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An edit of xkcd 2501, “Average Familiarity”:
[Ponytail and Cueball are talking. Ponytail has her hand raised, palm up, towards Cueball.]
Ponytail: Open-source alternatives are second nature to us foss nerds, so it’s easy to forget that the average person probably only knows Linux and one or two degoogled Android ROMs.
Cueball: And Firefox, of course.
Ponytail: Of course.
[Caption below the panel]
Even when they’re trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person’s familiarity with their field.
partly inspired by the replies to this post but i see this kind of thing all the time (shoutout to the person who once genuinely asked “who still uses google these days?”)
made with this neat tool
Hah no they don’t. My partner doesn’t even really know what a browser is, or where the distinction between phone/pc and ‘the internet’ lies. Sure she might have heard of the word ‘firefox’ but no way she can explain what it is or does.
that’s the true ‘average’ person. they don’t know. they don’t understand. they don’t even want to know. they just use this magic thing that shows stuff from the internet. they don’t even know what a bookmark is, they just ‘google’ for everything. even google, ffs.
Years ago I watched a friend type google.com into the search/address bar of chrome, click the link, then begin to search. Painful.
Reminds me of the time SEO put a tech blog article as the top link for “Facebook login” and they got a shitload of people complaining about how they couldn’t log into this new Facebook and wanted the old one back.
https://nyulocal.com/the-internet-inept-mistake-readwriteweb-for-facebook-hilarity-ensues-482cc4d1ba68