What's your 'old person' trait?

My old person trait is being 72.

You! The only person on Lemmy older than me!

I absolutely hate AI.

Is this an old person trait? Consider me a curmudgeon then.
- Anything invented before you turn 15 is just how the world works.
  Anything invented between the ages of 15 and 30 is revolutionary and groundbreaking and you should pursue a career in it.
  Anything invented after you turn 30 goes against the natural order of things.
- I would think so. Given how obsessed people have become with AI and how pretty much everyone and their mother has ingrained themselves with AI. It's harder to find someone who doesn't use it at all than those who do. I hate it and everything that comes with it.

I have opinions on my lawn and your proximity to it.

I've started noticing birds, and worse, I've started recognizing them.

If you haven't tried Cornell's "Merlin" app, I highly recommend it.
Bird watching is peaceful. I love it.
- That app is awesome!
- I love that app so much. My Amseln and Kohlmeisen are so sweet.
I volunteered over the summer to track birds at a plot of local conservation land. Went out there at the crack of dawn with binoculars and everything. That's when I knew I was really getting old.

Arthritis, so I can predict rain with my knees.

I have several joint damaging injuries. I've broken my ankle, torn the cartilage in my knee, and dislocated my shoulder fourteen times - and not only are those only the joint injuries, but only those that have required surgery.
Last year, during a change of seasons, I was visiting a local diner for a takeout order and asked if they minded if I sat down to wait for my order, explaining that I was a damaged individual. They, of course, acquiesced, but then the owner of the venue asked if I noticed more pain during inclement weather.
That was the first time over about thirty years of owies that I realized my pain might be correlated with barometric pressure.

I refuse to use TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. I only have Facebook because 90% of my friends and family are there and it's the primary way I stay in touch with them, but I'd like to get rid of that too.

Regarding TikTok, I was serving in the US military as an IT sysadmin when it became popular. But we discovered that the app embedded itself deep in your phone's hardware, granted itself full administrative access to your phone, then started trickling all your data to servers in China. And you couldn't fully uninstall it once you'd installed it once. Your phone was completely compromised if you ever installed that app.

It became a huge security risk and we were told to never use it. It was a horrifyingly effective spy tool China could use to easily collect data on us. That's why President Biden pushed to ban TikTok in the US.

But of course, TikTok became super popular among our civilian population and they refused to give it up, which led to a lot of pushback against the ban. It never held, and now people are still using it and sharing all their private information with China.

Meta does something similar with Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp, but we at least can keep tabs on what they're doing with your private data, since they're an American company. They mostly use your information to build advertising profiles on you, to better catch your attention with ads. But that information could easily be used against you if federal organizations wanted to. ICE could use it to identify non-white Americans and their daily habits and easily intercept them.

Still, if you don't want your private information being potentially stolen by these companies, it's best to dump these programs. I don't install them on my phone or tablet and I keep Facebook's website isolated on my computer, since it likes to read other open windows and use those sites to fine-tune advertising data for you.

Google has turned into one of these companies that collects data on everything you do, so I'm in the middle of de-Googling my life right now. But it's really hard because they're embedded everywhere.

We're living in a dark time where the only way to prevent corporations and governments from collecting information on you is to stay offline. Which is nearly impossible nowadays. We don't get privacy in this modern Information Age. Not while Capitalism is still a thing.

that's gonna need to be sourced.
is tiktok really exploiting phones to root them, then covertly installing itself "deep in your hardware"?
- When you install TikTok, it fabricates its own independent SoC within your phone. Sometimes you can tell because the case bulges slightly, but it depends on the model.
  This isn't strictly forbidden by Android and iOS APIs (yet), but there are limitations – this most notably affects the capacitors on the new SoC which degrade quickly and can make a faint clicking noise, hence the name "TikTok".
- I don't know the veracity of the statements about tiktok, but I do remember a hubbub back in the day about facebook nestling into parts of your phone and not being uninstalled with the app. A quick search later, and it looks like it was because it was a 'default app' on samsung phones. So yeah, for this I definitely want to see the proof of concept and at least some relevant info on tiktok specifically.
Yep, I am like this too.
How do you effectively promote spyware?
Make it addictive like a drug, make it a core element of common culture, and most importantly, make it have some kind of socializing network effect that generates a knee jerk disgust in normies when anyone dares to question its widespread and regular use.
It is extremely funny to me when someone asks me to install say discord or insta or whatsapp, and I say I don't use them for security and privacy reasons...
Then I ask them to install signal, and they say 'I'm not going to install a whole app just for you.'
Apparently entirely unaware of, oblivious that they literally just asked me to do that.
whooooosh
Then they get angry and begin to babble on about some kind of idiot nonsense about how either I don't know how to do digital security or how its just impossible so why try, or both.
If I mention that I literally did handle PII in corporate databases and thus do actually understand a decent chunk of cybersecurity...
They tend to become emotional and defensive.
Try to explain anything in detail to them and they have a bunch of sophomoric / dunning krueger instant retorts and thought terminating cliches, because they don't want to listen or possibly learn anything, they want to justify their digital drug addiction.
Oh well, works as an idiot filter for me.
Suffer no fools.
Former military person, fear mongers about magic evil of TikTok tech mining everything and sending it to the scary Chinese, says that FB does the same but also claims that somehow "we at least can keep tabs on what they're doing with your private data" (lol), while also admitting to still being on FB and using Google's services. Not at all suspicious and incoherent I'd say.
We discovered that the app embedded itself deep in your phone's hardware, granted itself full administrative access to your phone, then started trickling all your data to servers in China
Ok bud, that doesn't sound stupid AF at all. This random military IT sysadmin knows this but all other cyber security experts in the world have somehow missed this crucial bit of info. And for some reason, this info hasn't travelled up the chain through the intelligence agencies. Remarkable.
- honestly sounds a bit like right wing slop.
These days I only go on facebook for marketplace and a few community groups.

The streak of white in my beard?

The fact that 75% of my media consumption is things I've already seen before?

I can maintain eye contact in a conversation and at no point do I want to fuck/fight the other person nor do I believe they want to fuck/fight me?

I can maintain friendships with people who do not share all of my views on things, with a select view even having opposing views?

Comfort wins over style every time, with zero exceptions?

I'm turning 50 soon, and almost all of this hits close to home. Almost all. My media consumption is as it's always been: new books all the time. But also no TV, and I know all about a given movie from reading a few reviews, not actually watching it.
- Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy a good read every now and again, but when I discovered indie films as a teenager I was hooked. Not to mention I was a classic "nerd" who liked comic books, Farscape, and BSG at a time before liking those things hit the mainstream.
I'm confused by the fuck/fight portion. Is it normal to want to fuck or fight every person who maintains eye contact? Have I been unknowingly threatening/coming into all of my work colleagues?
- A lot of Zoomer/Alphagens have said in surveys that the perceive prolonged or maintained eye contact in a conversation as a sign of aggression or attraction. I was using hyperbolic language for brevity.
- There's a difference between respectlfully attentive eye contact (flits to other things occasionally, but refocuses), fighting eye contact (straight staring, tense facial expression), flirting eye contact (flits between eyes and lips, soft facial expression), and autistic eye contact (direct and unwavering eye contact that drills into your soul for seemingly no reason).
  Most likely, everyone just knows (at least implicitly) that you are autistic.
Why is every sentence a question? This comes off as defensive.
- It's more of a take your pick as to which of those is my "old" trait.

I refuse to scan a qr code for a menu. Give me a damn piece of paper

This irritates the hell out of me, especially after those malicious link hijacks in the news recently. I'd accept a url before a qr code.

When out eating and drinking, my preference is to go and order food and drink at the counter/bar, rather than install some app or give a website all my personal information before I can order.

What? This is a thing at restaurants now?

Involuntary groans whenever I sit down or stand up.

I love shoehorns and sneeze loudly.

Didn't realise these were old person traits but then these are also mine.

I primarily write in cursive.

Other people don't? Why are other people writing like children?
Ugh, I feel this one. I had only written in cursive for something like twenty years, and then I got a job where I needed to write in print for some legal reasons. It was super bad, yo.
Yes, me too. Cursive is easier and faster to write. Though I usually print the capital letters.

I always get printed boarding passes for domestic flights.

How and why?
- Sorry for the late reply, as others mentioned, either print at home, hotel, or at self check in kiosks at the airport. I'm irrationally paranoid about something happening to my phone whenever I need it for things beyond basic dumb phone use.
  The worldwide outage caused by the faulty security update (last year?) happened while I was in the air and nearly disrupted my trip. I was flying from Japan back to my mom's hometown in Thailand and had one more connection in Bangkok. The gate attendants were only letting people on the connecting flight with printed boarding passes.
- Own a printer and because relying on technology is for suckers.

I genuinely hate new things and most change at this point.

I don't think it's me getting old. I think I was raised differently than most of my peers and exposed to how previous generations actually fought for their rights instead of rolling over and taking it up the ass.

Most of my peers are dumb as shit and have no concept of how much businessmen are taking advantage of them. If someone tells them to buy something, they'll buy it.

I avoid going out during busy times - e.g., rush hour, school zones, restaurants on a Friday or Saturday night.

I am incredibly difficult to buy gifts for because I have everything I want, which is not much at all.

If it isn't done by 10:00 am then it isn't getting done.

I like to go to bed at 9/10 and wake up at 4/6

The older I get the earlier my bedtime/alarm gets.
My old person trait is my knees.

You mean, like, other than twice my age being statistically dead?

Many.

Let's start with neo-Luddite tendencies, e.g. deep suspicion of, and wanting very little to do with: devices with planned obsolescence; devices that basically spy on the user; this push for LLMs and similar generative artificial "intelligence".

Or rather, the people who are pulling the strings, so to speak, behind those technologies. The technologies themselves have great potential, but that cannot be reached under those who presently control them.

Also a strong dislike of people, usually kids, making noise or worse, actually being on my property because they have no respect for certain boundaries, or they don't even know those boundaries exist. Classic "damn kids, get off my lawn" old man attitude.

And finally: I still have a flip-phone and have no other computing devices beyond the one desktop PC I'm writing this comment from.

if it helps people like me have a 50% suicide attempt rate by my age
..I'm 18
And finally: I still have a flip-phone and have no other computing devices beyond the one desktop PC I'm writing
That is hardcore. I respect it. Even my 86 year old mother has a smartphone.

My age 😁

Some part of my body always hurts. Mostly back, intestines, and joints, but these feet of mine have been finding their footing in this game lately too. Life is pain ;(

Ya probably eating something you can't tolerate. Been checked for coeliac disease? Affects joints, gut, skin, etc..
- It's a combination of arthritis and ulcers in my case, but you're spot on about poor diet playing its part with my ulcers. Learned that lesson a long time ago. And the again some time later. And then again after that. And then again last week, too. Such is life. Not sure what's up with my back tho

I have never purchased a smartphone and don't want one. I still prefer to use a flip phone. Their quality has improved over the years so I haven't been forced to switch yet.

70+ and mine is playing world of warcraft.

How is the WoW community these days? I played A LOT back in the day but stopped about 8 years ago. Have you played for a while? It crosses my mind every so often, just curious.
- I played in the same guild since before 2010 and we did up to HC raids and some M+. After the previous expansion it sort of began to fall asleep and I have mostly been playing tier 11 delves solo and story content, and some random groups, since then. I play almost every day when I'm not on FFXIV. Have some 24000h logged so I guess I think it's fun still 😀
  I can't say much about the community as a whole. I can see in forums that some people are having issues, but I have generally met very nice people.

My age

No, I do not have whatever stupidly named money transfer app you're using this week, and no, I will not install it.

Honestly when Bitcoin was new I had hope that we’d all switch to that. I’d still prefer it to the slow-ass (US) banking system (cough NACHA) but now it has an entirely different reputation.
- The idea around but coin was the block chain stuff. However, its use case for money laundering has been there from the start.

I'm always up to date on the grocery store sales in my area and when there's something especially good on sale I will show up at the store when it opens at 7:30.

“Good morning, sir! We open at 8am.”

I prefer an analog kitchen. Spring based scales, wooden utensils, gas stove, glass storage.

Electric scale because it's more accurate. Wooden utensils yes agreed, plastic from utensils does break down in your food especially while cooking, high temps. Electric stoves are a lot healthier than gas, for yourself in the kitchen and for the environment/climate. Electric stoves got soooo much better in the last 15 years. Other than nostalgia, I don't see a reason to prefer gas nowadays. Glass for storage is the best, agreed.
- An electric kitchen scale is such a game-changer. If you convert ingredient volume into weight and something ends up being a fraction of a gram, especially when reducing a recipe, no big deal.
I upgraded from a normal electric range to an induction range... OMG the difference!
- It really is fucking amazing. I was always a gas guy but induction is a game changer
- That requires new cookware?
- Where I rent now sadly has induction as well. Really miss gas.
Just a matter of quality imo, outside maybe gas, but gas is hard to unlearn. That is to say analog kitchens are nicer and easier to cook with imo

I have a drawer in the garage titled "uncle solutions", it has a collection of rusted wire, bits of electric wire and similar shit for "quick fixes". I also just bought me and my SO nordic walking sticks, we still need to get matching trekking suits. Oh and I dream about retiring to a remote cottage and growing my own veggies like proper siberian babushka.

Napping

That and still in bed early, for me. But I'm also up before sunrise, for reasons.

I try like hell to avoid shopping at peak times. Before Covid, I could shop at 2am, but now I'm one of the oldsters waiting for the place to open at 7 or 8am.

I also like Antiques Roadshow, but only the American version. I don't give two shits about your mums tea set that was signed by the Queen's dog-wrangler that you paid 50 quid for that's now worth 200 pounds.

I don't download every new random chat app that's in vogue. I'll give you my phone number and we can text or talk without having to go through more 3rd parties besides the telephone companies we get service from. I hated needing a bajillion different text apps to talk to everyone I knew in the 2000s, I sure as hell ain't gonna start that shit up again 25 years down the road. Unless someone makes something like Trillian, fuck off with your WeChats and WhatsApp and Velcro or whatever the fuck.

I'd usually agree with this but SMS is pretty insecure, so I mainly use Signal instead for the end-to-end encryption in a responsible manner (no leaking war plans like a certain SecDef).
- It's cool. I don't plan on discussing war plans. Just swapping dick and bootyhole pics.
- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/02/trump-immigration-ice-israeli-spyware
  Do we really think ICE are the only ones? This also made me wonder if this is why DoD was using an unofficial version.
Most of my friends don’t even have my phone number, let alone a messaging service. We do postal mail or just go to each other’s houses. I mail out about twenty letters a week and get that much back, on nice stationery.
It’s good to feel loved.
- Dude or dudess, if true, f*cking awesome. And i envy you
- Last time I ever wrote letters was while I was in the service. Kept every single letter.
- that's awesome but my God my ADHD ass could not wait weeks for a response 😭
  id leave them on read for like 4 months because I can't find a stamp or something and forgot about it
- Postage stamps, in this economy?
  Joke aside I think that's pretty cool.
It's interesting because inside the US, this is a totally valid opinion to hold. Outside the US, many people end up having to pay per message, but can use data for free via WiFi, so it makes more sense that these apps are popular there.
- It used to be pay per SMS (and not cheap either), that's why WhatsApp got so big in the first place, it was "free" anywhere with free WiFi. But since many years now, regular SMS became free / dirt cheap (especially within EU), so it's no longer as good as a reason to use WhatsApp now. Now it's because it has groups, media, history, is searchable, etc.
Oh Trillian, that was such a good program. I loved changing the skin to fit my mood.

I’m old

never self checkout.. unless 18+ items are involved.
other than that or stealing literally no cashier will care or even remember you.

source: am cashier at grocery store

I use self checkout because it is faster and I don't have to interact with a human
Tbh I don't use self checkout because I'm worried about the cashier recognising me I use it because the normal tills take 5 business days to clear a single person. I can be through the self checkouts before a single person has moved through a normal till.

I get up earlier on weekends than weekdays. I try to get up at 6am but I often get up to pee at 4am and just stay up. I do a bunch of things and it feels like I've had a good day then I realize it's only like 10am and I still have a whole day ahead of me.

I don't own a smart phone and never have. Miss me with that Fisher-Price technology.

I love an early supper.

&

I putter in the garden.

Antiques Roadshow is absolutely amazing. It's fascinating to see some of the old things people happen to have.

Anyways, I'm at the point where I'm rewatching a bunch of old shows and cartoons I watched growing up, either through reruns or actually seeing. Mostly reruns, like how I'm currently on season 1 of The Golden Girls, a show I second hand absorbed to the point it's one of my all time favorite live action shows period. I hope when I get old I can be a male version of Sophia.

Also, I don't need a "smart" TV. If it can handle HDMI cables, that's good enough for me. I've been thinking if I ever have to upgrade monitors or get my own "smart" TV, that I'll purposefully break warranty to crack it open to remove any form of camera/microphone and remove anything that allows the device to connect to the Internet, Wi-Fi, or cellular data, or whatever else there is.

How it’s Made.
And get off my lawn.
- I don't know if they still make episodes of How It's Made, but that show was amazing. Sure some things, like their episode on computers, are definitely outdated, but it's still a cool thing to see regardless.

I'm ready for the sweet embrace of eternal slumber.

I feed pigeons, listen to radio sometimes and I like crossword puzzles

My neck hurts like hell if I tilt my head to the right, no idea why

I've never installed a banking app.

Woah

Literally everything i do. Im not even old but I could keep a conversation going with a 60 year old easily.

Old cars, reel to reels, vhs, win 95, atari 2600, pentium 3s, 50s music, records and vintage amplifiers and speakers..dos commands..the list goes on

That and I hate social media (i realize lemmy is social media) and my smartphone stays off on weekends. I prefer books.

Nah you hate mainstream social media, you're a hipster like the rest of us XD
- Yeppp

I cannot correctly say my kids' names when I'm stressed out in a hurry. I just end up saying both of their names. Eventually I will be right.

My grandpa was infamous for forgetting which of his three childen he wanted to speak to, so he just used to shout "ChrisEricJen" when he wanted one of them to turn up. He'd then send away the ones he didnt need.

Dinner at 4pm

6 hours after lunch is a good time for dinner.

I stopped caring about a lot of pop culture stuff coming out. I don't hate it. But like it used to capture my interest. Literally never heard of Lebooboo's until SP27E4.

Basic Fuckenomics I guess.

What’s lebooboos?
- What's SP27E4?

Physical media.

Does joint pain count? I've had the back of a 90 year old since I was a teen and the rest of my joints weren't far behind

Suspenders for my pants. They are really life-changing. The usual rotund American male over-60 physique leaves no purchase to hold up pants without constant attention.

The gut with a Hank Hill no ass, a cursed combination without suspenders. My roommate is all about them and I'm coming around to his and your PoV haha!

Neuropathy. Weeeee /s

I don't have android or iOS because they are shit

Nokia 3310, right? /s
- CatB40 and Pinephone

I'm angry and pessimistic most of the time

Complaining most music sucks and sounds the same nowadays. The 90s had the best music.

70s. Maybe some 80s, too.
- I could make a solid argument for the '60s
- 1870s that is

I look out the window to see what's going on down the street and who the hell is on my lawn

I scowl and scoff at randos that park on my street or longer in front of my house.

Tools and furniture are exciting!

I liked watching it more when I was younger. Honestly many of my old person traits might be introvert nerd stuff. Its kinda hard to tell the difference sometimes.

My biggest decision of the day is usually whether I get to have alcohol or pain meds that day. Pain meds usually win.

Blood pressure meds have relieved me of that choice.

I enjoy carbonated water, my friends say it's a weird old person thing

Add a splash of lime and a salted rim to make suero.
Add lime with muddled mint for fauxjitos.

The noises I make when I sit down and stand up lol

I most likely haven't seen over 1 hour of TikTok IN MY LIFETIME. And believe me, this is certainly not common in my age range. I would have everything backed up in USB pens if I could, and I despise anything that markets as “AI” — I am aware it reduces critical thinking, something which I somewhat lack. I do not listen to music from nowadays (2020s on), only 1960s to mid-2010s music.

Furthermore, I do watch some old shows, e.g., Perry Mason.

I’m wearing clothes longer and longer instead of replacing them to look good. I don’t care about looks much anymore, if it’s serviceable I’ll keep wearing it to not waste.

I like watching old British sitcoms.

Some would also say that enjoying a good traditional Anglican liturgy is another one

Waiting for God is so damn good.

i like knitting

I don't care if what I say makes someone upset