And looking for reasons to buy new versions of things: phones, laptops, gaming devices, etc. Bonus points if they’re on the edge of not being able to afford it at all.

46 points

Not quite this, but my dad will buy the absolute cheapest versions of things and get mad when I can’t get it to do the claims on the box. I’m sorry I din’t think this $25 smart watch is an actual replacement for the machine you use to measure blood pressure ;_;

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40 points

I bought my dad airpods to go with his iPad, he never uses them and insists on using some cheap shit bone conducting headset thing that he wears wrong with the bone conduction pads over his ear holes.

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32 points

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15 points

I empathize with your dad on this, one, cannot stand how most earbuds plug up your ears. You might wanna get your dad more expensive bone-conducting headset, or at least open-ear earbuds

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Highly recommend Koss KSC75s for that. They’re basically small headset pads with hooks to go over the ears. Decent sound and no ear plugging

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6 points

my dad also does this, and ngl it freaked me out a little bit when he decided to stick a banking app on an old oneplus 5T that didn’t even get security updates anymore, what’s worse he strongly refused the idea of me gifting him a newer phone, even a cheap-ish one. like i can afford it, god it’s no big deal.

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I was going to say most banks probably don’t support older versions of Android for their apps, and realized he’s probably using a sketchy 3rd party app

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3 points
*

maybe not in the states, that official banking app supports android versions all the way back to Android 6.0, the last android version supported by the OP5T is 10, so on that regard it was fine at least. you’d be surprised at how far back you can go compatibility-wise without breaking stuff with android’s first party compat libraries.

god if he was using a 3rd party app I would have fucking showed up at his doorstep at 12am and force him to update all his credentials.

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37 points
*

Not quite the same thing, but my FIL tends to put zero research into buying new tech items and gets easily sold on whatever hunk of crap the Best Buy salesperson is pushing on them. Which leads to a lot of cheap crap that breaks down after a few years. The most confounding part is this is someone who was a high-powered tech CEO back in the 90’s, and it’s like “how the fuck did you get anything done in those jobs?”

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51 points

CEO

There’s your answer

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30 points

My grandpa used to do this but he’d buy one for us too so my dad and I could figure it out and then go hang out with him while we set it up and showed him how to use it, which is how we ended up with cool shit like a universal remote control half the size of a cinderblock with an LCD on it in 1999.

RIP grandpa

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Yup. Have one that expects me to teach them how to use something all the time. Doesn’t listen to or bother remembering anything I told them and so expects me to be on call to help them use it every time they want to use it.

Basically, they can’t be assed learning anything new and just expect me to do everything for them.

This is in stark contrast to how my grandmother aged, she was basically self-sufficient to the end. So It’s been strange watching a lot of boomers, who complain about my generation being too childish, act like dependent children themselves. I know that’s probably harsh, but it’s actually kind of scary.

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24 points

Not really this but my dad has an amazing ability to set up any electronic thing in a way that is overwhelmingly complex for no reason, takes 3 hours, requires tools and frustrates him to no end. My man setting up a TV to a stereo system with a cable box and maybe a game console will end out requiring like 9 remotes used in a specific sequence that sometimes doesn’t work for ‘no reason’ (dude technically has a computer programming degree, it’s just from the days of punch cards, but he should still understand machines are deterministic). It’s a pretty amazing feat. Both of my folks are amazingly skilled at making simple tasks into incredibly complicated chores.

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26 points

but he should still understand machines are deterministic

I’m with your dad on this one

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