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this post was submitted on 31 May 2024
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Asklemmy
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@enbyecho @asklemmy I'm well aware that I'm somebody else's elder. I meant it matter-of-factly, like "geriatric pregnancy".
a) You made a gross generalization that cannot be attributed to a particular age group in a consistent, reproducible manner. "Old" in itself is of course an imprecise term use primarily in relative terms.
b) If as you assert, then you used the term incorrectly. The commonly accepted medical definition of "geriatric" is 65 years or older. When used in a general way to mean "aged" it is not "matter-of-fact" but a generalization and by it's nature relative.
What you really mean is "people older than me that I find annoying" similar to "boomer" or, in your case, your specific non-factual and colloquial use of "geriatric".
IOW, attributing your annoyance to some vague age group is roughly as ridiculous as attributing your annoyance to the color T-shirt someone is wearing. Or what country they come from, race they are... etc etc etc. It's a pointless, meaningless, and often highly localized stereotype.
It's not the attributes of the person, it's the behavior.
I've observed the same thing. The phenomenon is real, even if it's a generalization. How would you communicate this idea in a polite way? "A certain way of communicating by text that is predominantly displayed by the geriatric population"?
You don't. It's still a pointless unprovable stereotype.
Is it really unprovable? A quick search online for me reveals a lot of spilled pixels on the subject of how age is correlated with communication styles in various media. I think Gretchen McCulloch wrote about this even.
I don't see why it's bad to talk about these things. I'll admit, OP's language here was rather inflammatory. But some people say what you're saying regarding ebonics, yet AAVE has become one of the biggest fields in linguistics today. "Stereotype" doesn't necessarily mean "problematic to acknowledge."
@enbyecho @asklemmy Well, geriatric pregnancies start at age 35, so it's really a flexible adjective. If you took it incorrectly, that's on you.
Based on the mixed responses I'm getting, it is not an established stereotype that older people write emails and text messages poorly. If I knew it was then I wouldn't have asked if others had similar experiences to mine in the first place.