Ask me about almost any popular internet trend right now, and I will tell you, I don't know how to do that. Or I will say, never heard of it. Or I will give you a blank look of complete confusion because I don't have a clue what you just said. I don't know how to use the internet the way that normal people use the internet. I can use it like an old person, I guess, but not like a young person.
I know what Twitter is, but I don't actually understand how it works. There's a lot of # and @, I think, but I don't know what they do. And then I see those same things show up on Facebook, but I'm not sure why.
There are all these new-fangled websites out there like Pinterest and Reddit and Spotify and Google+. I don't know how to use these; I don't know what they do. I think I signed up for a Google+ account, but I didn't mean to; it was an accident. And now I get emails from Google+ about things I should do or people I should know, and they confuse me. I don't want to sign up for too many websites because that will confuse me more.
This is how I use computers and the internet. I go on webpages or into software programs I have used before and hope they look the same. When they look different than they used to (because they will look different someday), then I guess. When I use a website or program that I've never used before, I just guess what buttons to push and hope that it works. And some days I am smarter than computers and the internet and some days I am not. Some days I am a good guesser and some days I am not.
Fortunately, it is usually something that doesn't really matter to me, so I just skip it if I can't guess the right buttons. And if it is something that does matter to me, I go to a different website and try to find simple, easy-to-follow instructions on how to do it, hopefully a video with visual aides. And when that website's instructions make no sense to me or don't actually match up to what I'm looking at, then I wait. And eventually my husband will come home, and he will fix it for me.
That is what my husband is for. If the computer or printer or iPod or internet page is kicking my ass, my husband will fix it for me.
So now you know. Several times a week, at least, I ask myself as I guess and push random buttons to see what will happen, "Am I smarter than my computer today?" And quite often the answer is no, I am not smarter than this computer. But it's okay. I don't need to be. It will be okay.
