Dear Invalid User
July 11th, 2001 Posted in InternetI used to think that computers were great for everyone. Everybody should run out and get a computer and put the wonder machines to work. Grandmas and Great Uncles should learn how to e-mail and check up on the weather where their grandchildren live. Ah the computer age.
That’s what I used to think. Then I started answering e-mail at my job. I’ve come to the conclusion that people are idiots and shouldn’t be allowed to own a computer unless they’re thoroughly trained, preferably in a rather demeaning way so they understand the power of the computer geek.
My biggest beef is with AOL users. It seems the prerequisite for joining AOL is that you have absolutely no brains in your head. It doesn’t help matters that AOL makes things difficult. In normal e-mail programs links are highlighted and you can simply click on them to launch your Internet browser and check out the website a friend sent you. Not in AOL. The links don’t work. The only way to make them work is to use HTML e-mail, which is an even bigger nightmare. You would think AOL people would be aware of this problem and so learn how to copy and paste links.
Copy and what? That’s right, most of the idiots don’t know how to copy and paste. It’s rather frustrating. Part of my job is to explain to them how to copy and paste. One person wrote me back thanking me and praising me for teaching them how to copy and paste. They said they’d been copying and pasting all day. Wow. One person even thanked me for taking the time to write out the instructions for how to copy and paste. They were amazed I took so much time to do it. One of these days they’ll realize I just copied and pasted the instructions.
It seems there’s a lot of not-so swift people on computers. I had one person write in and say tell me our computer called them an invalid user. I was tempted to start my reply with “Dear Invalid User…” Today someone replied to my e-mail with “Dear Kevin of Webmaster…” This month we’ve been giving away The Prayer of Jabez. Someone e-mailed me about the free offer and the subject line said “The Prayer of Jezebel.”
I suppose I shouldn’t be so hard on people. Computers aren’t exactly intuitive for everyone. This evening one of the elderly people in our building stopped my wife and I and asked us to help her find the address bar. One of these days some snot-nosed kid will be laughing at me when I can’t figure something out, so I guess I should be nice. But sometimes you need to vent your frustration. I’m tempted to write a book.
