The subreddit R/Ask Men asked its users what one thing they still consider themselves boomers about, even if they are pretty adapted to most other things. Here is what ten users shared.
1. Age Verification
One Reddit user demonstrated his annoyance with constantly being asked to prove his age. Even when he’s used the same website log-in for over ten years. With all the advances in AI and technology, it would seem age verification would be a thing of the past.
2. Making an Account for Online Purchases
Every time you purchase an item online, even if you visit the website once, you are asked to make an account. Through these accounts, you automatically sign up for incessant marketing emails and promos cluttering your inbox. Wasn’t it better when you just paid cash for a purchase and left the store?
3. Not Everything Needs an App
If you go anywhere these days, it is almost guaranteed it has an app. The frozen yogurt store you want to take the kids to, the gym you like to work out in, the bird museum that recently opened. Everywhere has an app. Why?
4. Touch Screen Cars
The point of safe driving is to keep your eyes on the road. Not on the thousand screens inside of a new car. When you drive down any busy highway, you will probably run into a sign telling you to avoid texting and driving. What is the difference if you have to turn on your windshield wipers through a touch screen?
5. Kids With Electronic Toys
Take a grocery store, for example. If you walk around and look at all the kids in strollers or sitting in the front of carts, most carry some kind of technological device. Kids didn’t use to have access to these kinds of things, so they would entertain themselves with non-technological toys, or they would play with others to learn skills so uncommon today, like empathy, sharing, or caring.
6. Recording at Concerts
The fifteen-second video of your favorite song is okay. But waiting hours to get to a certain spot and then sticking your screen up in the air to watch a live performance through a screen while a real person sings for you, why didn’t you stay at home? Performers don’t want to look into a sea of stale screens. They want to see waves of emotion spanning from their fans. People moved to tears by their songs. If you wanted to watch on a screen, why did you buy tickets? Youtube exists.
7. Ebooks
Nothing beats the physical sensation of picking up a book and flipping the pages through your fingers. If the book is older, you inhale the sweet scent of aged pages. The fraying ends dance in your fingertips. Studies show that you retain more information when you read a physical book. Ebooks don’t give you the same sensation, and they just lean right back into the screen obsession we have today. Give your eyes a break.
8. Voice Recognition
It seems that everyone these days has some kind of voice-activated device. Maybe it’s Siri, maybe it’s Alexa. A lot of users on Reddit shared disdain that so many people rely on these creepy female android voices to do their household tasks. They know too much information as it is. Why are we giving them more information about our identities when we could just get up from the dining room table and turn off our own lights?
9. Automated Voice Machines
When you call customer service numbers, you almost always get an automated voice machine that can’t deliberate between yeses and nos. Which contradicts the whole point of calling customer service. Once you get through the grueling chat with the robot, you have to wait for extended amounts of time, sometimes hours, while another robot plays the worst waiting music you’ve ever heard. If you’re lucky, a real person answers the phone. If you’re not, sometimes the automated systems hang up on you or tell you to go to the website for more information.
10. QR Codes on Menus
Some restaurants don’t carry physical menus anymore. Instead, you scan a QR code on the table, which is not a good look for a first date if you spend the first twenty minutes of said date glued to your phone, watching other texts, emails, and calls roll in. Sometimes, restaurants ask you to order through the QR menu, devaluing waiters and encouraging you to step out of the dining experience. There is a time and place for digital menus, takeout and uber eats, never dining in.
This article was produced and syndicated by Wealth of Geeks.