• Piatro@programming.dev
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    11 months ago

    Why are people weaving social media and the internet into a single thread? The internet is so vast, social media makes up a tiny sliver of it.

    Because to most people outside Lemmy the “internet” (by which they mean the world wide web but that’s me being a pedant) IS social media. There might as well not be anything outside the walled gardens of social media to them because they’ve been conditioned to only stay on one, maybe two platforms for years at this point. The old “what’s a browser?” question these days gets answered with “I don’t need a browser I have Facebook”. Completely nonsensical to us but to them it’s totally natural. Not being derogatory about them or anything but the 60k lemmy users and however many million on Reddit are not the majority. Facebook with it’s 3 billion (with a b) users, IS the majority of the internet.

    • jarfil@beehaw.org
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      11 months ago

      I recently (yay Black Friday Week!) got asked by someone in their 70s, who never worked with a computer, to help them pick a laptop:

      • Me: OK, so what do you want to do with it?
      • Them: I just want to login to the internet.
      • Me: […] You can do that on your phone.
      • Them: But how do I go onto the internet.
      • Me: Use the browser to go to the webpage you want, or search for it in Google.
      • Them: So I have Internet on the phone?
      • Me: Yes, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to watch YouTube, read your mail, or access Facebook.
      • Them: [unconvinced] And should I upgrade to a smartphone?
      • Me: [facepalm] You already have a smartphone.
      • Them: Oh, and I don’t want TikTok.
      • Me: You don’t have TikTok.
      • Them: [pointing at the YouTube icon] This isn’t TikTok?
      • Me: No, that is YouTube [damned be the Shorts]

      They still want a laptop, which is fine, even if they don’t know what for (“not for gaming, not for fancy rocket stuff like you do”) after having showed them some basic office stuff on mine. Still not sure whether to recommend them a Chromebook, a tablet, or what.