mhoyeNov 16, 2023
One of the things I’ve learned about the consequences of bullying is that when people tell you things like “I’m pretty bad at math” or “computers aren’t for me” or “I don’t really get art or fashion” and you talk to them for a bit what you often find - not always, but often - is what that really means is “somebody treated me like shit for trying to like this when I was 9.”
Show threadSchroedingers_CatNov 16, 2023

@mhoye Computers is my bag, and whenever people say they struggle with computers, I talk about how the problem is not them, but the computer systems.

The systems are not people friendly, often. They are geek-friendly (sometimes).

And believe me, I have seen tools that make techies want to try something else too.

So often - in all these areas - the problem is not that "I don't get on with this" - it is, as you say, someone has dismissed their problems, not tried to adjust for them.

Show threadBee O'Problem Nov 16, 2023

@SteveClough @mhoye the thing that frustrates me these days is that geek friendly is disappearing. It's more like marketing/PR friendly

I've lost count of the number of times a site/app goes "UwU Something Went Wrong!" with actual useful info maybe buried somewhere only a turbo-geek would actually think to look. For a geek it's frustrating and for an ordinary user I imagine it's flat out demoralizing.

Show threadmhoye
@beeoproblem @SteveClough That doesn't bother me on the website side of things, because there's basically nothing an end user human can do about a website. It's infuriating if it's a program I can modify on a device I own though.
Nov 16, 2023 at 5:47pmWeb
Show threadBee O'Problem Nov 16, 2023

@mhoye @SteveClough one case where it was a problem I could fix on my end was when uploading a video to the birdsite. It had an encoding issue but the error message refused to say what it was. I was able to find the actual problem in Chrome's devtools though. EDIT: otherwise, I agree, most errors are beyond the user's control

Not exactly a nice experience for a user.