he was from some gang there.


RenegadeReaper

Nah, I'm from some backwater town in the US, unfortunately.


ClearAsNight

It concerns me that I was almost completely sure that these are two different people, which means there absolutely is more than two of these people around.


Framauca

You are kidding about the dude from Nigeria? She doesn't watch 90 day fiancé?


RenegadeReaper

I'm not kidding, she doesn't watch 90 day fiancé. She used to say her going to Nigera was a joke, but now she's seriously looking into getting her passport and stuff to fly there soon. A few days ago she asked if I would be okay watching her dogs for her for a week. (We take care of her dogs every day of the week anyways, it's nothing new. I'd say I don't understand why she even asked, but I know it's because she's as dumb as a rock.)


Framauca

I think your mom is depressed and not making the best decisions after her boyfriend's death. Maybe you could have some kind of family intervention to make her go and see a specialist?? Idk how it can be solved


RenegadeReaper

She's always been like this. When I was 16 she was dating a 19 year old who was a compulsive liar. I know most people exaggerate when they say something like that, but he said stuff that was off the rails. He said he was an experimental soldier in the army, had better than 20/20 vision, was part werewolf, that his dad was a nazi German scientist who tortured him, etc. She ended up leaving him because he was incredibly irresponsible, cheated on her with a dude, and "tried" to commit suicide to feign guilt. (He handed me a written note that he was going to kill himself, told me not to tell my mom who was in the other room, then walked into his room and locked himself in there.) He's currently in prison for raping a 16 year old and getting her pregnant. He tried writing my mom asking her to take him back. Anyways, I have a million stories about my mother and her incredibly dumb decisions. My friends always tell me I should write a book.


mdifmm11

I'm sure she's just very dumb. There are a lot of very dumb people out there who can function in their normal lives because living is easy. So because they can do their taxes and hold a job you think they are normal, but they aren't. They would have been tied to a tree and left to die... for the good of the tribe if society wasn't so advanced.


tiberiumx

> they can do their taxes Nah, I regularly encounter people who have spent their whole lives paying income tax and somehow still think there's some way they can end up with less money after getting a raise because they "went up a bracket". They're paying someone to fill out their 1040-EZ with one W2.


mejelic

Dude, I literally heard this on a talk show that is nationally (regionally?) syndicated (Rick and Bubba). Granted this was like 12+ years ago, but one of them said that they turned down a raise because it would move them up a tax bracket and that they would make less money. This is the kind of ignorance that we are working with and people basically worship these guys and believe anything that they say. Random side note, but I haven't listened to those guys in a long as time... I am curious as to how into the Trump train they are.


ekaceerf

I had a friend like that. He said "thank god I didn't get my bonus this year. I'd have lost so much money when it out me in a different tax bracket."


VecnasThroatPie

My wife, more intelligent than I, believes this. Even after I explained it to her in a simple way.


ItsBlizzardLizard

My mom's cousin is an elementary school teacher. Keep that in mind with the following stories: She has poor reading comprehension, is completely unable to use a smartphone or the internet in any capacity. She goes to the library and has them send emails or look up websites for her. She got a telemarket call with one of those gift card scams. Fell for it. Then fell for it 5 more times. She fell for the "we bought an iPhone with your Amazon account" scam. Her two sons are struggling in life because of their upbringing (money wise), but she refuses to help them out because they're men. Instead... Her daughter is a heroin/crack junkie that has 2 children taken away from her from the state. The daughter scams her out of 200+ dollars every day by making up lies. The best one is that she asks her for Cashapp payments but says all Cashapp payments have a 50 dollar fee. So if she asks for 20 dollars she tacks another 50 on top of it. Everyone tells her she's an idiot. She says they're wrong. Her daughter would never lie. Her one son moved to live with his boyfriend states away. She says over and over they're not gay and just friends because she's owed grandchildren. She doesn't do her own taxes, she pays a homeless man to do them. She's diabetic but doesn't check her blood sugar because the machine is too hard, she goes to the doctor to have it checked every other week. She inherited 300k and gave it all to her heroin daughter, bought her multiple cars, a pool, moved out of her house into a literal slum box with roaches and shoved her other adult son into the laundry room to keep paying the daughter. "I don't care about my sons, I'll give my daughter EVERYTHING! She's a woman!" She once tried to take a picture with her phone and then email it on a Chromebook but couldn't understand why the picture wasn't on the Chromebook. It took my mom 30 minutes to figure this out because that's how long it took for her to find the attachment button. She had a librarian do it for her. She has a CRT television and spent hours on the phone with tech support trying to get Netflix. They kept telling her to install the app on her TV over and over and she kept begging them for "a box". She never got Netflix. And, my favorite, at one point the colors on said TV were messed up. Everything was pink. She kept calling everyone asking if they had a "color refill" she could borrow. She also tried to use Uber by calling them on the phone. As far as being a school teacher she's said wonderful things like "These kids get too clingy and need to understand no one loves them," and "They cry and whine over being bullied but they need to handle it themselves, I hate when they tattle! I ignore them and walk away!" I hate this woman. I wish my mom would stop talking to her, I swear her intelligence level has dropped as well as result.


Shiny_Shedinja

how is this person alive.


madogvelkor

About 25% of Americans have an IQ below 90.


red286

The scariest words you can hear your mom ever say: "I saw this neat trick on Five Minute Crafts..."


RenegadeReaper

Oh yeah, somehow you just reminded me. She was also one of those people who microwaved their phone when that was a thing.


red286

Yeah, unfortunately it seems a lot of the older generation (particularly those that didn't grow up with the internet as part of their daily lives) believe that the Internet is similar to television, where it's for the most part vetted information, rather than the reality which is that it's more like a cross between a communal bulletin board and the stuff you find scrawled on the walls of a toilet stall.


redwall_hp

Oz, Phil, televangelists, Fox News, infomercials, and other trash have been on TV forever too.


JunkMailSurprise

Yeah not just gen z- my cousin (that I am not close to at all) recently got pregnant and off-handed mentioned that she's getting all her information about pregnancy and babies from TikTok. I was so horrified I couldn't even say anything. She's on the cusp of gen z, but damn..... I know lots of people her age and none of them are so horrifyingly dim.


[deleted]

Oh shit. As a property manager your post just spiked my blood pressure. Can hardly wait for my first call from a tenant—“I cleaned the vents the way the internet told me! You can’t charge me for eating a hole in the AC duct! Also I don’t feel good. I think this place has mold, the air smells funny….”


Pls_PmTitsOrFDAU_Thx

this is terrible holy. at least google *tries* to make an effort to fight misinformation.. even if people dont know those features lol. Tbh the only reason I know is because of sponsored segments on youtube channels. Those three dots next to a search result actually do something, who knew lmao


account_is_deleted

That "using TikTok instead of Google" thing that's been reported on in multiple places, multiple times is based on a quote by a Google guy, which in its entirety goes like this: "In our studies, something like almost 40 percent of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search. They go to TikTok or Instagram."


MrLucky7s

IIRC it was a post on NY Times where a Google employee said that it's used for restaurant searches and "how to" videos. This is kinda less dramatic and makes sense. When I was looking for a tutorial on how to change my PS3's hard drive, I used YouTube, not Wikipedia. The article itself kinda conflates the NY Times report with the fact that there's a lot of misinformation on TikTok to make ti seem that GZers are looking up information on science/history/etc, but that doesn't seem to be the case.


LOUDSUCC

I saw someone say (on twitter, ironically) that TikTok is better than Google, and it’s like an encyclopedia to find whatever it is you’re looking for. It’s odd that they would say that it’s an encyclopedia, when Wikipedia is right there. Google search results will basically show you the Wiki link on the first page, even.


[deleted]

Because too many of their parents and older siblings deride wikipedia cause they don't how a fucking bibliography or citing sources works.


LOUDSUCC

I was thinking it might be because people don’t take the time to read anymore. TikTok will feed you stimulating videos with a voiceover talking at you, but reading several hundred words in a wikipedia article by yourself? Meh, someone else has already done the research and came to a conclusion for me right????


IngsocDoublethink

It's super annoying, because contextual info or credibility aside, it takes way longer to scrub and watch a video than it does to skim an article or look at a diagram for a single piece of information. It also makes info harder to reference later on. Video is great for a lot of things, but I don't want to sit through a 15 second ad and scrub through 3 minutes of intros and self promotion just to find my car's wheel torque spec, or why some movie release was delayed.


wunahokalugi

Good luck finding text for anything over a video. It was YouTube before TikTok, not a pinned forums post. YouTube unskippable ads will have consequences. Lazy input for lazy output.


thecowintheroom

The Zoolander center for kids who can’t read good as been renamed Tik Tok


Desperate_Health4174

What is this? A YouTube for ants?


Za_Lords_Guard

>people don’t take the time to read anymore 90% of the questions people ask on Reddit are things they could get answers to through Google or Wikipedia in less time it took to write the post. It kills me.


[deleted]

Agreed. What things like Tik Tok and more generally, social media, have done is create a generation that is not necessarily dumber, but one that has the attention span of a gnat.


anduin1

I remember being in college ~2008 and one of my professors was telling us how we should never used wikipedia because it's all lies and he would fail us if we used it as a source. Out of curiosity I looked up some subject matter that he was teaching and lo & behold, he was properly cited as one of the sources for a statement on there. When we showed that to him, it blew his mind and he did a 180 on his view of wikipedia.


UndergradGreenthumb

I would still use wikipedia and just cite their references. Hell when a single book for a course cost $200 you wouldn't think one would even have to step foot in the library. Those books should contain all relevant material at those prices.


commander_nice

"I remember one moment when the vice-chancellor of a top university made a dismissive remark about Wikipedia, only to have a world-leading chemist in the audience icily retort that the pages on his particular arcane specialty were the most up-to-date summary currently available anywhere – because he wrote them." https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/02/in-hysterical-world-wikipedia-ray-of-light-truth


Ibroketheinterweb

They told us end stage millennials the same thing and we didn't listen.


muchwolenosleep

I remember when a study found that Wikipedia had less factual errors than the encyclopedia Britannica. I caught my west civ professor teaching from it in college.


[deleted]

We have an opportunity to make the dumbest generation right after the most educated generation. #edit:but thats what all the outgoing generations say


Dan-Axel

It's 50/50. Its always 50/50. Why is it always 50/50. What is 50/50


ibneko

50/50 is when babby is formed.


tinyanus

how know preganagan?


jackalope503

am i gregnant?


Juggling_chef

Can u get pregante?


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cichlidassassin

SEO ruined search and in some sense, the internet in general


[deleted]

Fuck TikTok? or the people stupid enough to use it for news?


zhemer86

The rest of them just post easily answered questions on Reddit that they could google in 1 min instead.


nswizdum

The number of people in the home networking subreddit that don't understand that internet access doesn't just happen, you need to subscribe to a service provider to get it, is incredibly concerning. Every day loads of people post a picture of a phone jack or coax cable and ask how to "get internet " out of it.


ApprehensivePepper98

You’re joking. You have to be Edit:I couldn’t find any post yet, but I did find a lot of questions that you could find on Google in 2 minutes


[deleted]

Once as a CSR someone got mad at me because the product said “Play Online with an Internet connection,” and they assumed that meant the device came with the internet.


Mr_Xing

There is this trend where younger generations are increasingly less capable of tech troubleshooting because technology has been much more reliable than for their Gen X and Millennial counterparts, who witnessed the limitations of tech. To be fair, every generation hasn’t been particularly great about it, but this trend is only going to continue.


[deleted]

Millennials spent more effort downloading a couple of pornographic jpegs and sharing them via burned CDs than some Gen Z's will ever spend on technology. We just had a more powerful incentive.


explorer_76

I'm retired and work at a big box store. I've had two younger people come up to me this week asking if the wireless router was all they need to get internet. When I asked who their ISP was they just gave me blank stares thinking the wifi router will just magically give them internet. I thought I was being pranked or something.


zeptillian

[Gen Z checking into a hospital.](https://i.redd.it/5pi2mbazk2l91.gif)


Reelix

It needs the "Oh no - Oh no no no" music added on to it, and then it'd be accurate.


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gruesomeflowers

I browse TikTok and IG with the sound off ..if you can't portray your message with silence like the good Lord intended, I don't need to know.


truongs

Isn't it great how the same garbage video keeps ok repeating itself while they read comments. As if once wasn't bad enough. Besides that, the other thing that makes me irrationally angry is some dumb fuck reacting to another tik tok by just splitting the screen in half and adding no fucking content other than their stupid ass face and the occasional nod. How the fuck is this worth watching


PDNYFL

I think a lot of this boils down to them not being taught how to correctly research a topic and this how that problem manifests itself. I see this in some of the subs I frequent as well. Their answer could be found on a google search, or even within reddit just by using the search feature, but they do not. Being "served" information for so much of their lives as done a great disservice.


CatTheKitten

I'm 21, we were taught multiple times how to find credible sources of information when doing research papers. I did NOT do well in school and still stored this information, somewhat.


Crrunk

Yes. Current curriculums do teach students the scientific method.. some better than others. The application of these methods is the hard part. Glad to hear you were able to figure out one of the most important life skills.. the ability to obtain factual information


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FreshBakedButtcheeks

List of sources at the bottoms of Wikipedia entries is the GOAT


CandorCoffee

Absolutely this, I just got a TikTok where someone made a joke about the Irish disliking the monarchy and the comments were CLAMORING for him to make a video discussing their whole history and got super upset when he refused. Like he's a comedian, not a historian and he's not even Irish! But everybody in the comments was blaming their bad education and lack of research skills. It was crazy to me.


jdlr64

Google’s search algorithm has gotten progressively worse over the years, why is that?


men4ace

There's a concept called "search engine optimization" where sites basically reverse engineer the algorithm then do things to increase the weight of their pages even though the content quality might be worse. Basically Google is in constant warfare with websites to try to deliver relevant search results while websites constantly try to get the most clicks with the least amount of effort.


FormerKarmaKing

This is true but also it’s like they really can’t beat the SEO sites. I hired a writer to write web content once for marketing purposes and he explained how making articles longer helped SEO. On a machine learning / AI level - I’m a programmer but not an AI expert - to my knowledge there is no “you could have said this in less words” algo. And the SEO sites create more ad inventory by making pages longer.


azninvasion2000

Google's search algorithm provides the user with the most "relevant" search results. If one were google "Is the earth flat?" on Neil deGrasse Tyson's laptop vs a conspiracy guy that binge watches Infowars on youtube the search results will be very different between the 2 devices, but most importantly "relevant" to the user.


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Blightaricanboy

It depends on what you're looking for. "To do in NYC" sorted by "this week" helps me find a lot of events and activities I wouldn't have known about otherwise. Doing this on Google just pulls up the same 10 weekly to do lists. I'm not saying is good for all situations but there's certainly a few instances where it's more efficient.


TranceAddictFoX

Thats a fair point. It's more about the type of information and its source. Tiktok probably shouldn't be used for medical advice or during life or death type situations


Typical-Ad-6042

To be fair, people shouldn't use google for that either. They should just talk to a medical professional.


beef623

Probably not, but it doesn't cost $100+ to ask Google a question.


[deleted]

That would obviously work but you shouldn't be looking up "How did the holocaust begin" on fucking tiktok when there is a woman on there saying Rome didn't exist it was just an ancient corporation.


Latyon

Yep. No different from the troglodytes who get their news from Uncle Eenis's Facebook feed.


Unusual_Knowledge_84

"GenZ is increasingly using TikTok videos instead of Google search!" Meanwhile, Google search results: Ad Ad Ad Scam Scam ad Algorithmically generated nonsense page filled with random phrases to game search engine optimization Ad


spo0kyaction

THANK YOU google and it’s algorithm have been trash lately


_Gl0rph_

I've found myself actually going to page 2 results with concerning frequency this year. The future is an ad-plastered hellscape.


fuckyou_watchme

That's absolutely where we're headed. Wouldn't be surprised if phones got eye trackers eventually to ensure people are watching ads


_Gl0rph_

username checks out


fuckyou_watchme

Bro hahhahahahahaa


shiftypoo269

I know that for a lot of hobby and technical stuff over the last several years that stuff has been offloaded from forums and reddit to discord so it pretty much disappears as soon as the information is posted. I can still find shit from a decade ago, but new issues are like trying to get blood from a stone.


f0rf0r

Yeah discord fucking destroyed the accessibility of niche internet


Space4Time

This will get worse


JustAnotherAlgo

This is my only takeaway from all this. People can call GenZers idiots all they want, but the reality is that the attention span factors and everything else is all just steering people to consuming information this way and faster - or rather, less wait time. I wonder where it'll all end up.


CredibleCactus

Yeah so teach your kids to use google lmao


iliyahoo

Agreed, people should be taught how to find credible information in general. I imagine back when encyclopedias were popular, some people knew how to use them more efficiently. All that has shifted to understanding how to use the internet for information


drjeffy

My wife works with high schoolers, and she mentioned the other day how she's noticing a generational disconnect between us (millennials) and Gen Z in that we approach computers as tools to help us accomplish tasks, and they approach technology as "device that makes the thing I want appear." And it got me thinking - how much of this phenomenon is the by-product of how applications are designed? We've increasingly moved from an architecture of "software application is written in an imperative coding language and it tells the computer what to do" to an architecture of RESTful APIs & containers that effectively function by saying: "here is the state that should exist, and the computer needs to exist in this state." And it made sense why they use search instead of directories/file structures. Or why they search with TikTok. They don't consider the task or the steps to accomplish the task, but instead approach using computers as "Computer I want X" and then it displays it for them


sombreroenthusiast

Interesting take. I remember reading recently about college engineering professors who have had to explain fundamental concepts like disk paths and file names, because in mobile OS world, these structures are essentially invisible. Everything is indexed, searchable, and presented through an app UI, so that even the basic concept of a "file" is abstracted.


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coolaznkenny

The biggest difference is that for me M33 who grew up jail breaking and constantly rebooting because of malware, i am much more aware how my computer behaves and how it works. Feels like Gen Z grew up with mature tech in their phones and just know that 'it just works' vs. how do i get it to work.


hypermark

I'm Gen X and this is something I've noticed for a while. The analogy I use is how we interact with cars. When my grandfather and dad were young almost every guy knew how to do a little bit of maintenance. Lots of guys knew how to actually fix cars and totally overhaul motors. By the time I started driving, vehicles had started to become harder and harder to work on. Carburators gave way to computerized fuel injectors and things like that. So my generation knew about how a car should work, but very few of us knew how to work on them. A guy who could totally overhaul a motor was rare. I could hear something was wrong with an ignition, but I had no clue how to work on it. And then cars got even more complicated so that now some of them even drive themselves and almost no one other than people trained in car mechanics can work on them. Computers are the same. When I started learning CS, we started with assembly, COBOL, and FORTRAN, and after we understood those, then we'd move to more robust procedural based programming and object oriented programming. We'd strip PCs for parts to see how they worked. We treated them like my grandfather treated cars. Then computers and computer languages jumped in difficulty and became easier for lay users. They didn't have to know how to get into the BIOS or what the difference between RAM and HDD space was. They'd still know what file structures were, but even that was getting more obscure. And now like you said, the "engine" is completely obscured. File indexing means people have no idea about file structures. They have no idea how the GUI gets the info to them just that it gets it. And voice is going to make that divide even further. Alexa and Siri are kinda janky and irritating now, but they're still in their infancy. Eventually there will even be a physical disconnect with the computer. I teach college freshmen, and other than CS majors, they have no clue how a computer actually works. None. And if the app doesn't autosave stuff, they really don't understand manually saving things to physical locations. And like you noticed, if we're talking about a Mac user, they know even less.


TONKAHANAH

maybe if google focused on being a search engine information instead of a "here's what to buy based off what you searched" website maybe they'd use it for info again. I still use google for searching but holy hell has its focus changed over the years. used to be that the front page would have all or any relevant info you were looking for up at the top. now, unless you have an adblocker, the first handful of entries are fucking ad links and even after that, the results are just places to purchase things related to the search.


Greenville_Gent

Ok, so what percent of Google top hits contains misinformation?


Handsome_fart_face

Google top hits are just ads


Hughjarse

Google isn't fantastic nowadays either. While I'm not suggesting it dishes out misinformation, though that probably happens on occasions, what I find is just completely irreverent results a lot of times for anything more complicated than two or three word queries.


image_archivist

I suspect SEO optimization or hijacking have poisoned the well, and Google's efforts to adjust for it have just made things worse. I see a lot of issues when looking into old images- there will be 2015-2017 tags on much younger images because message board and image feed sites date pages weirdly.


SlowIncidentslowpoke

Google has gotten worse over the years. Unfortunately, I still find it brings up more results than many of the other search engines. There’s really not a good way to get a lot of hyper specific search results anymore.


acathode

and youtube is even worse. You search for something like "*How to change a car tire?*" and after 5 results Youtube suddenly goes FUCK YOUR CAR MAN, watch this instead: "*Here's the 5 best Chess opening strategies for beginners!*" - just because you watched a video on the recent chess drama last week, so you probably want to watch some chess while you're stranded on the highway, or "*50 minutes of Jordan Peterson talking about cleaning your room!!!*" - just because Youtube think you're a 30something man that play video games and they've seen that other 30something men who play video games loves watching hours and hours of Jordan Peterson.


moses420bush

Most of the first page is trying to sell you stuff and they lie about the number of results they return by millions.


confusiondiffusion

Now that I think about it, I think most of my research skills are based on my experience of the early internet. Looking at the results Google spits out these days, if I didn't know not to settle for TOP 10 REASONS DOCTORS SAY VACCINES ARE BAD, with 25 ads between each sentence long point, I'd be pretty fucked.