Technophobia 15

 

Does your desktop look like this?

 I admit there was a time when I didn't know you could cut and paste text from a web page... About 1993? And for a while I didn’t know you could pause CDs. I used to think you had to let your phone run out completely before you charged it, and you couldn’t leave it plugged in once it was at 100% because er er... It wasted electricity?! But now we're putting a woman on the Moon!

A friend told me about a man who runs his entire business through a tablet.

Someone on Twitter asked what the little bumps on the F and J keys of a keyboard were for. Touch typists find them with their forefingers. They keep your fingers on the home keys, ASDF JKL;.

Boggles my mind how many people work from a laptop as their only computer. Not even a plug-in monitor or keyboard or mouse. Just that 15” screen and touchpad in their $200k/year white collar job. The absolute hubris of it all. (@dioscuri)

I have a client who communicates exclusively via Microsoft Word. If she has something to tell me I will receive an email with nothing in the body, but a Word doc attached. That’s where she writes her message. Whenever she wants to email me a photo she does it via an empty Word doc with said photo as its background. But my favourite thing was the first time I witnessed her visiting a website. She had me spell the URL (w w w dot), and with my own two eyes I watched her type it into Word, make it a hyperlink, and Ctrl click to go there. I was so fascinated I didn’t even say anything. (Via Twitter)

It’s 2026, but when I watch a film on a streaming service the sound is so quiet as to be almost inaudible.

Who at Apple was like ‘you know we should make the new iPhone photos app super confusing and random because now it’s too straightforward and easy to use, let’s make it feel like you’ve had a stroke every time you want to find something!’ (@seanonolennon)

Firefox has changed, without notice, the method of managing your bookmarks. You now have to click on a star... I had to ask Grok.

Actual interaction I had today, Jan 16:
website rejects bank info
I retype, website rejects info
I refresh and retype, website rejects info
I call support
"Oh, it's a savings account? You need to click the button five times"
I click the button two more times
It works (?!?!)
(@its_bvisness)

Why does it seem like everything has three extra steps now? You can’t just do one thing. You have to log in, check your email for the code, enter the passkey to access password, that isn’t the right password so you enter email AGAIN for password email, then you have to make a new password, then you have to save it to your password saver but first you have to enter the passkey to access your passwords but the username doesn’t automatically update so you have to enter your email AGAIN in your password saver and then you can finally Do The Thing. What is this system? (@parakeetnebula)

I got a new TV after 11 years, and there was a nice simplicity to just turning the old one on. The new one requires a loading screen, logging in and navigating complex menus just to be able to watch. (@ianmackey)

There is a special place reserved in hell for website designers who disable cut and paste in password fields. (@WKCosmo)

Trying to buy something at an actual store, and they’re like, What’s your email? Phone number? Zip code? Blood type? (@kristabellerina)

I am so tired of logging into things. Please stop making me log into things. I don’t want to make an account! Stop texting me codes! (@holy_schnitt)

THE BIG REGRESSION
My folks are in town visiting us for a couple months so we rented them a house nearby. It’s new construction... It’s amped up with state of the art systems. The ones with touchscreens of various sizes, IoT appliances, and interfaces that try too hard. And it’s terrible. What a regression.

The lights are powered by Control4. And require a demo to understand how to use the switches, understand which ones control what, and to be sure not to hit THAT ONE because it’ll turn off all the lights in the house when you didn’t mean to. Worse.

The TV is the latest Samsung which has a baffling UI just to watch CNN. My parents aren’t idiots, but definitely feel like they’re missing something obvious. They aren’t — TVs have simply gotten worse. You don’t turn them on anymore, you boot them up.

The Miele dishwasher is hidden flush with the counters. ... It wouldn’t even operate the first time without connecting it to an app. This meant another call to the house manager to have them install an app they didn’t know they needed either. An app to clean some peanut butter off a plate? ... Worse.

Thermostats... Nest would have been an upgrade, but these other propriety ones from some other company trying to be nest-like are baffling. Round touchscreens that take you into a dark labyrinth of options just to be sure it’s set at 68. ... Or is that what we want it at, but it’s at 72? Wait... What? Which number is this? Worse.

The alarm system is essentially a 10in iPad bolted to the wall that has the weather forecast on it. And it’s bright! I’m sure there’s a way to turn that off, but then the screen would be so barren that it would be filled with the news instead. Why can’t the alarm panel just be an alarm panel? Worse.

And the lag. Lag everywhere. Everything feels a beat or two behind. Everything. Lag is the giveaway that the system is working too hard for too little. Real-time must be the hardest problem.
Now look... I’m no luddite. But this experience is close to conversion therapy. Tech can make things better, but I simply can’t see [how] in these cases. I’ve heard the pitches too — you can set up scenes and one button can change EVERYTHING. ... It actually feels primitive, like we haven’t figured out how to make things easy yet. That some breakthrough will eventually come when you can simply knock a switch up or down and it’ll all makes sense. But that's at least 20 years down the road.

It’s really the contrast that makes it alarming. We just got back from a vacation in Montana. Rented a house there. They did have a fancy TV — seems those can’t be avoided these days — but everything else was old-school and clear. Physical up/down light switches in the right places. Appliances without the internet. Buttons with depth and physically-confirmed state change rather than surfaces that don’t obviously register your choice. More traditional round rotating Honeywell thermostats that are just clear and obvious. No tours, no instructions, no questions, no fearing you’re going to do something wrong, no wondering how something works. Useful and universally clear. That’s human, that’s modern. (@jasonfried. Jan 5, 2026)

The government makes the Civil Service get the lowest bid for computer services and it always, always results in the Civil Service paying out a ton of money in compensation for continual errors. They hide the information about compensatory payments under different names in their rules and regs. "Special payments" was the name the DWP used to use (I worked on the team for two years and paid out an average of 27 claims per week, just me. There were over 50 on the team covering CSA alone, let alone the other areas of the DWP). (Rebecca Hodson)

Friends my age, who have been not-very-techy for decades, and hardly ever watched TV (some didn’t know how to turn theirs on) have now got tablets and Netflix and are keen followers of some niche series I’ve never heard of! (Now I want to say: There are other streaming services!)

Your life becomes so much more liberating when you learn that keeping your laptop plugged in at max is actually Perfectly Fine and much healthier for the battery than draining and recharging constantly. (@PalmyrPar)

More here, and links to the rest.

Buzzwords of 2025

 IQ of a crayon

And trending topics. 

What are you going to do when you retire? I’m going to train to become a “death doula”. (Takes over from “storyteller”. But a birth doula plays a useful role protecting her client against careless and overworked staff. Perhaps death doulas do the same.)

First week Jan: “learned helplessness” is popular, but nobody quite knows what it means.

Breaking the internet.
And calling me a “retard”. (With the IQ of a crayon. Can I be a nice colour?) 

Narcissist has taken over from bully. Never mind the motivation, look at the behaviour – and stop it.

slop: the productions of AI

Late Jan: Some severe storms, and the usual whingeing about “nannying” risk-to-life warnings. Two men were killed by falling trees during Storm Eowyn. Don't forget insurance companies, which won't pay out if you ignored the announcements.

agency: People talk about it as if it was a thing. Here, have some agency. (While talking as if we were the puppets of our subconscious – or a dysregulated nervous system.)


Early Feb
Spitting fury at the suggestion from Yvette Cooper that knives should be manufactured with rounded ends. What if someone attacks you with a poin-ted stick?

Extremely pious Twitter announcements explaining why you or your organisation has “made the decision to leave Twitter”.

nervous system: for heart, psyche, soul etc. 

skill issue: You’re single? It’s a skill issue. Prob from gaming. You lost? Skill issue, not unfairness.

bread-crumbing: See Hansel and Gretel.

Anyone you disagree with online is a p@do, a r€tard or gay.

Accusing public figures of having “given a Nazi salute”. You can freeze frame almost anybody and find a moment where it looks as if they might have given a Nazi salute for half a second.

“Some women have penises” popular last week of Feb.

Maine Women’s Lobby is fighting for trans rights: men in women’s sports, changing rooms and toilets. And probably on women’s panels and women-only shortlists.

legacy

First week March DOGE are sacking weather forecasters. They mention global warming, and if it’s true, Americans will have to find alternatives to cars.

March
I missed the Transies last night. Does anyone know who won Best Trans in a Trans? (@SamBarber1910 Mar 3 on the Oscars)

Scientists have created transgender mice! (They’re “transgenic” mice. See also the autonomous nervous system. It's not automatic.)

proctor: I would say it means to oversee or supervise. Because a test proctor watches over students who are taking test tests and make sure that they’re following all the rules. Right? (@mermaidwrites)

Vibes are back!!! From the late 60s.

21 March: “Abundance” is all over the place.

And Hegel has been all over the place for the past year. I suspect he was a dualist. Grok says: "Hegel's philosophy centers on the dialectical unfolding of Absolute Spirit through history, where reality is the self-development of the Idea via thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, culminating in the rational reconciliation of all contradictions in freedom and self-consciousness." He did say "Everything contains its opposite." 
 
April 
You can only know about online indoctrination into misogyny, violence or whatever if you watch Adolescence. A phenomenon is only real if there’s a TV drama about it.

The folks in Austin, Texas are overjoyed because the city has decided to allow the building of medium-sized blocks of flats. 

Truffles are suddenly everywhere.
And tariffs, not to be confused with truffles.

Black chick peas. Black almost anything. See truffles. (Jan 2026: black food seems to be ovah.)

In Europe they imprison you for a tweet. We’re better off in the US! (In the UK, this is: Lucy Connolly was imprisoned for "hurty words". In reality, her crime was incitement to violence and murder. She pleaded guilty and was given a prison sentence.) 

People don’t like the em dash they find in text from AI, and assume AI invented it. (Americans don't use dashes at all, and punctuate long, complex sentences with commas alone.)

Black and white wings at the corner of the eye. Is there a youtube video?

Oh, no, is “gay” just an insult again? And “retarded” just means “wrong”.

Theatre kids – twice in one morning! 2025-05-02 Who are they? Probably teens who study drama at school and form a tribe. (Passionately involved in drama club, school plays, and especially musical theatre productions, says Grok.) 
 
The UK Supreme Court affirms the original meaning of the Equality Act ("man" means man, and "woman" means woman). Many people and organisations won’t lie down. (At the end of December, Bridget Philipson, Women and Equalities Minister, is sitting on the official guidelines (from the Equality and Human Rights Commission) as she tries to twist logic to allow the Act to allow that "women" includes transwomen. And nobody can keep them out of women's loos, sports, changing rooms, panels, organisations, refuges, shortlists.) 

14 April: high trust, low trust (A “high-trust” society is a “racially homogeneous” society. Or even "monoethnic".)

People are sending drones to picturesque villages and harassing the residents.

People going on about “hoes”. What do they mean? Stopped now mid-June.

People redefining the phrase “born a woman” to mean “looked female at birth” so that they can say Imane Khelif WAS female at birth. Or even “has an F on their birth cert or passport”. They don’t understand the verb to be.

Aura is back, June.
vibe coding: Watch this space.

Longhouse, longhousing: In far-right and alt-right online subcultures, "longhouse" has been repurposed as a slang term to critique modern society. It metaphorically describes a perceived matriarchal, overly egalitarian, or collectivist social structure that some claim suppresses individualism and masculinity. (Grok)

The Kim Reaper (Leadbeater)
sinister ministers
flip the script: turn it on its head

Showers of rose petals are now a Catholic thing. (Through the oculus of the Pantheon – nice.)

Young people think people in the past wore black or very dark lipstick – because that’s what red looks like in black and white.

We’re going through a strange moment with airconditioning. Government says new builds shouldn’t have it, because those who can’t afford it will feel hard-done-by. They don’t put it like that, they waffle about “inequality”. Meanwhile Guardianistas can hardly bring them selves to touch it. Something sinful about being comfortable. And it’s TECHNOLOGY – vulgar, common, you can’t get a unique artisanal one hand-carved out of wood. Everyone gets the same. And it’s American. The British middle classes went through all this over central heating in the 70s. They also won’t take practical steps like fanning yourself with a fan, or even having electric fans. They came with the usual superstitions “Don’t stand right next to it it’ll make you hotter”. Guardianista in mid-rant confesses she has a cheap mobile aircon unit, “But we use it perhaps ten times a year!”. Yes, but I didn’t inhale.

Next year is forecast to be the hottest on record. 

Showing off is called aura farming now, just keeping you up to date. (@gorangligovic.bsky.social‬)

It’s insane that in 2025 a woman not wanting to get undressed in front of a male work colleague is “hate.” (@angijones)

Seismic popular week of 5 June.

7 July: Lots of “hosting” this week as Lionesses celebrate win and Trump visits to play golf and have off-record chats. 2025-07-27 Couldn’t we “welcome” people? Or “play host to”?

14 August: What can we be passive-aggressive about this week? People playing videos with the sound on. Various pass-ag solutions suggested, from frosty looks to moving seats. Some even suggest “Could you mute?” Meanwhile phone manufacturers no longer supply phone jacks. You have to buy bluetooth headphones and sync them to your device. 

Head of Scottish Libraries has banned The Women who Wouldn’t Wheesht. Many furious exchanges on Twitter: I think my district nurse qualification trumps your SEN! Perhaps it’s class don’t patronise me I’m from MORNINGSIDE!!!! (The book eventually made it to the shelves.)

Everything’s a hub now. It has taken over from “centre”.
Strange backlash against painter Mark Rothko as “ugly” and “modern”.

Deconstructing the phrase “land bridge”. Is this a land bridge or a country inhabited for hundreds of years? (See “transitional form”.)

Where did I put things that changed our lives? Freezers. Supermarkets. Takeaway coffee cups. Door dash. Wifi. @moseskagan points out that in the 80s and 90s a lot of people did no regular exercise. Had old fashioned methods gone out, to be replaced with nothing? No more squash or Indian clubs? Along came aerobics and Tai Chi and... tennis?  

I just want to be the happiest version of myself. Meaning “I just want to be happy”.

Solo polyamory, self-partnered. What fresh hell is this?

“The” is vanishing. Yookay, Tate, Tatler, Post Office, “Portuguese are holding a national day of mourning”. Americans already talk about “some French” instead of “some French people”.

Gay means uncool and has for years.
R@tarded means wrong, bad or stupid.

Of any beautiful, priceless object with an intriguing aesthetic pedigree: The important thing is the story. (It's part of the drive to turn any subject into a human-interest story.)

lore: fascinating fact

People still going on about “youngsters find it aggressive if you end a tweet with a punctuation mark”. It was never a big thing. (Or "It was never that big of a thing", as they would say.)

18 September Young people shouldn’t have to pay old people’s pensions because we are entirely responsible for immigration.

People are pretending not to know what “far-right” means after a huge rally in London pro Tommy Robinson, pro the flag and presumably pro removing all brown people. Ooh, you can’t call MAY far-right! Reporters report speaking to ordinary people with “legitimate concerns” who “feel they are not being heard”.

Blench is having a slight revival: a portmanteau of blanch and flinch.

Fabians are the new hate figures.

7 Oct: Longhouses popular this week. Looks like they are matriarchies, and “longhouse behaviour” is sneaky oppression and manipulation. By women.

15 Oct§; incuriosity

Neuroplasticity is the new chemical imbalance. (@hanna_pssd)

16 Oct; This week we are all terribly worried about the feminisation of society. (See “longhouse”.)

Misandry – tip of an iceberg which is an attempt to mirror all the grievances of feminism because men are such sensitive souls they can’t bear to be criticised at all, ever, and call it cruelty. Feminisation of public life comes in here somewhere. What repellent, whiny wimps.

Normalise doing X when you mean “Do X”.

dusty: pejorative. You don’t want to be dusty.

Jacobin: No idea.

Transactional Analysis: Eric Berne has been reprinted! And rediscovered.

mog: Me neither.

Kneeling down and presenting a ring to propose to your girlfriend is back!!!! I’m so glad.

Many such instances: And others on this template.

People saying neuro-linguistic programming is pseudoscience. Never thought I’d live to see the day.

People talking about groups “ruling the world”, as if it was a good thing.

Someone else points out that the “work” women are having done to their faces makes them look more like transsexuals. They have “facial feminisation” surgery, and we copy them.

Things are still “hollowed out” and “broken”.
And they’re still banging on about dopamine. (There's a book – just like in the old days.)
SNAP (food stamps in the US) should be abolished. The food all goes to “bums”.
Men with obvious “mummy issues” wanting to take the vote away from women.

Caitlin Moran is sick of certain words: the environment (“Where is the environment? I’m sure I’ve never been there. It’s a corporate way of saying ‘where we live’.”), diversity, mental health, journey.

November
Twitter saying Mrs Mamdani is ugly. She is stunningly beautiful in a dark-eyed, dark-haired way. 

Outliers are popular. They mean nothing. They’re our old friend “the exception proves the rule”.

Have earbuds become airpods? Makes no sense. And it's "Black Friday Week".

There's a police manhunt in Ireland for an Irish teacher that wouldn't use 'preferred pronouns' in school. (@JohnMurphy51)

In London nobody thanks the bus driver. Didn’t we do that one a few years ago? Why don’t you travel on some London buses?

Now that it looks like believing humans can change sex is not so obviously “the right side of history”, people are coming out with strange, individual compromise positions. Because I’m so special I’ve got my own take. Who suggested transwomen could compete in some sports? Could swim in the Hampstead Ladies Pond if they had their own changing room? The "consultation" consisted only of leading questions putting forward various compromises. Meanwhile women who apply to swim in the Men's Pond are given short shrift.

People are objecting to Post Office’s Christmas stamp as “inaccurate”: Mary is wearing pink, and a head-covering, and she and the baby are lightly tanned. Head-coverings are Muslim! Jesus and Mary were white! Oh, the stupidity.

Emotional regulation, dysregulation. Translation: don’t be uncontrolled in the corridor, as we were told at school.

Tourists are paying to attend Indian weddings. 

Per the Times, the middle classes steal from the self checkout and then sell high-end groceries on Facebook.

Has “roll up” taken on a new meaning?

Oliver Sacks had feet of clay. Someone even calls his case histories “twee anecdotes”. 

Unbelievably, apologists for FGM are still publishing (in BMJ Ethics) and influencing: Oh, but it’s their culture! Trying to abolish FGM is colonialist! And it's really not as bad as made out! (What about footbinding and bride-burning? Infanticide?)

All food is “glazed”. That’s not vinaigrette, it’s a “balsamic glaze”.

People talk about consumerism as if it was a sin. Never defined. (Someone tweets that reading 30 books a year is "consumerism". Too many? Too few?)

On Christmas Day, someone posts pix from Mrs Mamdani’s Vogue photo shoot. Response: tons of bricks on Michelle Obama and Mrs Mamdani. And Melania never got the cover of Vogue! (You see Michelle Obama is BLACK, and Mrs Mamdani is OF SYRIAN DESCENT and Melania may be from Slovenia but at least she’s WHITE. God bless us every one!)

Brigitte Bardot: She was "kittenish". (She was directed to act the way middle-aged men think children act.)

Americans are giving each other herb strippers.

And claiming Italians aren't white. 

And there's a lot of this around in 2025: Reminder to everyone: it is still “the Christmas season” for 11 more days. (@KJP. The converse is "Christmas starts earlier every year".)

And Twitter/X is getting more and more racist. Fix it, Elon.

More here, and links to other years.