I don't agree at all with the author's approach. I'm a millennial and I came to Reddit around 2019-2020, using it a lot since the pandemic, I prefer the new reddit a thousand times. It's not a question of interpreting the site as questions, it seems like a nonsense to me. It's a matter of making everything more visual, I don't stop to read the title, the community or the author, at a glance I see the vast majority of the post, if I consider it I see the rest of the information, most of the time I ignore the information, because I don't care.

I would like to remind you that Instagram (the example given in the article) is mostly used by millennials.

[–] Bougie_Birdie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah, I'm not sure this is the generational thing that the author is trying to make it out to be. It seems to me like one of those things that leans on personal preference.

The author's sample for the behavior of generations is a few anecdotes from personal friends. How many friends does a person have, 3, or 30, or 300? That means n is pretty small when there's something like 3 billion mellenials

[–] RandomStickman@fedia.io 6 points 22 hours ago

It might be a vaguely generational thing as in people's preference being influenced by when they hopped on board. How the website looked when they first started shapes their preference kind of thing. I started using reddit over a decade ago and vastly preferred the old layout for the same reason Foni hated it. I hated the new layout precisely because I don't want to see all the contents all the time and I want to filter it by reading the titles first. IIRC most users who come on to reddit after new is the default preferred that over the old and the percentage of people who uses old kept shrinking over time. Now that I'm on mbin I've configured it to be like old reddit as well (not that it took that much effort).

[–] charizardcharz@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago

Agreed, this seems more like a preference shaped by which layout you're used to. That would make it somewhat generational as younger users wouldn't be starting with the old layout, but some older users would also be affected if they started after the new layout became the default.

To add another anecdote, I'm Gen Z but started using Reddit 12 years ago. I prefer the old layout on desktop and even use mlmym to get a similar layout for Lemmy, but I prefer card layouts on mobile. I dislike the new layout due to what I would consider as excessive whitespace and the fact that it shows fewer comments by default, but I want to see image posts inline and use "Show Images" from RES for that.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 10 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Because you're primarily looking at image posts...

Older people, 30-40s grew up when bandwidth was a limiter, we're used to having to decide if an image is worth the bandwidth.

We just grew up with vastly different internets.

You all could just load a bunch of stuff and ignore what you didn't want. We're stuck in the mindset that bandwidth matters, so a bunch of stupid memes we aren't interested taking up bandwidth and screen real estate just feels off.

It feels less like it's being "offered" and more like it's being shoved down our throats.

Bandwidth is going to be the new "turn off the lights when you leave" for the Oregon Trail generation. In our heads we still need to be cognizant of how much we're using, even tho subsequent generations never seem to think about it. They've just never had to.

Happens to every generation in some way or another.

[–] TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org 10 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

I'm getting annoyed that every damn thing is turning into a web app now and JS/Chrome is even infecting desktop programs that traditionally were written in a real systems language like C or C++. The technology world feels janky and bloated now, built like a house of cards where one thing is relying on 20 other things, some of them in the cloud, to work right.

Programming these days seems to be more about glueing various services and APIs together to come up with a solution instead of actually coding it.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 3 points 19 hours ago

You're half right. There's a lot of house-of-cards junk (see left-pad) but a lot of it is also using existing frameworks as a foundation instead of reinventing the wheel. Cryptography in particular is one wheel you should not roll yourself.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 1 points 22 hours ago

that traditionally were written in a real systems language like C or C++

I mean...

You act like people weren't using Java for serious shit... They still do for whatever reason.

[–] Foni@lemm.ee 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I am 38 years old, I remember perfectly when downloading a single song could easily take a week, porn was exclusively photos because online videos were unimaginable and streaming hadn't even been invented yet. I don't understand why you're still worried about that right now, photos, videos, games, movies, everything moves online in a matter of seconds, downloading at +10Mb/s on emule is today normal. I have gotten used to it normally.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Anytime someone is generalizing a group like a generation...

It's usually understood that exceptions exist.

[–] Foni@lemm.ee 1 points 18 hours ago

Ok, I might be the exception, but as I said before, Instagram has its main user base among people of my generation. I don't think those users care about bandwidth at any level.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 6 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I don't stop to read the title, the community or the author, at a glance I see the vast majority of the post, if I consider it I see the rest of the information, most of the time I ignore the information, because I don't care.

Careful, this is how popular subs/communities end up full of non-relevant stuff, because people upvote without checking if it's appropriate! Thankfully I've not seen much of that here yet, but I think that's because I tend to subscribe to smaller communities.

[–] Foni@lemm.ee 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I would never upvote without seeing what community it is in. It wouldn't happen to me on Lemmy but the Reddit algorithm spent weeks showing you stuff from that sub and it was something I hated, maybe over time I ended up doing what you said, but for now I still have the habit of doing it.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 1 points 17 hours ago

I had the opposite experience, I was always told that if I upvoted certain things I'd see more of it, never seemed to make a difference!

[–] Microw@lemm.ee 5 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Same, millennial here and I massively prefer card view over having to click again. Similarly I want a Mastodon interface in which links are shown as link preview cards.

[–] Foni@lemm.ee 2 points 18 hours ago

Yes, a link without a preview is unpleasant