this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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This is helping my mother:
"Yeah, yeah..."
start explaining using a ver simple analogy in a piece of paper
starts rolling eyes and looking away
"You're ignoring me..."
"I'm not ignoring you! I don't need to look at you all the time"
"What did I just said?"
"I don't know! I don't understand any of this stuff!"
"Yeah, that's why I was explaining. I'm done"
"YOU NEVER HELP ME!"
I know, I know. Some explanations are simple but can be overwhelming to others. But she refuses to even try. She's far from computer illiterate. I set a jellyfin server and she uses it everyday. Every time she has a hard time with it she expects me to drop everything and just do it for her. Everytime I go I don't do anything, I just go there and while she shows all I do is repeat these two sentences: "What does it say on the screen and what are the options?" and "What do you think you should select?". She eventually figures it out as I force her to actually read it.
THIS! This is the most frustrating fucking part of it all!
Both of my parents are smart. They have college degrees, were successful within their fields, and can generally pick up on new concepts and ideas really, really quickly. But somehow they just turn off their brains and refuse to engage with whatever is in front of them with a computer. They set up their smart watches quickly, they have no problems with apps and by god, my dad can troubleshoot anything from a boat engine to electrical wiring to freaking concrete work... but if something on the computer isn't working it doesn't matter how you try to explain it, how many times you tell them to just simply fucking. read. what's. on. the. screen. they won't do it. They want someone else to do it all and they won't watch.
Of course you don't fucking understand, you old geezer! You refuse to even make the attempt!
My mother can be the same way. I don't know why. I eventually told her I charge very reasonable $300/hour rates for computer support and she stopped asking for help.
My dad on the other hand... More than a decade ago I got tired of fixing his computer problems so I set him up with ubuntu. He's into it. He manages his own desktop now and never asks for help. I have no idea if he's done weird things on the machine, but he seems happy. He even got a printer working.
Getting CUPs to work properly is a right of passage for any Linux enthusiast. You win the cool dad competition.
My parents are constantly getting signed out of their various websites. I don't know how they manage it, because they are definitely not deleting their cookies I doubt they even know how.
Why do weird tech issues always occur to the most technologically incapable people
They're probably deleting their history because of "safety".
The end there, brutal, holy shit lol. And never any acknowledgement, huh, that she basically navigated the whole scenario herself after one of these sessions?
You have some saintly patience.
And she's good at it too when she actually tries! You wouldn't believe what she actually manages to do when I can't help her.
That sounds (from a distance of course), cartoonishly silly. Of all the forms "IT for relatives" takes, yours feels like a rare one lol. Cheers.