There’s a fine line between making a joke and being the joke.
I have long subscribed to a saying attributed to the 16th century preacher John Bradford, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” I try to keep this in mind and regulate my mockery of those to whom I may feel superior.
This has especially become true for my attitude toward the aged and infirmed. Rather than finding old people jokes funny, more often than not these days, I am reacting with “Hey, that sounds like me.” This dawning self-awareness of the hastening of my “maturation” is especially acute with technology.
A few short years ago when I was still connecting my laptop to my “smart TV” to watch streaming content on Netflix or Disney Plus, my youngest walked in and asked what I was doing. When I said I was hooking up my laptop to the TV to watch “Stranger Things,” he said nothing, picked up the cable TV box remote, pressed a button and said “Watch Stranger Things on Netflix.” Lo and behold, it came up on my TV right there without the aid or additional supplementation of a separate device.
“How’d you do that?” I asked, sounding uncomfortably like my own father, who is in his 80s.
“It’s one of the apps we have with our Xfinity. It’s all built in, Dad.” He left “duh” unspoken.
That was my first clue that my handle on technological advancement may not be what I thought it was.
I like to recall the time a more senior executive asked a question aloud to which I went back to my desk, looked it up on Google on my computer and returned within minutes with an answer. He was amazed. I didn’t tell him how I got the answer, mostly because my intern had been doing the same thing to me for months. I thought this intern was brilliant. I didn’t realize he was just “Googling” everything.
I have long made it part of my weekly schedule to call my parents on Monday nights. During many of those conversations we have a segment I like to call “IT Support” in which I try to diagnose IT issues over the phone and offer helpful suggestions. Sometimes I succeed, but more often lately, I am failing to address their problems.
This has led me to conclude that a financially rewarding, if not patience testing, service would be IT support specifically designed for seniors.
I have also begun to recognize myself in the Progressive Insurance TV commercials featuring Dr. Rick who works with people who are in danger of becoming their parents. The one that got me recently was the poor guy trying to talk into the TV remote and failing to find the football game he wanted to watch. I confess, I have been that man, much to my sons’ frustration/delight.
Either technology is outpacing me, or I am falling behind.
The latest example is artificial intelligence, or AI, as this ubiquitous term is better known. Specifically, I am falling victim to “generative AI” or the content shared on the interwebs that isn’t real but is instead, created by AI to look real.
I didn’t realize that while I scrolled Instagram and laughed at these posts of people mocking their parents for sending them obviously fake videos and asking if they are real, I was literally sending our family Instagram group AI videos of unreal products with such age-revealing captions as “Hey, who else wants this?” or “If you’re making my Christmas gift list, you can add this” only to have one of my better informed offspring reply with simply, “Dad, that’s not real” or “AI.”
Laughing at all those olds out there falling for AI videos isn’t so funny anymore.
These are the offending examples that I fell for: hoodie with the dog pocket, and R2D2 Roomba vacuum cleaner.
The problem is that there are enough phony videos that I can easily recognize to make me feel falsely confident in my ability to recognize all fake videos. It’s enough to erode my trust in all content shared on the internet, or at least prevent me from sharing it with loved ones as “interesting” or “cool.”
It’s to the point that anything I see online that would make me say “Wow, that’s unbelievable!” probably is, in fact, unbelievable.
AI-generated content is an age revealer. Remember about 10 years ago when we discovered there were frequencies of sound that only people under age 25 could hear? Turns out, it was a real thing. Kids were driving their teachers crazy in class playing these high pitched tones only the pupils could hear. Well, AI is just like that. It’s the new mosquito tone. Kids instantly recognize AI content while us olds are genuinely contemplating how that cat could learn the moves to the Macarena.
I’m sure none of you have had this happen to you. Y’all are no doubt smarter than me. But let my mistakes serve as a cautionary tale. Don’t fall victim to hubris.
The very memes you laugh at today could be mocking you tomorrow.
