From my perspective as a 56 year old who hasn’t been on this site long and this being my first Internet forum I’ve actually participated in to any degree and also as a manager of folks ranging from 61 to 22 I have a couple of thoughts.
One is a “mechanical” generation v a “computer operator” generation. Example: My father got a new TV because his old one exhibited a small flame and copious smoke to announce its demise. He had followed the directions to the letter to set it up, been on the phone with tech support for at least two hours, and couldn’t get it to do the channel setup thing on his over air antennae. I stopped by to check on him and asked what he was doing. He was carefully boxing up the TV to return it. Asked him to let me have a crack at it so he did. He gave me the instruction manual which I totally ignored while hitting all sorts of buttons on the remote until I finally got to the setup screen I was looking for, set it to antennae, and started the automatic channel scan. As it started he asked what the TV was doing as he hadn’t seen that before. Told him it was automatically finding all the available channels but we could go back and edit later if he wanted. He asked how I got it to do that. Told him honestly, I didn’t know. I just hit buttons until it did what I wanted it to do. A few minutes later his TV was working. And we had a discussion about the “mechanical” mindset he grew up with v the “computer operator” mindset. I understood his viewpoint was to read and follow instructions EXACTLY. If you’re reading a repair manual and it tells you to torque the head bolts in a specific pattern to specific torques in steps with a final torque on the third step through the sequence, THAT’S WHAT YOU DO if you don’t want to waste hours of time and trash expensive parts. If you’re setting up a TV and hit the wrong button, you’re not going to trash the TV but the instructions were probably translated from Korean to English by a person to whom English is a second language so the instructions probably suck, thus you mess with it until you get it. Totally different mindset.
On the other side, my son, an intelligent, hard working man who works in software sales and makes more than I ever have, had a spindle go out on his zero turn. He wanted help fixing it as he paid zero attention to such things growing up and now regrets it. So I took him through the thought process. It goes back together EXACTLY as it was before, so take enough pictures you can accomplish that before disassembly. Check the part for a part number. Check that against the part diagram in the manual to confirm. Call the dealer and/or get on the computer to source the part by make and part number. Read over the manual describing the replacement procedure to determine any torque specs, additional seals, gaskets, etc. needed that may not come with the part. Order the part and replace back to what it looked like before following the procedure in the WSM. This level of detailed instruction following was a bit new to him as well. However, he has been able to utilize similar thought process on mechanical and household repair issues going forward. It’s a different mindset.
The other thing, as some others have pointed out, is interacting with others on a forum of this sort does have a little bit of a learning curve. I must admit, though, it’s irritating when a question is asked, responses include relevant follow up questions, and the follow up questions receive no response or are dismissed as irrelevant.
One last thing: My son and I were riding past a billboard one day while he was still in college. It said something about a rather shockingly high high school drop out rate in NC. I said something about that being awful. He said it looked good to him. Asked him why. He said, “F&$@ those losers. Less competition for me.”
There are still some out there that understand you can say whatever you want, but you’ll never get any calves if you only have cows in the pasture. And you’re owed nothing unless you put in the work to take it. I’m related to some and some work for me. Those who don't understand that don’t work for me very long.
I do agree there are many who are entitled wastes of air.
