BalloonFish posted:

This is so, so true. It's really more for the pet peeves thread, but I do some freelance sub-editing and one of the papers I work for has two boomer-age contributors who seem to be bordering on the functionally illiterate. One in particular has work which reads like his work has been run through Google Translate from English into a non-Indo-European language and then back again. At best the sentences are clunky and awkward and, full of commas in, strange places like, this where they make, no sense. He also keeps adding double spaces after full stops. Half the time his sentences just end in the middle of a thought or switch track entirely. And aside from his writing, his work is full of factual errors as well.

There is a set format for laying out your copy when it's sent in, so the graphic designers can easily work it into a page (no auto-format line breaks, no indents, all text left-aligned, headings to indicate subtitles, intro paragraphs, info boxes etc. in square brackets so the designers know which bits are what etc.). He ignores all of those and (I was told by a weary and gratefully retired ex-colleague of his) lays out his page in the same style as the paper which gave him his first writing job in the late 70s. We also ask all contributors to send their words to us in .docx format but he always, without fail, sends it in .doc. Whenever he adds an info box he does it with an in-document formatted table, which has to be rewritten in plain text every loving time.

When I began subbing I asked the editor if he knew this guy was so useless and I was basically rewriting all his work from scratch. Yes he knew, but the guy was consistent and punctual (which is more than some of the other contributors) and, anyway, he was a mate of the MD of the publisher so it would cause to much drama to get rid of him. Editor is a Gen-Xer so you can try and draw a sociological conclusion from that!

With the editor I drew up a new Style Guide which was sent to all the contributors but was about 90% just specifically calling out everything this guy did. Did it have any effect? Some of the other writers upped their game but this guy kept trucking on in exactly the same way.

And the worst things is I just know he opens every issue of the paper, turns to his page, reads his nicely-presented, flawless, style-correct writing and, instead of realising that it's almost totally different from the garbage he sent in, leans back and thinks "Yeah, I'm hot poo poo at writing...!"

jokes posted:

"The blacks" is such a common phrase among older people, it's horrible.

Sentient Data posted:

Yep, they sure "bargained" that guy into a better deal, that's totally the word they'd use

Ghost Leviathan posted:

I'm guessing this lasted about until they bought a new nintendo game and, despite repeated attempts, couldn't fit it in their old nintendo?

alphabettitouretti posted:

Play posted:

yeah elbows on the table is weird because it's usually the easiest way to eat something. as kid you instinctively know how dumb that "rule" is

also an intense fixation on silverware, how it is to be positioned and used. My parents were really strict about switching the back fork to your right hand before you put it into your mouth after you've been cutting something. loving why? Just let me eat goddammit

uvar posted:

quote:

Specifically parsley (... that's garnish ... you don't eat the garnish ... that's etiquette).

The Butcher posted:

She would act/be confused and deny that ever happened.

I can't be sure if that's the alzheimer's ramping up or just her usual lifelong style of "do thing, deny thing ever happened".

Weird times.

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

ITT goons getting as smug as boomers because they don't play Monopoly like those stupid plebs.

Speaking of boomers, oh lord did they complain back in the day when childproof medicine bottle caps were introduced. Figuring out how to hold down the cap and then turn it was utterly beyond their leadened brains.

Lil Peeler posted:

My mom was the same way, but relented over time and eventually enjoyed the show. A big part of it came from being an Evangelical Christian earlier in her life. While she wasn't super into religion when she raised me, she was always averse to "crass" humor and popular culture that didn't share her moral values.

That's a very boomer thing, making sweeping value judgements about stuff you're not familiar with based on limited interaction and anecdotal evidence.

bitterandtwisted posted:

The dumbest moral panic in the UK I'm old enough to remember was "video nasties" - horror movies, mostly direct to VHS. Lots of films were banned outright, including good ones like Evil Dead. Others could be seized and destroyed, including a number that nowadays are only rated 15

There was a high profile murder case where toddler James Bulger was killed by two older children and the tabloids, based on nothing at all, blamed the movie Childsplay 3
Mary Whitehouse, one of the big figures behind that panic, is mentioned by name as one of the Pigs in the Pink Floyd song.

bob dobbs is dead posted:

prediction goes: second boomeriest peeps in the history of the world were the romans in the heyday of their success

explains lots imo

Chocobo posted:

My mom was convinced my dad was having an affair because "there was a conversation on screen about him meeting this girl".

It was one of those lovely little porn site banner ads about dating local singles that mimicked a messenger window. I had to have multiple awkward conversations with her in order to save their marriage. Yes, he probably typed "porn" into the googles. No, that was not actually a conversation he had with a local single girl. Yes, you both need to learn how the internet works.

Edit: quoted the wrong person. Sorry, still figuring out these internets.

shame on an IGA posted:

doing everything according to a rigid series of steps with zero critical thinking is the core of what they are, it's why they lose their poo poo every time a menu moves in a new version of Outlook, they're scared to click around and look for it because they might break something. Anything which is not mandatory is forbidden.

Plan Z posted:

Being able to nap as a kid must have been rad. My mother hated the idea of people sleeping, and would wake anyone up if she was up. She chilled out on it a few years ago after she passed out in public from sleep deprivation. It turns out a woman she knew from church who was a "nurse" (actually just answered phones) told her that "Nobody actually needs sleep" and no attempts to convince her otherwise, even from a doctor, could change her mind.

PipHelix posted:

When you guys go visit NYC after all this, do yourself a favor, after you see the Empire State Building and Ellis and have a real authentic New York Slice at the Times' Square Sbarros, swing by Staten Island, or the South Shore of Long Island, or anyone having a screaming fight with protestors at Columbus Circle.

He'll be the guy with the gold chain and the trump hat and you can all have a consciousness raising session on how awful Italian Americans have it. Why, they way they're portrayed in the Sopranos and the things they say about Christoforo Colombo! Definitely do NOT try to explain racism to anyone who uses the term 'g*ps* c*b'. But you likely won't find many of them in any of those places.

Apologies for the derail, good night, gently caress me for having lived in a real place. I am vanquished. Please return to making GBS threads on the people who wield structural power against minorities and have for 50 years.

univbee posted:

I can't believe the parents who had issues with naps. I loving wish my 5-year-old napped, or even got into bed before 10:30 instead of bouncing off the walls despite all attempts to get him to settle down.

Piss Meridian posted:

LabyaMynora posted:

Y'know why nobody gave a gently caress?

'Cuz it was called "Cock Blockers," but with a silhouette of a chicken in place of the word "Cock."

Colonel Cancer posted:

If you didn't write like this... As a brooding teenager... You missed out...