Read Online My Formerly Hot Life by Stephanie Dolgoff - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Stephanie Dolgoff
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bad if you don’t—is one I’d be wise to apply to anything that feels like I’m too much of a Formerly to dip into.
But don’t for a minute think that I’m an Andy Rooney–like dinosaur who can muse for an entire segment about how many wristwatches I own but never wear or who asks for my emails to be printed out for me so I can readthem in hard copy. Unlike the stereotype of folks my mom’s age, I’m not fearful or dismissive of technology, even if I don’t see it as the extension of self that younger people often do. The problem is, I am barely able to find the time and the presence of mind to learn what I need to know to make the technology I already have do the minimal things I ask it to do, let alone explore the next generation of gizmo and all of its many features, the ones that the guy at the store assured me I could have so much fun with.
Fun. Hah! Let’s say I somehow miraculously have four hours budgeted for fun—fun for me primarily, not fun for the kids that will also be enjoyable for me. There are about 700 things I’d spend that time doing before learning how to use a new handheld device that I will probably drop in a Portosan at a Cheetah Girls concert. Coffee and a pedicure with a girlfriend I haven’t seen in months; a massage and a leisurely trawl at a bookstore; seeing a movie with my husband that’s not by Disney/Pixar. You get the idea. That’s another way you know you’re a Formerly: if you simply want your gadgets to do the three or five things you need them to do and do them properly.
Of course, there are tech-minded Formerlies who are interested in technology for technology’s sake, just as I’m into clothes beyond the fact that they cover my naked body. And I love that, in part because they can explain it all to me when I’m about to smack my computer. But I’ll always be clawing my way up the learning curve. All of this technology made its appearance when I was already a grown-up and hadeverything well in hand. It basically stood there like a stubborn child with its lip out and insisted I drop everything and learn how to use it. In the early 1990s, someone who didn’t check with me first decided that cassette tapes were no longer good enough and that everyone had to convert to CDs. Remember that? It seems quaint now, but aside from a gnarled mess of an overplayed love mix from a high school boyfriend, I didn’t understand why I had to go out and buy CDs of the same music I already owned. Now that there’s a new thingy I supposedly must upgrade to every other week, you can see as I might be a bit annoyed.
One could argue that another sign you are a Formerly is the degree to which you are thrown for a loop when websites you like are “upgraded” beyond recognition. My Formerly friend Melissa O., who ran the site for a magazine I used to work for (but nonetheless is stymied at having to make a conference call, which makes me perversely happy), says that after a redesign, people Formerly age and older are less likely to come back. “Even if the site is better and easier and clearer, she’s thinking, I can’t find that one thing I used to love to do. A teenager will take the time to visit again and explore.”
Well, exactly. Not only does that teenager have far more time to screw around on the Internet looking for neat sites than I do, but if surfing the web is not part of a Formerly’s job or something she finds relaxing, odds are, she’s online to stay in touch and do her business. I mainly go online to read news and blogs, to shop and to get information for storiesthat I’m working on. The only pure fun I have is on the massive timesuck that is Facebook. And predictably enough, when they redid their site after I’d been on for a few months, I felt like someone had come into my house, rearranged my underwear drawer, hidden all my everyday bras and panties and replaced them with wedgie-inducing thongs and impractical lingerie that was for someone with boobs that
But don’t for a minute think that I’m an Andy Rooney–like dinosaur who can muse for an entire segment about how many wristwatches I own but never wear or who asks for my emails to be printed out for me so I can readthem in hard copy. Unlike the stereotype of folks my mom’s age, I’m not fearful or dismissive of technology, even if I don’t see it as the extension of self that younger people often do. The problem is, I am barely able to find the time and the presence of mind to learn what I need to know to make the technology I already have do the minimal things I ask it to do, let alone explore the next generation of gizmo and all of its many features, the ones that the guy at the store assured me I could have so much fun with.
Fun. Hah! Let’s say I somehow miraculously have four hours budgeted for fun—fun for me primarily, not fun for the kids that will also be enjoyable for me. There are about 700 things I’d spend that time doing before learning how to use a new handheld device that I will probably drop in a Portosan at a Cheetah Girls concert. Coffee and a pedicure with a girlfriend I haven’t seen in months; a massage and a leisurely trawl at a bookstore; seeing a movie with my husband that’s not by Disney/Pixar. You get the idea. That’s another way you know you’re a Formerly: if you simply want your gadgets to do the three or five things you need them to do and do them properly.
Of course, there are tech-minded Formerlies who are interested in technology for technology’s sake, just as I’m into clothes beyond the fact that they cover my naked body. And I love that, in part because they can explain it all to me when I’m about to smack my computer. But I’ll always be clawing my way up the learning curve. All of this technology made its appearance when I was already a grown-up and hadeverything well in hand. It basically stood there like a stubborn child with its lip out and insisted I drop everything and learn how to use it. In the early 1990s, someone who didn’t check with me first decided that cassette tapes were no longer good enough and that everyone had to convert to CDs. Remember that? It seems quaint now, but aside from a gnarled mess of an overplayed love mix from a high school boyfriend, I didn’t understand why I had to go out and buy CDs of the same music I already owned. Now that there’s a new thingy I supposedly must upgrade to every other week, you can see as I might be a bit annoyed.
One could argue that another sign you are a Formerly is the degree to which you are thrown for a loop when websites you like are “upgraded” beyond recognition. My Formerly friend Melissa O., who ran the site for a magazine I used to work for (but nonetheless is stymied at having to make a conference call, which makes me perversely happy), says that after a redesign, people Formerly age and older are less likely to come back. “Even if the site is better and easier and clearer, she’s thinking, I can’t find that one thing I used to love to do. A teenager will take the time to visit again and explore.”
Well, exactly. Not only does that teenager have far more time to screw around on the Internet looking for neat sites than I do, but if surfing the web is not part of a Formerly’s job or something she finds relaxing, odds are, she’s online to stay in touch and do her business. I mainly go online to read news and blogs, to shop and to get information for storiesthat I’m working on. The only pure fun I have is on the massive timesuck that is Facebook. And predictably enough, when they redid their site after I’d been on for a few months, I felt like someone had come into my house, rearranged my underwear drawer, hidden all my everyday bras and panties and replaced them with wedgie-inducing thongs and impractical lingerie that was for someone with boobs that
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