STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

erin · Chanel

your parents + the internet

halleybird · Hermes

My mom is just discovering that there's more to the Internet than just email. Around Christmastime, she says to me: "Did you know that you can just put in your credit card number online, and they bring stuff right to your door?!?"

On another note, my grandpa is almost 90 and he has had his own email address for years. He keeps in touch with his grandkids that way.

Cricket · Gucci

My dad is utterly clueless on the internet. A while ago he wanted to send me an email and he asked if my address was www.janedoe.com ! With of course my name in the "jane doe" spot. No, Dad, everyone doesn't have their own websites.

My mom is a world-class internet shopper, but still has dial up. I don't know what's wrong with her! It is EXCRUTIATING to do anything on their computer, much less shop! Surfing the net at her house puts me in a bad mood. She has so much more patience than I do.

Maddie · Coach

My mom has started posting on a forum and has internet friends! Granted, it's a forum for people with chronic back pain, but it still weirds me out.

My dad is pretty internet savvy. He's a lawyer and has his own business website and eveything. He's also really into music and LOVES iTunes.

zeitgeist4 · Gucci

My dad has always worked with computers, so back in elementary/middle school we had Prodigy internet service, even before AOL. So he is internet/computer savvy.

My mom on the other hand can barely use the internet. The computer magically starts doing weird things when she uses it, so she only checks her e-mail if my bro (who is away at college) calls her and tells her to check her e-mail. Even then I have to help her sometimes. She will go on HGTV.com or the Martha Stewart website, but that's it.

sfclinevandy · Coach

After the American Idol Standards episode, my mom told me she really liked some of the music so she ordered it. I was really impressed and asked if she had learned how to do I-tunes (my dad is obsessed with i-tunes but my mom's not as high tech). She told me she didn't order the actual songs from i-tunes but she ordered the SHEET MUSIC from sheetmusic.com (she's a musician). I thought that was funny.

My mom is obsessed with the internet Text Twist. It's like Boggle and she plays it all the time.

boobaby · Kate Spade

My parents are very internet-savvy. Back in the infancy of ebay (I think 1997 or 1998), my parents were making bank. They were selling antiques locally for a few years by renting out booths in antique malls, but ebay exposed them to a larger customer base. They created a little warehouse out of our childhood bedrooms. They set up a little studio in our basement for taking photographs of their wares, had a packaging station, etc. As ebay grew, they found it more and more difficult to make good money for all the hassle, so they auctioned off their antiques and officially retired from the biz. My dad still buys on ebay all the time. In fact, he's such a savvy ebayer that when I really want something and I can't keep monitoring it (ebay is blocked at work), I just call him up and he will get it for me. He is very proud of his 100% feedback score.

sfclinevandy: A couple years ago, while visiting my parents, I introduced my mom to Bookworm and Text Twist and she's still addicted!

blink · Coach

my parents, especially my dad (met his 2nd wife on the internet in the early 90's!!!), are internet savvy. my mom doesn't use it for much more than email though, because she has slow dial-up and also her job only requires very minimal computer skills for a DOS based software without internet access.

but my in-laws are another story, they are still into the whole forwarding every flipping chain email they get. their outlook inbox is FULL of thousands (ok maybe hundreds) of jokes/pics/videos/cartoon and other such nonsense. I was so over that by 1998.

Lilykind · Hermes

My dad majored in computer science and had been using the Internet since its infancy for his job. He felt it was imporatant for my brother and I to know how to use the computer and later the Internet. We got internet in 1997, and my dad used it for everything. He still does...bless his heart.

My mom? My brother finally taught her how to go online maybe five years ago (she's 63 now and has never been tech-savvy) and she only goes online to get recipes from Martha Stewart for dishes she'll never make but likes to look at.

alb · Marc Jacobs

My mom has email but just recently figured out that you have to put "www" first when checking a website. My dad (who is internet savvy) asked her once to pay a bill online and she couldn't pull up the website b/c he didn't say to put "www". So now when I tell her about a new site or something I always have to say "it's www.whateveritis.com"

okay weird, it looks like that's a real site.

erin · Chanel

alb wrote:

My mom has email but just recently figured out that you have to put "www" first when checking a website. My dad (who is internet savvy) asked her once to pay a bill online and she couldn't pull up the website b/c he didn't say to put "www". So now when I tell her about a new site or something I always have to say "it's www.whateveritis.com"
okay weird, it looks like that's a real site.

that's funny. whenever i tell my mom a website to go to, she types it into google instead of typing it in the url space above.

DC Shopper · Dooney & Bourke

Maddie wrote:

My mom has started posting on a forum and has internet friends! Granted, it's a forum for people with chronic back pain, but it still weirds me out. My dad is pretty internet savvy. He's a lawyer and has his own business website and eveything. He's also really into music and LOVES iTunes.

my mom has internet friends, too, it's soo weird. from dorky chat groups like church organists and stuff. she is surprisingly computer-savvy, but at the same time she gets flustered with things like posting pictures and stuff.

my dad uses the internet for comparison shopping and directions.

poptart · Coach

Lilykind wrote:

My mom? My brother finally taught her how to go online maybe five years ago (she's 63 now and has never been tech-savvy) and she only goes online to get recipes from Martha Stewart for dishes she'll never make but likes to look at.

OMG I just laughed for like 5 minutes. What is it with Moms and their recipes?!

manhattanmonkey · Kenneth Cole

erin wrote:

alb wrote:
My mom has email but just recently figured out that you have to put "www" first when checking a website. My dad (who is internet savvy) asked her once to pay a bill online and she couldn't pull up the website b/c he didn't say to put "www". So now when I tell her about a new site or something I always have to say "it's www.whateveritis.com"
okay weird, it looks like that's a real site.

that's funny. whenever i tell my mom a website to go to, she types it into google instead of typing it in the url space above.

Mine too! Whenever I tell my mom to type something in to look at she asks "here?" pointing to the Yahoo search bar. No mom....the address bar!

Dad still marvels at the net but still doesn't no where to type things either. He recently ordered something online and was amazed at how he could track it.

Bastet · Kate Spade

My dad is very internet savvy. He was the one who taught me how to build my own computers back when I was in high school.

Mom "uses the internet" through my dad; she doesn't know anything about how to use a computer and doesn't want to learn.

She does "email" by writing the email down on a pad. Dad types it up and sends it. Or she stands at the computer and dictates what she wants the email to say while he types. To get email, dad prints it out and gives it to her.

She "surfs the web" by asking dad to do all the clicking. Dad got sick of that really quick. Now he just goes to the website and prints a bunch of stuff out in low-quality grayscale so she can read it and look at stuff at her own pace.

She routinely tells me never to make a blog or post pics on the web because she heard on the news that people will stalk me through it. (She doesn't know I have a LiveJournal and a photo gallery).

She can't believe that I don't subsribe to a newspaper or own a phone book. (But always asks me to look stuff up on the web because it's faster)

A few years ago, dad built mom her own computer and hooked it up to the internet. I tried to teach her the basics, but when she informed me that she did not want to use the mouse at all, I gave up.

ILoveChoo · Hermes

oh lord, they're both awful! Mom writes down emails and my little sister sends them to me. And my Dad's knowledge is pretty much limited to fowarding those dumb email chain letters and jokes.

Although Mom did impress me the other day when she told me that she went on to found some information about a problem my little bro was having with his hands (congential trigger thumb?) and she actually found some! I tried to send her to jcrew.com for a swimsuit (she needs long torso and nowhere around he sells thsm) but the idea of putting her credit card number in freaked her out too much so she wouldn't buy one. Hmm, maybe that would be a good Mothers Day present...

curiouscookie · BCBG

Dad is more technically savvy. But hates to be on the internet to chat or write emails. He likes to browse and I while he was visiting me (I have high-speed, and they only have dial up) was online looking at everying from cars to home depot kinda stuff.

Mom on the other hand was never very technically savvy but 5 years ago when one of the best ways to communicate with me was via IM, she picked it up and started flying on the keyboard. Often she would tell me off for being slow in my response !

and dad would conveniently just sit by her while she is chatting with me asking her to say this or that to me

Mom still hasn't learnt to turn the comp on and dial up, open the browser,etc. Even though my brother and I have both offered to teach her. She used to say that that was the only way she could get the boyz to chat with me.

Dad is really cute about one thing - SPAM. He often forwards stuff to me and asks me to check out this deal and that deal!!!

No wonder their computer always has virus problems. I have to keep telling him not to open up emails from people he doesn't know and to just delete them but his curiosity is always peaked by the whole marketing things.

zeitgeist4 · Gucci

Lilykind wrote:

she only goes online to get recipes from Martha Stewart for dishes she'll never make but likes to look at.

Bwahahaha! My mom does that too! She cooks, but she has piles of Martha Stewart recipes she never makes.

luckyclover · Dooney & Bourke

Bastet your post cracked me up. Although my parents don't actually do all that, I could easily see them doing it that way lol. My mom had to do a class for work where she made a website for something related to her job but she just doesn't "mess with it" as far as the computer is concerned. She has email, writes up a christmas letter every year and does job related stuff on her laptop but that's about as far as it goes. I like it that way....I think anything more would over load them haha.