I’ve noticed a tendency in people to blame computers when they don’t actually know what they’re doing. This doesn’t bother me so much, what does bother me is the excuses that are commonly used to blame the computer are generally accepted in popular society!

“My computer crashed.”
“My hard drive crashed.”
“There is obviously something wrong with the software/crack.”
“This &^$!@ stupid thing isn’t working.”
“My computer can’t make a smaller PDF to email.”

I asked on Facebook for a term for this behaviour, I had one friend tell me ID10-T error and another tell me PEBKAC.

A person vomits out one of these computer stupidisms, they get nods of understanding, and suddenly the blame on them vanishes. This feels like the Emperor’s New Clothes all over again. Maybe these excuses persist because everyone is safe behind them; there’s no accountability, a victim mentality. The biggest culprits are probably students who LOVE to blame their computers and various fictional e-goblins for their tardiness. “My printer ran out of ink!” How convenient. Take 25c to the local print store and they’ll print you a page. It’s probably cheaper in the end to print at these places than to actually buy and maintain your own personal printer.

A side story: I used to lecture for a brief stint and I once had a student hand me a flash with his “PDF” on it. I copied it over and became suspicious when the PDF was 10 Megs big. This was a five-page essay with no pictures necessary… I looked up at the student querying the size of the file and all I got was a shrug. I decided to try to open it and Acrobat tells me it’s corrupt. I look up at the student and instantly he goes into defence mode: “It must be a virus from the library computers.” I burst out laughing and ask him how a virus works and again I get a shrug. I ask him for his backup and he doesn’t have one. I ask if he emailed it to his Gmail and he says it was too big (Last time I checked you could email 25 Meg files to and from Gmail). Sweat is building up on the poor kid’s forehead. I look him dead in the eye: “Are you bullshitting me?” “No Sir, I promise it was working this morning when I left, I even opened it on my friend’s laptop…” and as he rambled on, I renamed the file from PDF to MP3 and looked up at him and waited for him notice. He stopped talking dead in his tracks, he knew he was busted, and there was silence. I pressed enter on this MP3 file and some hip hop crap that they love so much started playing. The kid went pale. I took him to a disciplinary hearing for fraud or something like that, I can’t remember. What a laugh.

Another common thing I find is that people don’t actually read the error messages that pop onto their screens. I oft’ get phone calls complaining about something not working and when I ask what’s wrong they tell me it just doesn’t work. I then ask what the error was and they say they didn’t read it. There is a small group of people out there who think that just pressing buttons makes technology work. I remember buying something from a costume store a while back tended by an elderly couple. The husband was busy so the wife tried to process my credit card on her little machine. She went through the motions like a monkey would copy a person. Swiped the card, pressed some buttons, handed it to me, and the machine quite clearly displayed “ENTER SUPERVISOR PASSWORD”. I looked at her and told her that I don’t think she did it correctly and handed it back. Again, swipe, press press press, hands it to me, “INVALID OPTION”. I hand it back again telling her she’s done something wrong and she starts getting flustered with the little device, “Ag this damn machine, it never does what I want, I’m going to call the bank and complain!” Eventually I took the machine from her and did the transaction myself. She looks at me as if I’ve performed magic. I had never seen the machine before, I had no idea how it worked; I just followed the prompts on the screen.

I love how people like to argue with me. I had a colleague of mine tell me that they can’t get onto the network. I go through the usual rigmarole of asking what the error message is and they tell me it’s asking for a username and password. I ask them if they’ve tried their username and password and they tell me “no no, it’s asking for a domain password”, all the while staring at the screen clicking frantically like they’re playing some Facebook game. We run on a domain network by the way. I told them to try their username and password and again they tell me no. Why ask me if they don’t want my help? Anyway, I tell them just to do it and not argue with me. “Oh it’s working, thank you.”

Following instructions also seems to be rocket science, especially when it comes to cracking software. I won’t go into whether I condone software piracy or not. Stealing is bad kids! There are four basic cracking methods plus one or two overcomplicated ones I’ve come across. Either you have to replace some exe files, or you have to run a keygen, or you have to do an “offline activation” sort of thing, or you get some very generous crackers that give you a little programme that does the whole thing for you. That’s it! Each of these usually comes with very well documented instructions on how to achieve a “licensed” piece of software. But for some reason I still get phone calls asking for help with this and I end up reading out the instructions to them like a five year old. I’m not sure how this relates but I’m probably just ranting now.

“But I’m not a computer boffin like you!” You might exclaim… that’s another one that really gets into my panties. Its 2013, you bloody well ought to be! This is probably why Mac is gaining in popularity. The software and interface is becoming more and more simplified and idiot proof. Microsoft, following the same rout, thinks they’re clever with their integration of the Metro interface in Windows 8 (Those blocks you see when you press Start). The blue screen of death is such a joke, how often do you actually see these things nowadays? Practically never! Still I have people tell me their computer blue screened causing them to lose all their work and we should accept that as a valid excuse. No my friend, if your computer blue screened then there is obviously something wrong with your hardware. I can most likely attribute this to too much percussive maintenance to get the thing to run faster, I’ve seen frustrated monkeys get less violent. Last time I checked, Word, Excel, etc., have autosave features that work every five minutes or something silly like that. After Effects has autosave. Maya 2014 even has autosave… wait let me check… Yep, found a YouTube video by some guy called Ken Lee, couldn’t understand a word he said but I could at least see what he was doing. Even the new OSX has some persistent operating state or something like that where you close the application as is, open it again and it carries on right where you left off.

There is hope though! Another of my colleagues had an issue with a piece of software that I had dished out a while back. She followed the instructions I laid out perfectly but still had an issue. I came to sort it out but she wouldn’t move, she would rather have me instruct her on what to do so she could learn, rather than me waving a magic wand to fix it and she’s none the wiser.

It’s a big problem when common misconceptions grow in popularity and grab hold purely because it’s safe. It’s easy. It brings me back to the Emperor and his clothes. Everyone sticks with these misconceptions because the moment you actually admit to doing something wrong yourself and not blaming the machine, then suddenly you’re the idiot, and you’re the one who can’t do their job properly.

How else do you learn?

The first step is to admit that you don’t know.