Whoa grandpa, still buying those see-dees? Slow down and chill, dude

They’ve tracked me down. My cover is blown.

I’d quietly slipped out of the country and started life anew with a new address and a new name. Well, when I say new name, I thought I’d fox the spammers by cleverly ensuring my brand new name was still spelt the same way as my old one – a nifty double-bluff I was sure they’d never anticipate. Then I went about my business, guardedly but assured of my relative anonymity.

Until this week. They found me.

Unlocking my mailbox one morning to retrieve the pile of newspapers (i.e. news stories printed on paper, kids) and the inevitable account statements posted to me via the national postal system by my bank just across the road even though I have asked them time and time again to stop, I was horrified to see what lay beneath……a catalogue for ‘the modern man’.

Despite being in a different language, L’Homme Moderne bears all the hallmarks of deliberate product gender ageism. There’s a reassuringly smiling but deep-down very unhappy man on the front with his white hair and sel-et-poivre beard. The pages inside are full of sad clothes and bad gadgets; thermal slippers and reading lamps; neoprene driving gloves and leather wallets; white nylon shirts through which everyone can see the colour of your nipples.

The catalogue wasn’t delivered in the post by the postman, oh no. A complete stranger must have walked up to my house and put it in my mailbox as a deliberate act of malice. They knew where I lived and wanted to make sure I knew that they knew. I’m guessing a spook from L’Homme Moderne’s worldwide network of spies must have spotted me out and about at last Saturday’s open-air food market, ticked the boxes marked ‘Over 50’, ‘Probable slipper-wearer’ and ‘Could do with a new wallet’, and then followed me home. Pinned into Google Maps, pheromone spray on the doorstep, catalogue shoved in the mailbox, done.

I don’t worry so much about ageing any more: I did all that crisis stuff back in my 30s. But I do get annoyed by the assumption that I can be so easily pigeonholed as a mad old bastard easily bamboozled into ordering from a catalogue of tat intended for grey minds and broad waists.

You think I’m over-reacting? OK, let’s take a look at the catalogue together. Pick an example of ghastly shite nobody other than those already on the downslope into dementia would ever consider buying, at any age.

Yes, I agree, let’s choose corduroy trousers.

As you can see above, in L’Homme Moderne, the ad for corduroy trousers appears on page 8 (left). But since the typical reader suffers from short-term memory loss, he must be reminded about those corduroy trousers with an almost identical supplementary ad on page 14 (right).

That enough for ya? Not at all, Methusela, there’s more!

What to I find on page 20 (right)? More corduroy trousers! And on page 24 (left)? Ooh, I dunno, could it be… corduroy trousers? It certainly could!

Hang on, I’ve turned the page and already forgotten what I was looking at, what with me being old and all that. Thank goodness for the technicolor pavement pizza that’s on page 27 (below). Yippee! Corduroy trousers!

Not bad going, really: five ads for corduroys spread across a mere 32-page catalogue. The last one’s my favourite, though, because it includes a splendid infographic to big-up the stretching waistbands designed to accommodate middle-age overhang. “Oh for heaven’s sake, do suck in your embonpoint, dear.”

On the other hand, I won’t pretend that age is not relevant when it comes to comparative levels of comfort with regard to consumer tech. Bill Gates, Tim Berners-Lee and the gang still have sharp analytical minds but I reckon even they’d struggle to find their way around Apple Music. Heck, I’d be amazed if even Tim Cook could find his own MP3s in this steaming cowpat of disastrous UX design.

But while software user interfaces have rapidly worsened in recent years, da kidz have kept up with it. Older users can’t understand why modern IT products are so much more capable but at the same time less usable than ever before. For these mature users, it’s as if products were designed to be as baffling as possible to those who suffer from a logical mindset. Surely if a product is more capable, one of those capabilities should be usability, no?

Youngsters, however, have learnt from birth how to use software despite its programming. Having grown up with UX failure as the norm, they consider it perfectly natural to tap 47 times on a smartphone to dismiss a cookie prompt, followed by a pop-up ad, followed by a self-playing video, etc etc. In an ADD generation, everyone accepts it.

Indeed, a survey of 2,664 teenagers found that over the course of one year, teens spent an average of 32 hours helping their parents with social media and 29 hours solving their email problems. More than half of those surveyed suffered the indignity of having to help their parents set up a WhatsApp group video call, and 67% were called in to assist with Zoom or Skype.

The survey concluded that if the teens had been as savvy about pocket money as they were about Zoom, they could have earned £4,214 over the last 12 months for their expert IT support. But they didn’t. No so smart now, are you, little Damien?

Evidence of this lack of financial nous among today’s yoof is clear in how they are forced to pay regular subscriptions for stuff they’ll never use. They’re not stupid, of course, and they suspect – just like Mr Andersonnnnn before them – there is something not quite right with the world. Unfortunately, this can make them over-defensive.

Well, look, youngsters are hardly alone in this. Every time I find a decent movie available on streaming, it turns out to be available only if I subscribe to an additional subscription channel. If I gave in to all that temptation, I’d have more parallel TV streaming subscriptions than L’Homme Moderne has ads for continence pants – and yet I’m still tempted.

No, I hold no moral ground here. It’s simply the re-introduction of financial slavery by a corporate elect concentrating revenues to serve the middleman, not the creator nor consumer. As it has always been. Right, bruvvers?

We all got fooled again.

ALISTAIR DABBS is a freelance technology tart, juggling tech journalism, training and digital publishing. If this week’s closing video rings any bells from a misspent youth humming ‘Wardance’ in the playground, you may be interested that one of Dabbsy’s colleagues has just written and published the first and only, not to say much belated, biography of Killing Joke. Otherwise, you can find more of this nonsense at The Register.