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Olds And The Stupid Shit They Do On the Internet


MaybeACoordinator

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My dad is just kind of frustratingly annoying -- he seems to lack all intuition and need to be walked through Facebook and stuff, and as soon as you tell him anything, it goes right out the other ear.

It was my grandfather who took the cake. The last decade or so before he died, he was way into two things: genealogy, and porn. And one time he was trying to link some family info on to some old lady's family tree message board and the inevitable occurred: he posted a porn link instead. I think he got the banhammer...And my grandmother found out about it but just sort of gritted her teeth and ignored it -- she came from a generation where that was just what men did.

He acted repentant in front of her but secretly thought it was funny.  The old ladies on the family site did not.  At any rate, I am proud of him for not going to the "I was hacked" card most olds try to play. 

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My mom has done stupid shit as well; I inadvertently left myself logged into FB on her computer & she went through an entire day posting / commenting /reacting as though it was me.  I don't recall exactly why I didn't have my phone to get these alerts, but she knowingly went about this task with my profile.

 

On another occasion, it was her phone & texting.  She got a text from some phishing people who didn't present themselves as the IRS, but it was a similar grift.  She thought she was being clever because she spotted that it was poor spelling & the syntax was off - but then also  responded with "I don't know how  you got my phone #, but I am not who you are trying to reach.  I am retired, lived in ________ for _____ years & I worked as ________ for ___________ in that town and ___________and I __________ ..."

On & on with personal details & shit that only helps some fuckhead to further create a profile about her, guess passwords, whatever.

 

Maddening. 

 

I often wonder what  shit we will be falling for when it's our time to be 75, 80+ years old.

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That's fantastic.  My mom is of the variety that she answers the phone when "Microsoft Tech Support" calls her cell phone.  Even though she has a Mac.  Then she gives them remote access to her computer (Lord only knows what they installed on her machine).  Then she proceeds to use her email, online banking, and every other sensitive online thing she can use.  Then she doesn't tell me for 3-4 more days.

 

It's amazing that nothing was stolen from her (yet).  I got her to change all of her passwords (using her iPad) and take the computer in to get a factory reset.  But holy shit, when does the fucking light go on?

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6 minutes ago, Chewbacca said:

That's fantastic.  My mom is of the variety that she answers the phone when "Microsoft Tech Support" calls her cell phone.  Even though she has a Mac.  Then she gives them remote access to her computer (Lord only knows what they installed on her machine).  Then she proceeds to use her email, online banking, and every other sensitive online thing she can use.  Then she doesn't tell me for 3-4 more days.

 

It's amazing that nothing was stolen from her (yet).  I got her to change all of her passwords (using her iPad) and take the computer in to get a factory reset.  But holy shit, when does the fucking light go on?

Fucking this.  Fortunately, it only happened once.  Unfortunately it cost her $1200.

"But why can't I get that money back, he didn't fix the computer?"

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53 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

My dad is just kind of frustratingly annoying -- he seems to lack all intuition and need to be walked through Facebook and stuff, and as soon as you tell him anything, it goes right out the other ear.

It was my grandfather who took the cake. The last decade or so before he died, he was way into two things: genealogy, and porn. And one time he was trying to link some family info on to some old lady's family tree message board and the inevitable occurred: he posted a porn link instead. I think he got the banhammer...And my grandmother found out about it but just sort of gritted her teeth and ignored it -- she came from a generation where that was just what men did.

He acted repentant in front of her but secretly thought it was funny.  The old ladies on the family site did not.  At any rate, I am proud of him for not going to the "I was hacked" card most olds try to play. 

You mean every generation?

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1 minute ago, Gene Parmesan said:

You mean every generation?

Well, yeah, she's a wise woman. She just was more willing to accept it than some women are today. She is a mother of seven kids, and she raised four or five grandchildren, including me, and I think she found the porn stashes of every male under her roof. After thoroughly inspecting it she would throw it away, give us a talking-to, and nothing worse than that. (She really does have a dirty mind -- I think she really enjoyed finding our spank-troves. "And I just can't believe what I saw on page 76 of that "Swedish Gangbang" magazine you had! And my lord, what I saw on page 83.")

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47 minutes ago, Chewbacca said:

That's fantastic.  My mom is of the variety that she answers the phone when "Microsoft Tech Support" calls her cell phone.  Even though she has a Mac.  Then she gives them remote access to her computer (Lord only knows what they installed on her machine).  Then she proceeds to use her email, online banking, and every other sensitive online thing she can use.  Then she doesn't tell me for 3-4 more days.

 

It's amazing that nothing was stolen from her (yet).  I got her to change all of her passwords (using her iPad) and take the computer in to get a factory reset.  But holy shit, when does the fucking light go on?

Yep. My old man fell for this.  Twice. Luckily nothing got stolen. 

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10 minutes ago, Fuck Tim Beck said:

Yep. My old man fell for this.  Twice. Luckily nothing got stolen. 

Same.  My mom fell for it about five years ago.  Once she found out that it was a scam, she was so freaked out and paranoid that they were going to be able to get back in she ditched the computer and bought a new one.   

To make matters worse, my grandmother (85 y.o.) relies on my mom as tech support.  My mom went to her house earlier this year to set up her printer.  She was there for six hours and still didn't get it to function properly.  

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My dad is 82. He got his first computer and email account about 20 years ago and an iPhone and Facebook page about five years ago. Looks up stock prices and point spreads on yahoo and then writes them down on a legal pad and uses a calculator to get his account balances and bookie balance  

He has never sent a text or email that I can remember and he’ll mention seeing stuff on Facebook when we are talking on the phone, but he never pushes the like button and never posts his own content on the phone. 

Except for that one time he posted a link to Lexi Thompson bikini pics. 

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1 hour ago, Buffsoldier said:

Fucking this.  Fortunately, it only happened once.  Unfortunately it cost her $1200.

"But why can't I get that money back, he didn't fix the computer?"

But did he 'fix the cable'?

My dad is the tech support for other clueless peoples his own age, so I got that going for me, which is nice.

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24 minutes ago, crimsonlonghorn said:

My dad is 82. He got his first computer and email account about 20 years ago and an iPhone and Facebook page about five years ago. Looks up stock prices and point spreads on yahoo and then writes them down on a legal pad and uses a calculator to get his account balances and bookie balance  

He has never sent a text or email that I can remember and he’ll mention seeing stuff on Facebook when we are talking on the phone, but he never pushes the like button and never posts his own content on the phone. 

Except for that one time he posted a link to Lexi Thompson bikini pics. 

Props to your old man.

lexi-thompson-bikini-sexy-1-large.png?fo

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I remember my dad buying his first computer about 20 years ago. 

I helped him set it and start it up.  He grabbed the mouse and was waiving it around in the air.  I was like, "What in the hell are you doing???"  It took him several days to figure out how to control the mouse.  

He's cheap, so he signed up for all of these coupon sites.  And he signed me up, too.  I changed my email address and didn't tell him the new one.  Every time I would visit, I'd have to clean malware off his computer.  

I finally read him the riot act about this stuff, and things have gotten a lot better.  Except that a couple of years ago, he let Malwarebytes expire without knowing it.  When he complained about his computer running slowly, I reupped Malwarebytes and it found 64 trojans.  Now I pay for his subscription and it comes to my email when it's about to expire.

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I've been through this a lot.  It's an example of how "inflexible" older folks' minds become with age.  If they were computer literate in their 50s or 60s, they'll maintain that level of literacy, but anything new, fugeddaboutit.  Add in difficult seeing small screens and learning touchscreens and it's just a disaster.

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My dad is just kind of frustratingly annoying -- he seems to lack all intuition and need to be walked through Facebook and stuff, and as soon as you tell him anything, it goes right out the other ear.
It was my grandfather who took the cake. The last decade or so before he died, he was way into two things: genealogy, and porn. And one time he was trying to link some family info on to some old lady's family tree message board and the inevitable occurred: he posted a porn link instead. I think he got the banhammer...And my grandmother found out about it but just sort of gritted her teeth and ignored it -- she came from a generation where that was just what men did.
He acted repentant in front of her but secretly thought it was funny.  The old ladies on the family site did not.  At any rate, I am proud of him for not going to the "I was hacked" card most olds try to play. 


So what kind of porn did Grandpa post? Anything really fucked up?
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1 hour ago, gyroprotagonist said:

But did he 'fix the cable'?

My dad is the tech support for other clueless peoples his own age, so I got that going for me, which is nice.

Yeah, my dad is an EE, and used to build computers when that meant breaking out a soldering iron. I can still remember when he first got Compuserve, was the wildest thing ever. So I don't have to worry about him  and tech. His brother worked at Bell Labs too.

 

My mom on the other hand is hopeless.

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.Except that a couple of years ago, he let Malwarebytes expire without knowing it.  When he complained about his computer running slowly, I reupped Malwarebytes and it found 64 trojans.  Now I pay for his subscription and it comes to my email when it's about to expire.


After reformatting about a couple of hard drives, I now do the same thing with my parents.

My dad is going to be 80 later this year. Back in the day he used to take a lot of pictures so he now has thousands of slides. Last week he took the projector and all of his slides out and started to go through them. I’m pretty sure that this is an annual event. The projector breaks. He asks me to come over without telling me why. I get there and he asks me if I can fix the projector. I don’t think that he was too amused with my laughter so I tell him I will get online and look for a solution.
My solution was to buy him a slide scanner. I took it over to him on Tuesday. He was really excited. I got it all setup for him and showed him the basics. The yesterday we have the following phone conversation:
Dad - The scanner is broken.
LD - What changed since yesterday?
Dad - Your mother and I moved it, but we plugged everything in the same way.
LD - Did you turn it back on?
Dad - *silence*
LD - The button is on the right side.
Dad - Never mind. It looks like I fixed it.

I showed him the button the day before.

I’ve received the following 2 texts since I began typing this post:
502ca6e530e7c220ebafc9c86484631f.png
c4adf19f7b61f6bc4aaf120e512403ed.png

I know what I’ll be doing for the rest of the year.
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FIL is 75, retired and bored.  His day consists of making sure via group text with me and several other random family members and people I don't know or haven't seen in 12 years are up to date with what he's doing at the moment.  He might be mowing his yard, checking on his lemon trees, wondering why his tractor won't start, who knows, it's always a pleasant surprise that I can't find a way to exclude myself from.

And he insists on texting by using voice and talking to his phone.  He'll do it while we're all watching a movie but try to whisper.  Then when it can't understand him he'll repeat it a little louder, then a little louder until my wife grabs the phone and types it out for him.

He's a good guy though, several times we've been in a bind and needed him to come stay with the kids and he was on his way before we had hung up the phone.

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I just took over as one of the officers of my HOA. It's on the smaller side as far as HOA's go, but still. The guy who is moving to a retirement home or something and has a year to live, so I'm trying to be gentle with him during the handover. He's in his 70's and was a banker for like 40 years or whatever.

He hands me an attache from 1970 full of paper sheets (Dumb and Dumber full of receipts-like). Anyways, the crowning jewel of this old thing was a green ledger of some sort that is long in a landscape way, like a sideways "legal" size document, and this is where he had been doing the HOA dues for all 100 homes. I couldn't believe it. He said, "I tried to do it on a computer and it broke. Sorry kid.". He had an aol email address he never used and just wouldnt use a spreadsheet. Oh, and he didn't even understand the concept of ACH, he had people (mostly their banks) mail to him a check monthly/quarterly/yearly. Absurd.

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2 hours ago, G650 said:

Yeah, my dad is an EE, and used to build computers when that meant breaking out a soldering iron. I can still remember when he first got Compuserve, was the wildest thing ever. So I don't have to worry about him  and tech. His brother worked at Bell Labs too.

 

My mom on the other hand is hopeless.

Weird thing, though.  My Dad had some familiarity with DOS programs and a little bit of command line OS work.  Windows and all GUI's absolutely mystified him, though.  He never could remember which of the various ways you could do various things.  At least with command line, he could write text commands down.  Clicking, double-clicking, cursor, right-click, fuuuuuuuuuu.

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4 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Well, yeah, she's a wise woman. She just was more willing to accept it than some women are today. She is a mother of seven kids, and she raised four or five grandchildren, including me, and I think she found the porn stashes of every male under her roof. After thoroughly inspecting it she would throw it away, give us a talking-to, and nothing worse than that. (She really does have a dirty mind -- I think she really enjoyed finding our spank-troves. "And I just can't believe what I saw on page 76 of that "Swedish Gangbang" magazine you had! And my lord, what I saw on page 83.")

Well......you gonna leave us hanging here?  What WAS on pages 76 and 83?????

1 hour ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

I wish I knew, exactly, but if what I would often see from his history is any indication, it would have been kinda of the 42DDD Juggs variety. He liked him some big ol tittays.

tenor.gif?itemid=4268618

 

As for me, about 3-4 times a year, I get a call from a friend, family member, or some attenuated connection, FREAKED OUT about the phone call from the IRS coming to arrest them.  My standard advice is this: when they contact you the next time, ask for his first name.  Then address him by that name, and tell him to SHOVE A SPLINTERED BROOMSTICK UP HIS OWN ASS UNTIL HE FUCKING BLEEDS TO DEATH.  Then hang up on him, and never answer a call from that number again.  I think it's pretty sound advice.  But some old person every quarter or so needs to hear it, before they cut a money order to some scammer.

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Wife's mom is on the Netflix mail service.  We set her up and account and showed how to use the Netflix site and find movies she wants to watch.  She gave up on that and just calls my wife and tells her what movies to put in her queue and she just gets in the mail and mails it back.

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5 hours ago, El Diablo said:

Mom's 92 and thinks the cleaning lady stole her toothbrush.

Mom is a retired florist.  When I see tools that she could use to do that type of work in her spare time, I buy them for her.  I bought her some stem tool thingamajigger a couple years back and she was really excited to have one, said the old style was a clunky desktop machine and this was one she could keep in a little tool box.

A year or two goes by, I ask her if she's gotten to use it much.  She says "no, someone stole it out of the garage".  Oh really, the same garage that at times they forget to close the door on that stays open all night long and somehow this one single tool is the one they stole, not all the other tools dad has laying around all over the place.

Sure.

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13 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Weird thing, though.  My Dad had some familiarity with DOS programs and a little bit of command line OS work.  Windows and all GUI's absolutely mystified him, though.  He never could remember which of the various ways you could do various things.  At least with command line, he could write text commands down.  Clicking, double-clicking, cursor, right-click, fuuuuuuuuuu.

LOL. Interesting.

 

My old man ran the engineering department for a couple local TV stations, then the corporation that owned them, so he was pretty well versed on everything up through a couple years ago. We had a similar arc though as being really into it in the 80's and 90's, especially during the chip wars of the mid 90's, then sort of waning interest until we both did the bare minimum to keep up.

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8 hours ago, mulletpelini said:

A year or two goes by, I ask her if she's gotten to use it much.  She says "no, someone stole it out of the garage".  Oh really, the same garage that at times they forget to close the door on that stays open all night long and somehow this one single tool is the one they stole, not all the other tools dad has laying around all over the place.

Sure.

It's @El Diablo's mom's maid. 

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1 hour ago, SimonBolivar said:

I find it crazy the changes that are happening in our lives today. My grandfather was a depression era baby who grew up without indoor plumbing or a/c in Central Texas and by the end of his life he was on facebook  all day and texting me links to every article ever written. 

Personally I don't think it's any big leap, could you imagine going from horse and buggy, candle light and letters to the automobile, electricity, radio and the telephone? Or seeing images transmitted for the first time? Or an airplane?

The internet has been a big leap to be sure, but it's just a different pipeline for stuff we were already doing. Late 19th century saw stuff that was unimaginable before.

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