The #TellMe challenge started in 2019 as a social media game: challenging others to express something in an indirect way.
Tell me you’re from NYC
without (actually) telling me
you’re from NYC.
I don’t own a car and life is easy.
Tell me you’re from the midwest
without (literally) telling me
you’re from the midwest.
It started, I think, as a fun and creative challenge playing to exaggerated stereotypes and (mis)perceptions but, social media being social media, it soon degenerated into something a little snarkier. I bet you didn’t see that coming.
Tell me you’re an idiot
without telling me
you’re an idiot.
Not that people used those words, but that was the subtext of re-posts like this:
Tell me you don’t know anything
about (whatever)
without telling me you don’t know anything
about (whatever).
This blog post could be me telling you that I don’t know anything about the #TellMe challenge, but that’s not its intention. There’s something else I don’t know anything about.
Tell me you don’t know
how WhatsApp works,
without telling me
you don’t know
how WhatsApp works.
OK, I will. A 40-something acquaintance asked for the phone number of an acquaintance-in-common and I said, thoughtfully and entirely accurately (at least as it related to my thoughts), “I don’t know if I have it.” Whereupon the asker said, “Well, if you’re on WhatsApp with her, you have her number.”
And that was true: I did have her number. Having it and finding it in a timely way were not the same thing, but the patience of the 40-something was saved by the presence of a 50-something from the same group.
Of course, once we start disclosing home truths, it’s hard to know where things stop. Just how “meta” does this get? Is it Tell me you don’t know how WhatsApp works or Tell me you don’t know how your phone works or Tell me you’re old?
Honestly, I think I’ve got a three-fer here. I may not know stuff, but I’m efficient at it.
Since I’ve plunged into the world of phone app development, I find overlaps from what I learned in book publishing decades ago, often under the guise of cute new terms. Then, there is the electronic end of development involving programming languages that I recognize the way I recognize Arabic or Japanese and that is beyond my ken. Manipulating the technology is supposed to be “user friendly.” But there is a wasteland of how to “make it simple, stupid” to traverse. As the author, creator, and editor I may not know stuff, but I had better find out ways of learning or I will lose control of what’s mine to market.
Laurna – This is where a young family member can be invaluable. Good luck!
After I got my pacemaker, I also received by mail (before Canada Post shut down for a long winter’s nap) a device to monitor how the pacemaker was working. A very nice woman from the clinic called and talked me through setting it up. Telling me, in other words. Then she said, “You’ll have to download that app using your Apple ID and account.” Oops. I said I had (I thought) three Apple IDs and at least five passwords, none of which work.
Pause.
She said, “Maybe we should get you a monitor that doesn’t require an app.”
Did I tell her without telling her that I’m clueless? Or just old?
Jim T – Hah. I prefer to think that we have many clues, but not all of them. Not clue-less, exactly, but perhaps clue-deficient? Or maybe just clue-selective. 🙂 And I hope they got you a monitor that doesn’t need an app.
I’m still chuckling at “Tell me you’re an idiot without telling me you’re an idiot.”
Sometimes it’s blindingly clear.
Tom
Tom – Indeed, and sadly, it can be blindingly clear.
I’ve always liked the line in the Corner Gas TV sitcom song: “I don’t know the same things you don’t know.”
In this so-called age of communication, it’s only getting more frustrating.
I am perfectly computer literate, but refuse to scale any more vertical learning curves just to make life more convenient for others. You want to reach me, phone me. Or email me. Or mail me (eventually).
I will continue to rant, even as I am now sitting on a digital iceberg and given a series of shoves out into the vast Sea of Incommunicado.
Barbara – 🙂 That *is* a great line. I like email but have adapted, sort of, to two texting apps so that I can reach next-gen family. That’s the “problem” – I can’t stand pat on email because I want to reach *them*. But there will come a day that I join you on your digital iceberg. Save me a spot with a view.
Plan to bring a book.
Yes, ma’am.