Idiotech

Parents, teachers, bosses, and the general old people population are terrible with technology.

Idiotech
uPick
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"I just need to see it on a map."

My dad refuses to use the "Get Directions" feature on Google Maps. He types in the address he is looking for and then tries to figure out a way to get there.

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MySpace and Wii are both offended.

my mom asked to try playing on the wii and i said sure she held the remote backwards and got upset when the thing didn't work she said, 'aww come on, i thought wii (we) had to work together!' she then goes on to throw the remote at the tv screen, miss it entirely, and storm out of the room saying 'i suppose now myspace is all claustrophobic now too!'

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And four free iPods!

Today my mom called sounding very excited. When I asked her what had happened, she replied "I know what I'm getting your brother for christmas. The computer just told me that I won a Wii!"

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Great first impression, Mom.

I was bringing my boyfriend home for the first time to introduce him to my parents. We were talking and he said to me, "Oh wait, did you see my picture on FaceBook?" And I was about to reply when my mother jumped in and said, "Facebook? We have a Facebook! One second hold on!" She ran upstairs, leaving all of us in confusion (everyone knows my mother is horrible at... Read More » technology, as you'll see in the following stories). She runs back downstairs holding a photo book in her hands, and proceeds to show my boyfriend the many photos she took of me and my bare butt when I was a baby. This was the same woman who refused to get a computer when she heard it came with a mouse. And once she did get her computer, she called me in to ask why Safari wanted her to file and edit her view of history, and why the bookmarks in the window need help.

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And she wonders why I never call her.

My mother still has a ringback tone on her cellphone. It's the default.

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"Oh, Dad. Good work, carry on."

i walked into the den the other day to see my father rubbing the mouse on his head i asked him what he was doing and he said "trying to get better reception for the internet"

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1 comment

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I'm already logged in!

My step dad thinks that his hotmail account doesn't just log him into hotmail, he thinks it logs him into ANYTHING on the internet that you need an account for. You can guess how that ends up...

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This'll stop those Internet thieves.

I went to my parents house for a visit to find that my dad had put an aluminum pie plate over the wireless router "to stop the neighbours from stealing the internet"

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Windows = Office

The other day, I was installing MS Office on my sister's computer. I couldn't find my product key. My mother found her Windows product ID, and then proceeded to inform me that I could just use the Windows Product ID because Windows and Office are the same thing.

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"And it's called a 'calendar'? I'm not familiar."

Just showed my dad how I use the calendar on my phone to save events and things. He said his phone "doesn't have that app." I then took his old flip phone and showed him how to get to it in less than a second...

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Pranking your mom? There's an app for that.

I convinced my mom that the lighter app on the iPhone actually heated up the phone. She was skeptical at first, but after 10 seconds of the top of my phone on a light bulb when she wasn't looking, thoroughly convinced her the iPhone can do anything.

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She needs to SHIFT her mindset. Ugh.

Not a parent but someone at work, I helped her set up a password for an internal program, it needed both lower and upper case letters in it and she could not figure out how to type an upper case letter, I tried to explain pushing shift then the letter but she would try to push them at exactly the same time and of course it wouldn't work and you can't tell right away because... Read More » it's a password so it comes out as dots and she couldn't figure out why it wasn't working.

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...Then I asked him for money.

Often, my parents text me while I'm in class. One day, we were doing a dissection lab and I had to text my dad 'I'm busy atm'. My dad came home later that day and, very angry, told me 'I'm NOT an ATM, I'm your father.' I had to explain to him that atm was shorthand for at the moment around three times to for him to get it.

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The best kind of aunt is the kind who worships you.

I recently visited with my aunt who is almost 90 years old. I took a picture of me and her and I told her I was going to send it to my wife who was in another city 300 miles away. She looked at me sort of puzzled and said "You can do miracles". I had a good laugh, she is the cutest Aunt to have!

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Formerly ugly?

One time my family and friends of the family were gathering for lunch and pinochle. Their teenage daughter and I (I am also a teen) went to play Monopoly, not knowing how to play pinochle. We overheard my mom and her mom saying how the term "fugly" is so cute. The teenage daughter and I had to explain to them what "fugly" really meant.

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Can't touch this.

The other day I saw my dad try and use the screen on his blackberry curve as a touchscreen. He's had it for 3 months.

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Don't believe everything you Facebook.

My mom is generally ok with the Internet, and tech stuff. However, when she bought some plane tickets for me and my husband a while back as a gift, I noticed something odd in the itinerary. My husband's ticket said it was for Brian Danger Lane. I kept staring at it, completely baffled, because, obviously, that isn't his middle name. So finally I called her. She told me she... Read More » put it on the ticket because that was what his Facebook account said his middle name was. Yes, really. She had to call the airline to sort that one out.

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Emergency averted.

I was on the bus ride back to my apartment one day when I noticed that I had gotten a missed call and a voicemail from my dad. Since it was too loud to call him back on the bus, I listened to the voicemail and decided to call him back later. In the voicemail he sounded winded, and said "Call me back right away." The last time I received one of these calls from him my uncle... Read More » had died. So I panicked for the duration of the bus ride and when I finally got a hold of him he explained: "I can't figure out how to send this email..."

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You could get a Server Transmitted Disease!

My otherwise very sharp 96-year-old grandma informed me that I should be careful when using computers at work because they could transmit diseases. I thought she was speaking about germs on keyboards. Until I realized she had seen an item on the news about computer viruses.

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Cut off from the internet

Three weeks ago, my mother called me complaining that the internet was broken. So, I went to her house on the weekend to try and figure out what had gone wrong. Turns out she had plugged in the router incorrectly. Problem solved, or so I thought. Two weeks later when she complained again about the internet "being broken" again, I did my best to describe where the cords... Read More » should go. She swore up and down that wasn't the problem. Today, she called me with an update. Apparently someone had dug up the DSL line next to the power transformer in our front yard, and physically CUT the connection.