The day my boss, who asked for my help, said “That’s not what GPT said” and promptly ignored my input, wasted 2 days of a customer’s time and $700 of their money (refuses to walk back his time doing what GPT said), then finally allowed me to fix the actual problem using my meat popsicle intelligence’s output, which took 14 minutes.

We’re doomed. He votes.

Lol I’m autistic, I’ve never been in touch. I rarely understand what’s going on but I fake it really well!

Brother I have never once been “with it”, as the kids say, and the rock I live under gets comfier every year so I probably won’t try to change that.

i am an “old hat” in my fire dept. been here 21 years. know a lot. seen a lot. still learning a lot. trained a lot of the newbs. who are mostly 20-30 now. and definitely a cohort of their own. eager. but also dismissive of some of us old guys sometimes. lately i feel like it’s time. i kinda want to transition to a more academic life too. but am grappling with the fomo when the next big job comes in, though i have been at a lot of local history making fires. just kinda feeling invisible, so maybe it’s time to retire.

I started realizing I was out of touch musically when there were big festival lineups and I didn’t know 95% of the bands.

I’m a Millennial and I could kinda follow Gen Z humor for the most part, but then Gen alpha came along with Skibidi Toilet. That broke me, I’m… I’m done.

Probably always been a bit out of touch. Never really enjoyed pop culture. The first time was probably around 10 when everyone started getting into social media and I was like why the fuck would you ever put your real name and face on the internet.

When some actress died recently and there was like 30 posts on reddit and all I could think is who the hell is this? And to be honest, I realized I didn’t care and it’s time to leave reddit. Then I thought, I’m getting old, I don’t need a virtual obituary and just want to see cat pictures or something funny after work.

I think when I moved from not liking things younger people enjoyed to simply having no idea what they enjoy at all.

I’ve never been particularly with it on trends and such. When I was younger I knew the trends and rejected them in the spirit of youthful rebellion, aspects of my personality were defined by what and who I wasn’t.

Then I got a little older and rejected the things people slightly younger than me enjoyed. This came naturally, because I was no longer the target audience for these things it was easy to write them off as if I were.

Now I don’t even know enough to reject them. My knowledge of what younger people like seems to be about five years out of date. When something new comes along that seems irritating to me it seems to pass so quickly I don’t really have time to register it, and when I find something new I enjoy there’s apparently whole fandoms about it where (presumably… hopefully…) very young people fight about it, and they’re fighting about things I genuinely don’t have time to decipher. It’s like it all moves too fast for my vision to really gain focus, by the time I’m able to tell what I’m looking at everyone else seems to have already moved on.

At 40, I don’t think I really am. I’ve never kept up with pop culture, so if you asked me who the hottest musical act is right now, I wouldn’t have a clue. My MP3 collection is so eclectic that even Lemmy probably wouldn’t recognize half of what I listen to. So, if that’s what you mean by being out of touch, then perhaps.

However, I do make an effort to stay abreast of current events, political movements, and what’s happening in the world.

That said, I do feel myself becoming somewhat disconnected from the general cultural zeitgeist as I get older. I’m much more focused on my family these days than on keeping up with what my kids are into. For example, I genuinely don’t understand the humor behind things like Skibidi Toilet, nor do I have any idea what the hell MrBeast is doing. I couldn’t tell you what the most popular YouTube channels are, either.

So perhaps I’m not out of touch with the world itself, but I’m definitely becoming less connected to the culture of the younger generations. And honestly, I’m not entirely sure that’s a bad thing.

To answer this without a Hall & Oates reference, a younger Gen Z friend of mine was talking to me about looksmaxxing and aurafarming and I just had 0 fucking idea what he was on about.

I then realized I’m out of touch and out of time.

Literally never. Not once. I was your nerd at school who’d find joy in a science encyclopedia, and really thought everyone else my age acted like the dumbest people on Earth.

Today’s “67” was yesterday’s something else. And it’s never not made me cringe.

Whenever there is some viral story about some youtube/ticktock celebrity.

If you have kids moving into their teens you figure it out fast.

They start speaking an entirely different language.

As you grown into an adult you follow your peer group and friends through whatever social life, maybe going to places like bars or events that keep up with music trends. You all like the new banger from whoever that shows up on the playlist or New Year’s Eve party. You talk about new series, what entertainer is in concert or on social media, you still remain connected to trends.

But at some point life intrudes, work starts wearing, maybe start a family, and you have less time for these excursions. Crowded, noisy, expensive bars get way less attractive and maybe you have a couple favorite chill spots that play music you like. You’ve got your playlists set. Your streaming music is “bestof” a decade a lot of the time. This is where diversion starts, you choose the familiar over seeking out the new and exciting. But you don’t really notice, you got shit to do.

But eventually you do. Younger coworkers start talking about entertainment and people more and more often you don’t know. They start using phrases and slang you have to figure out. And like I said, if you have kids, you’re gonna have to learn 6-7, gyatt, and the most irritating - the repurposing of words and symbols you already knew. # is number or pound, not just hashtag you illiterate heathens. Maybe your closet, too. You’ve now had the same jacket for 15 years, among many other pieces of clothing that have lasted; jeans, shirts, pullovers, whatever. That’s ok, why keep buying new throwaway fashion? They’re still good to wear.

So now you listen to “old” music, maybe some of your clothes are old enough to vote, and you spend time on Urban Dictionary or KnowYourMeme so you don’t feel lost when younger people sart talking about pretty much anything.

That’s when you know.