Dateline: from the '90s to present day. I have a gift. Many, but let's focus. I can tell within 20 seconds of meeting anyone new if they're on twitter (I'll never call it echs). Unfailingly accurate. How? I know ppl & I know tech. I embraced the rise of the internet. Endlessly fascinating to a person with ADD & insatiable curiosity. The perfect elixir. Still is to this day. My bestie Petey taught me to assemble desktop computers back in the mid 90s. In 1996 I coded, hosted & launched a website to sell my local musician buddy's CDs (reviewed in Rolling Stone!). I was figuring out how to embed & code & test credit card processing plug-ins, in 1996 for fook sake. Tools were simple. I recall using 'Coffee Cup' software for the HTML coding. Which actually worked well. I made weekly trips to the post office to mail out the CD orders.
I don't recall how I managed to a) buy the domain then b) host the domain, but I did it. I do recall the ISP was called 'Black-Hole Internet' & surely is long gone. The phrase 'trumpet winsock' still rings a bell. Anyhoots.
Again, this was the 1990s as outlined earlier. At the end of that decade I parlayed my interest & skills & ambition into a career pivot that set my career & shirley my life in a new direction.
So why this entry? Because all these years, we're talking 30, I am gobsmacked nearly daily at how ignorant nearly everyone I know is with technology.
Friends, family, colleagues...(nearly) everyone.
99% of every female I know own iPhone. Literally just one bird I know doesn't. Also my ex-wife from years back, she was weirdly tech savvy & prolly uses a real droid phone (partly why I dug her, she was proper smart). Apple products are made for the tech idjit. Ergo their popularity, no? I've owned a couple iPhones (work issued) back in 2008 & again in 2012. I despised them. Was issued an apple laptop in 2014 & nearly tossed it in the street with frustration at how shitty it is for a work machine. I understand why they exist and why they're so popular: they're for the tech ignorant.
Back to the story: how do people my age & younger navigate life knowing fuckall how their devices work? How websites work? The internet? Mobile phones? Even at a rudimentary HTML level.
I use Proton email. Nobody in my tribe has even heard of Proton, let alone realize why it's so incredible. I use Brave browser. Nobody in my tribe has even heard of Brave. I use a VPN, constantly. Nobody in my tribe can even spell VPN. Now & then I encounter an AOL email. Still in use. Not in an ironic fashion. I see yahoo emails all the time, so do you. Yahoo is the target of the largest hacks in human history, or were before data breaches were more common. Yahoo has appalling security. And yet a) their emails are everywhere & b) their users are wholly unaware of their massive data breaches. Hardly a secret. It was in all the papers. Oh and the ppl everywhere who have address like 'first name followed by zip code' or initials followed by '54' or some random number that gmail assigned and they accepted it. Why accept? Why so lazy? Or the ppl that have only a single personal email? Are you dense? Use at least one for newsletters & other spammy situations. They're free ya fuktards. Get another one. A Proton.
I'm on Bluesky. Nobody in my tribe has even heard of Bluesky (Two exceptions. I have a tech savvy buddy Cole; he's in his 30s, does dark web movie streaming behind monster VPNs, fucking awesome for me. Another buddy Mark, in his 20s, is a nationally known Blockchain expert & taught me about Bitcoin back in 2019, allowing me to retire over a decade early...(thanks Mark I owe ya dinner in the European city of your choice!).
I use a password manager. So should you. I have over 100 active online accounts. Every single one has a 12- or 16-digit random number/letter string. I have no idea what my passwords are, other than the master key which unlocks the 100+. Nobody in my tribe uses a password manager. I tell them to, but they don't even understand what they are let alone why they should use one.
Most people never cleanout their cookies, leaving a gold mine of digital history for all the websites they visit (& don't). Most ppl don't even know how to cleanout their cookies. Or where they're located. Or why they should. If you use Edge they're here. Brave they're here. Add these as bookmarks to your main toolbar so it's always handy. Set your browser to clean out all cookies upon close, in your settings.
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How are these people able to live like this?
More to the point: are they even living?