For example, mine is that I love watching Antiques Roadshow.
I absolutely hate AI.
Is this an old person trait? Consider me a curmudgeon then.
I would think so. Given how obsessed people have become with AI and how pretty much everyone and their mother has ingrained themselves with AI. It’s harder to find someone who doesn’t use it at all than those who do. I hate it and everything that comes with it.
Gen Z here. I think you’d be surprised to find that gen z generally hates ai slop. Specifically the slop, most people are ok with some AI use.
For llms It’s seen the same way I imagine search engines were (I was born after Google existed). People can just find an answer for their problem instead of searching for it in a book or asking someone. This can either be amazing for learning new things, or for cheating. My professors even tell me to USE ai to learn, just know how to actually use it to help learn rather than get the correct answer and be done with it.
I refuse to use TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. I only have Facebook because 90% of my friends and family are there and it’s the primary way I stay in touch with them, but I’d like to get rid of that too.
Regarding TikTok, I was serving in the US military as an IT sysadmin when it became popular. But we discovered that the app embedded itself deep in your phone’s hardware, granted itself full administrative access to your phone, then started trickling all your data to servers in China. And you couldn’t fully uninstall it once you’d installed it once. Your phone was completely compromised if you ever installed that app.
It became a huge security risk and we were told to never use it. It was a horrifyingly effective spy tool China could use to easily collect data on us. That’s why President Biden pushed to ban TikTok in the US.
But of course, TikTok became super popular among our civilian population and they refused to give it up, which led to a lot of pushback against the ban. It never held, and now people are still using it and sharing all their private information with China.
Meta does something similar with Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp, but we at least can keep tabs on what they’re doing with your private data, since they’re an American company. They mostly use your information to build advertising profiles on you, to better catch your attention with ads. But that information could easily be used against you if federal organizations wanted to. ICE could use it to identify non-white Americans and their daily habits and easily intercept them.
Still, if you don’t want your private information being potentially stolen by these companies, it’s best to dump these programs. I don’t install them on my phone or tablet and I keep Facebook’s website isolated on my computer, since it likes to read other open windows and use those sites to fine-tune advertising data for you.
Google has turned into one of these companies that collects data on everything you do, so I’m in the middle of de-Googling my life right now. But it’s really hard because they’re embedded everywhere.
We’re living in a dark time where the only way to prevent corporations and governments from collecting information on you is to stay offline. Which is nearly impossible nowadays. We don’t get privacy in this modern Information Age. Not while Capitalism is still a thing.
Yep, I am like this too.
How do you effectively promote spyware?
Make it addictive like a drug, make it a core element of common culture, and most importantly, make it have some kind of socializing network effect that generates a knee jerk disgust in normies when anyone dares to question its widespread and regular use.
It is extremely funny to me when someone asks me to install say discord or insta or whatsapp, and I say I don’t use them for security and privacy reasons…
Then I ask them to install signal, and they say ‘I’m not going to install a whole app just for you.’
Apparently entirely unaware of, oblivious that they literally just asked me to do that.
whooooosh
Then they get angry and begin to babble on about some kind of idiot nonsense about how either I don’t know how to do digital security or how its just impossible so why try, or both.
If I mention that I literally did handle PII in corporate databases and thus do actually understand a decent chunk of cybersecurity…
They tend to become emotional and defensive.
Try to explain anything in detail to them and they have a bunch of sophomoric / dunning krueger instant retorts and thought terminating cliches, because they don’t want to listen or possibly learn anything, they want to justify their digital drug addiction.
Oh well, works as an idiot filter for me.
Suffer no fools.
that’s gonna need to be sourced.
is tiktok really exploiting phones to root them, then covertly installing itself “deep in your hardware”?
When you install TikTok, it fabricates its own independent SoC within your phone. Sometimes you can tell because the case bulges slightly, but it depends on the model.
This isn’t strictly forbidden by Android and iOS APIs (yet), but there are limitations – this most notably affects the capacitors on the new SoC which degrade quickly and can make a faint clicking noise, hence the name “TikTok”.
The streak of white in my beard?
The fact that 75% of my media consumption is things I’ve already seen before?
I can maintain eye contact in a conversation and at no point do I want to fuck/fight the other person nor do I believe they want to fuck/fight me?
I can maintain friendships.with people who do not share all of my views on things, with a select view even having opposing views?
Comfort wins over style every time, with zero exceptions?
I’m turning 50 soon, and almost all of this hits close to home. Almost all. My media consumption is as it’s always been: new books all the time. But also no TV, and I know all about a given movie from reading a few reviews, not actually watching it.
I’ve started noticing birds, and worse, I’ve started recognizing them.
I volunteered over the summer to track birds at a plot of local conservation land. Went out there at the crack of dawn with binoculars and everything. That’s when I knew I was really getting old.
If you haven’t tried Cornell’s “Merlin” app, I highly recommend it.
Bird watching is peaceful. I love it.
That app is awesome!
I love that app so much. My Amseln and Kohlmeisen are so sweet.
I prefer an analog kitchen. Spring based scales, wooden utensils, gas stove, glass storage.
I upgraded from a normal electric range to an induction range… OMG the difference!
That requires new cookware?
If you can stick a magnet to your current cookware, no. :)
Mine is all cast iron so I’m good, but aluminum or copper pans won’t work.
Well I have cast iron, stainless, and glass, so…
Just a matter of quality imo, outside maybe gas, but gas is hard to unlearn. That is to say analog kitchens are nicer and easier to cook with imo
Napping
That and still in bed early, for me. But I’m also up before sunrise, for reasons.
I always get printed boarding passes for domestic flights.
How and why?
Own a printer and because relying on technology is for suckers.
I don’t download every new random chat app that’s in vogue. I’ll give you my phone number and we can text or talk without having to go through more 3rd parties besides the telephone companies we get service from. I hated needing a bajillion different text apps to talk to everyone I knew in the 2000s, I sure as hell ain’t gonna start that shit up again 25 years down the road. Unless someone makes something like Trillian, fuck off with your WeChats and WhatsApp and Velcro or whatever the fuck.
I’d usually agree with this but SMS is pretty insecure, so I mainly use Signal instead for the end-to-end encryption in a responsible manner (no leaking war plans like a certain SecDef).
It’s cool. I don’t plan on discussing war plans. Just swapping dick and bootyhole pics.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/02/trump-immigration-ice-israeli-spyware
Do we really think ICE are the only ones? This also made me wonder if this is why DoD was using an unofficial version.
Most of my friends don’t even have my phone number, let alone a messaging service. We do postal mail or just go to each other’s houses. I mail out about twenty letters a week and get that much back, on nice stationery.
It’s good to feel loved.
Last time I ever wrote letters was while I was in the service. Kept every single letter.
Paper mail is so underrated.
I need to get a wax sealing kit.
And a fountain pen. Or six.
Dude or dudess, if true, f*cking awesome. And i envy you
There is absolutely nothing stopping you from doing the same thing.
Make a friend’s day, give them mail that’s not bills or ads or packages.
Postage stamps, in this economy?
Joke aside I think that’s pretty cool.
Postage is expensive, but I look forward to checking my mail. Mixed in with the ads is real human sentiment!
that’s awesome but my God my ADHD ass could not wait weeks for a response 😭
id leave them on read for like 4 months because I can’t find a stamp or something and forgot about it
It’s interesting because inside the US, this is a totally valid opinion to hold. Outside the US, many people end up having to pay per message, but can use data for free via WiFi, so it makes more sense that these apps are popular there.
I’m old
No, I do not have whatever stupidly named money transfer app you’re using this week, and no, I will not install it.
Literally everything i do. Im not even old but I could keep a conversation going with a 60 year old easily.
Old cars, reel to reels, vhs, win 95, atari 2600, pentium 3s, 50s music, records and vintage amplifiers and speakers…dos commands…the list goes on
That and I hate social media (i realize lemmy is social media) and my smartphone stays off on weekends. I prefer books.
Does joint pain count? I’ve had the back of a 90 year old since I was a teen and the rest of my joints weren’t far behind
Physical media.
I’ve never installed a banking app.
I have opinions on my lawn and your proximity to it.
