this post was submitted on 11 May 2026
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    alt textAn 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

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    [–] ian@feddit.uk 1 points 1 day ago

    If only they knew what the word average meant.

    [–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago (3 children)

    I can never see any media hosted from files catbox.moe, am I the only one?

    [–] spoopy@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

    Do you happen to live in Spain during a football game

    [–] Hypocrite9554@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

    Looks like there's an outage at the moment

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    [–] HrabiaVulpes 4 points 1 day ago

    Every group of nerds assumes average person knows more about their obsession...

    [–] ferrule@sh.itjust.works 54 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (17 children)

    The other day my wife was talking about her new job and having to take notes. For the past 30 years I've been keeping notes in text, then markdown in vim, starting with personal scripts, then vimwiki. A coworker showed me Obsidian, which while not FLOSS, does use an open standard for all its files. It pretty much does what my setup does.

    Then it dawned on me that my wife and other non-techies just use whatever their computer has on it by default (i.e. OneNote). She never thought to go out and look for better productivity software. The idea that there is tons of better apps out there doesn't register. She has a phone, knows about the app store and gets tons of stuff there but as for her desktop or laptop the idea of apps outside of MS Office and the video games she plays is lost on her.

    [–] BigTwerp@feddit.uk 18 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

    All my work computers are provided by the companies I work for and per their rules I can only take and store notes using their approved software and on their servers which basically means I work on a locked down Microsoft ecosystem. Access to third party productivity software is simply not possible outside of certain role specific specialist software.

    I would guess literally millions of employees have a similar setup so it's not that we are tech illiterate per say, but more accurately in the corporate world this option doesn't exist so there is no point trying.

    Outside work my productivity tools consist of a Moleskine notebook with tasteful check paper.

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    [–] sunstoned@lemmus.org 13 points 2 days ago (4 children)

    I feel obligated to mention Logseq here. It's similar to obsidian, but FLOSS (AGPL-v3).

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    [–] sleet01@lemmy.ca 11 points 2 days ago

    Condescension means "patronizing attitude or behavior"; your comic doesn't show condescension so you probably need the dictionary definition spelled out.

    .../s

    [–] Jaimesmith@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago (5 children)

    The β€œwho still uses Google?” crowd forgets most people just want their computer to work, not become a weekend side quest.

    [–] ricdeh@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

    Nonsensical argument. Just because a piece of software is FLOSS and non-Google, it is not automatically a "weekend side quest". Big Tech is very happy that these false equivalencies have spread as well as they did, but they don't hold a kernel of truth, at least not anymore.

    [–] desertdruid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

    oh man it sures takes all my weekend to install firefox and set a search engine

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    [–] BennyTheExplorer@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

    Honestly, switching search engines is pretty normie friendly. I've got a lot of non-techy friends or family, that use Ecosia or something. They also did it on their own, I didn't even encourage them to do it.

    With things like Linux it's a bit harder. But if they don't rely on any specialized software, they are usually fine with me offering to upgrade their Laptops so Linux. I installed Linux Mint on my Mom's Laptop and she can use it as well as Windows. She never complained about it.

    [–] faintwhenfree@lemmus.org 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

    I get the point, but going away from Google search is so easy.

    Gmail on the other hand I understand why people are still stuck using and I don't push them to switch away.

    But it drives me nuts that some normies in my life will complain that Google has gone worse, still refuse to switch. There are some who don't know how to change default and I still get it, but there is one mf at my work, he changed his default in edge from bing to Google and when I said since you know how to change default why not use DDG or startpage or honestly any other non giant alternative. He just says too much work.

    [–] ptu@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

    Gmail was about easiest to switch away from. You can just create a new email account and have two mailboxes. Then update the new email to services as they go.

    [–] faintwhenfree@lemmus.org 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

    With banks and financial services in general being a bitch about changing contact details. That's a form and a visit to the branch for each bank, broker, investment advisor, direct fund provider. That's already almost 30 applications. I haven't even counted stuff like vehicular services, government tax portal, property tax portal, electricity provider, gas provider, internet provider. Not all of whom allow changing for email address digitally or without some complicated support ticket.

    It's such a mountain of changes I myself have only gotten through the list halfway and it's been 4 years of trying. I can never recommend that to anyone in my family, they'll just hate me.

    P.s. This might just be my country specific problem, I understand other countries are easier.

    [–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

    I think it might be specific to your country and it sucks.

    Here, banks are required to ask you to update your contact details once a year. You just log in as usually and sometimes they just give you a form to fill out with your phone number, email, physical address and stuff. If it's unchanged, you leave it all unchanged.

    [–] faintwhenfree@lemmus.org 1 points 1 day ago

    Sounds like a dream.

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    [–] DigDoug@lemmy.world 194 points 3 days ago (19 children)

    I remember being on Reddit some time ago, and in the comments somebody mentioned Linux. The next comment was "What's Linux?"

    I try to keep that post in mind whenever I think anything is common knowledge.

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    That's why I try to show people I know how to get FOSS alternatives for their everyday apps. It takes a bit of patience but trust me when I say this: Most people are more tech savvy than you think, they just don't wanna go through a judging community.

    [–] imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 2 days ago (5 children)

    Judging by how huge share of browser usage Firefox has, I am pretty sure vast majority of normies know nothing about Firefox

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    [–] guymontag@lemmy.ml 75 points 3 days ago (23 children)

    I said "web browser" when talking to a mac user. They had noo idea what I was talking about till I said safari xd.

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