memes

I had to text my mom a screenshot of the browser menu with the 'share' button circled so she could share a link to me of the website she called me to help her use

Recently had to help my mom figure out her new internet setup. She wanted to keep her old phone number but it was not carried over to the new provider. My guess is she said that she wanted to keep it while ordering the new one but never followed any of the steps they gave her to make that work. So we called them and it was crazy how she was unable to explain to them what her current situation is and what needs to be fixed. Claiming that "nothing works" even though the internet works just fine and the only problem is the phone number. Also not really looking at the emails they send her and following the steps to activate the online service center where she could manage this stuff on her own.

Later I showed her that the laptop she got from work is able to connect to her new router wirelessly and does not have to be connected via cable. She already uses another laptop and her phone over wifi. Apparently she just has no interest in understanding how any of the internet systems work.

Painful would be the several (!) times I had to check the computer over after they fell for a tech help scam and lost money. The stupid thing was that if someone tried to sell them something on the street or phone they were smart enough to refuse, but for some reason a popup on the computer makes things legit. Even after it was a scam the last time it happened. Why?

There are many more lesser events that aren't painful as much as just tedious, but I think having some patience and knowing what to tell them (vs. actually explaining it) helped. I tried to reduce the complexity and lock things down, but in the end it was just easier to come over and fix the problem every now and then.

When I was younger having to fill out timesheets in Excel for my mum.

Always forgetting their passwords to their accounts and having to reset their passwords for them.

Providing them access on my Netflix account and then when Netflix had the changes where you can't have it in two homes asking me why they can't get on, cancelled my subscription in the end.

Email attachments and when they go over the max attachment limit complaining about having to upload their files to the cloud.

Volunteering my help to others...

The list could go on and on.

I appreciate my parents but when it comes to helping with technology it sometimes drives me up the wall.

"C'mon you guys! There it is right in front of you the whole time. You're dereferencing a null pointer! Open your eyes!"

My Dad will ask me to help him with a tech issue then, because he spent 20-odd years doing spreadsheets and databases, he will decide that he knows more about the thing he's just asked me for help with so I don't help him anymore.

Most notably, when he was having issues with his video editing and I was doing a couple things with his export settings (we had a few classes about video editing in college- photography major) and half way through he decided I was wrong and the way he was doing it was best. The videos are now huge and unwieldy when they're only going up on YouTube. 🙃

My father in law (age 78) just got a new phone. His last phone cost $100 new, was only a year old, and took actual seconds to respond to most things. It finally got stuck boot looping to recovery mode so I lent him my old OnePlus 7T to use because we were gonna get him a new one for his birthday, but he just went ahead and bought a new (used) Samsung for $200.

The Samsung is actually a pretty decent phone, but he refuses to learn how to use it. He badly wanted to use his old phone, but it won't work anymore. He made me put the SIM card in his old phone. I told him he's free to use that old thing, but I won't be helping him with it anymore.

He is finally learning how to use his new phone a month after getting it. The man refuses to shell out for a half decent phone, despite having the money to. He'd rather spend $150 every 18 months buying a new crap phone than spend $400 on one that could easily last 5 years.

He doesn't even need a smart phone. He doesn't understand what a launcher is. So he downloads whatever crapware is advertised to him, then gets really confused why his home screen is all fucky. I've told him he should really consider getting a flip phone and using a laptop for anything else. He doesn't want to. He wants a smart phone.

I can't save this man. My parents are in their mid 50s and have finally caught up. 20 years ago, I was telling them they do not need the crapware DVD that came with the digital camera to import their pictures. All you need to do is put the SD card in the computer and copy the DCIM folder to the Pictures folder on the computer, then delete everything in the SD card's DCIM folder to free up space.

Since I don't use Windows anymore, I don't answer Windows questions anymore lol If anyone calls with a Windows question these days, I just nope outta that.

Trying to explain to my Mom the difference between turning off her phone and locking it.

She also called me recently saying she played something on Spotify but wasn’t able to stop it.

Installing TeamViewer Quicksupport on her phone has been the best thing I ever done.

My grandfather had directories full of young teens, even his desktop wallpaper. They were definitely over 18 but still... I never said a word, just acted normally.

my dad once asked me to copy files from his desktop to his disk, and then double and triple asked me if he can now delete the files on his desktop safely

you'd think he'd have had copying files figured out after a decade of owning a laptop, but alas

I've got a stubborn father. Years ago, back when our old family computer was working and was something we actually used, all I wanted to do was remove a simple toolbar from the single web browser we all used that might have been caused by a virus (probably caused by me being dumb) and uninstall something that caused it (also probably caused by my idiocy). This was around 2019.

The problem was my parents didn't want me on it all night so they had something like an admin password, but I figured it out long before this because they wrote it down in a notebook. The other problem is they didn't know I knew the password, so I didn't wanna let them know I knew it. Also, with the computer being in the living room, I couldn't just fix this at any point because my parents (at least one of them) were usually in the living room at any given time besides at night.

In the end, it pretty much devolved into me telling my father that I'm just trying to remove something that could actively harm our PC, but he refused to let me do it. Don't know if it was because he didn't wanna type the password or what, but it was a short shit show... until he finally relented and for a measly few seconds he had to enter a password instead of spending minutes fighting me on this.

I set up my parents with Ubuntu. One afternoon, they let my sister's ever-so-helpful boyfriend try to "upgrade" it to a short-term unstable version. He broke it and left the thing in shambles.

Now they have Apple computers and I don't get involved. They still use the same password for everything and just go to the Genius Bar when it gets slow.

Having to explain to my grandma over the phone how to work the tv remote.