#If anyone tries to tell me 'they don't teach cursive in schools anymore' as an excuse i swear to god

[squirrelfromspace]

Im Gen Z and i know how to use a rotary phone, can read cursive because i learned it in school and know how to use a phone book.

You wanna know why? Because my baby boomer parents showed me how to do those things, even if i probably wouldn't have to know them to live. I know it's not the norm to know those things because our technology is more advanced than it was in the childhood of other generations, so we don't really have a reason know how to use rotary phone or a phone book. I mean most people don't have those things anymore, they use their phones or the internet which is just an advanced form of a phone book or a rotary phone or many more things.

That's the reason the internet or phones, for example, were invented. Because HUMANS ARE LAZY and we constently search for new ways to make our everyday lifes easier.

For example: if i would tell one of my friends that i could use a rotary phone, they would just say: "neat skill, you won't ever need it in your life but neat skill." Or they would just look at me questionaly and go: " Cool? We do too?"

But if i would, for examply, tell my baby boomer aunt i had that skill, she would probably act confused and shooked why i would know that.

Cursive writing is something we're teached when we're 7 years old, ar least where i live, but most people don't use it because they don't like it or think it takes to long. Many even combine cursive and non-cursive writing, so it'll look like they want it. The only person i know who really writes cursive is one of my friends and i admit it looks neat and fancy, but i could never write like like that because it's not my style! Also i have no real memory of any teacher or adult i know who actually writes cursive, so honestly if someone tries to make fun of me for not qriting cursive, i mostly ignore it, because neither do you?!

And phone books, well honestly who uses phone books anymore. You can find everything in the internet and if you don't know how they work it's fine.

All in all what i wanted to say was, if you want to make fun of a generation for not knowing something, first check your facts because many people know how to do those things you just never see them do it because nobody needs to. Secondly: if someone doesn't know how to that stuff it is not bad because we as a human species envolve constantly, so the "old ways" to do things get forgoten because we have found better ways. Thirdly: if kids don't know how to those things you don't make fun of them because you never showed them and therfore they don't know how that works, you teach them nicely. I mean if you make fun of a millenial or a gen z kid for not knowing something they were never showed in their live it is kind of like laughing at a toddler for not knowing how to walk

(+ fourth: don't generalize an entire generation and call them dumb just because you saw one kid who didn't understand a rotary phone. And also not all baby boomer are bad or mean and make fun of everyone, it's just the obnoxiously loud ones who shout their opinos everywhere that get hearda and often those are things like "millenials are bad, gen z are just little kids who son't know anything about the world" (But i don't mean with that that every loud person or baby boomer is mean)

( i am sorry if there are gramatical errors in my text, english is not my first language and i am really bad at writing texts, i'm more of math person)

Also i don't want to offend anyone so if anything i said seems mean to you or something, i am sorry i did not mean it that way

I recently saw a meme on Facebook that said something along the lines of “how to make a millennial panic: lock them in a room with only a phone book and a rotary phone and write the instructions in cursive!” It had this smug “aha, gotcha” vibe oozing out of it, and it…just sort of made me laugh. Like, really? Really? But it also made me think…

Beyond the fact that I know how to use both a phone book and a rotary phone and can read cursive (as long as it’s not too horrifically messy), I think it was the attitude of “Oh no, we’ve got you because you couldn’t possibly figure out how to use something that’s new to you” that really made me snort. But I think that’s the key to this and similar memes that I’ve seen.

They don’t think we could figure out how to use something new to us, because they can’t do it. 

Like, if you presented a millennial with a rotary phone or a phone book and they had never, ever used one or seen one used before, I can guarantee pretty much any millennial could figure out how to use it. Because that’s what we do: we adapt. We’ve been through so many variations of technology and seen so many new forms of technology emerge that we’ve had to learn to adapt swiftly and fluidly. It’s second nature to us.

Put a boomer in a room with a smartphone, laptop, and tablet however, and well…different story.

I’m not sure if they literally don’t understand that presenting a millennial with something they haven’t encountered before would not be an obstacle and certainly not a panic-inducing one, or if they just say things like that to make themselves feel better that they couldn’t do the equivalent, or if it’s a combination of the above.