Friends of Dave #438: 🥳 reminiscence bump 😎
Next on TLC: AI for the Old Guy
As I’ve said before, Friends, inspiration for these preambles tends to hit me at the most unexpected times…..like Hot For Teacher popping up at the grocery store while you are looking for condiments, or that soul-crushing moment when your teenager asks what a busy signal sounds like. (Fun fact: it’s the sound of our innocence.)
This week’s inspiration struck while I was scrolling through my LinkedIn timeline.
Yes, LinkedIn. You know, that place where Millennials breathlessly overshare every obstacle of their adulting journey like they are the first to persevere and where someone connected to someone you don’t even know is always “thrilled to announce” a new job they’ll quit in six months.
Amid the algorithmically generated career confetti, I came across a post from a Gen Z “AI thought leader” — a job title that didn’t exist a year ago — promoting a carousel entitled: “27 ChatGPT Hacks That Made Me a 6-Figure Founder at 23.”
Oh my f^%king god….
Meanwhile, I’m over here trying to remember if I’m talking to GPT-4, GPT-3.5, or my Alexa that occasionally answers questions if I ask nicely.
Now, don’t get me wrong — I consider myself a reasonably tech-savvy Gen Xer.
I programmed in BASIC on a Commodare 64.
I made mixtapes. Like REALLY GOOD mixtapes…ones that would put John Cusack in High Fidelity to shame….with cool titles for each side…
I dominated Napster. I used my Blackberry to take videos. I switched from DVDs to streaming on Netflix BEFORE they made me do it.
We were the original digital pioneers — before it was cool, monetized, wireless and turned into an unpaid internship.
But lately? I feel like I woke up in a tech dystopia scripted by a Silicon Valley intern on a microdosing bender.
It seems like everyone’s suddenly fluent in Prompt Engineering. They’re building AI agents, chaining LLMs together like Pokémon cards, and I’m just trying to figure out how to make a cooler background for my Google Meet profile than “Slate.”
It’s not that I’m anti-AI. I do use ChatGPT. I’ve had it rework emails, analyze random theories I have in my head, and — in one deeply humbling moment — explain TikTok slang so I wouldn’t look like a fossil in front of my kids.
Still, I can’t shake this gnawing, creeping feeling that I’m…behind.
Not in the “I need to learn a new skill” kind of way. More like the “why does the how-to guide need a user manual and why is this younger colleague offering to ‘onboard’ me like I’m his Dad’s friend?” kind of way.
So, in the spirit of self-improvement (and light existential unraveling), I took a little time to reflect on what it means to be a Gen Xer trying to stay relevant in an AI-dominated world.
And here’s what I came up with: I don’t think we are lost. We’re just tired.
Tired of every new tech innovation feeling like getting the group project on the topic we least wanted.
Tired of acting excited when someone who doesn’t know the meaning of “Be kind, rewind” says, “Oh, you have to try Claude. It’s way better than GPT for reasoning.” Listen, Chad — I just figured out what a plugin is. Let me finish this YouTube video from six months ago before you throw another chatbot at me.
Tired of being outwitted by a glorified autocomplete engine with the confidence of a 19-year-old intern who just watched one TED Talk and now thinks they should run your team.
But mostly, we’re tired because we’ve already seen this movie….we’ve been here before.
Remember when Gmail launched and you needed a golden invite like you were joining Fight Club?
Remember Ask Jeeves? We asked. He delivered vibes not answers.
Remember the first time someone texted during a meeting and we thought, “Wow, how rude”? Now it’s considered “efficient cross-channel communication.”
We’ve seen tech cycles come and go. CD-ROM encyclopedias. PalmPilots. Google Glass. Facebook before the really old people who like to argue about stuff they see on cable news ruined it.
We survived Y2K and MySpace. We watched Microsoft Clippy rise and fall.
So no, AI doesn’t scare us. But it does annoy us. Mostly because it’s being marketed like a miracle and explained by people who weren’t alive when we used dial-up….or are old and call it “A1”…..
The real challenge isn’t learning the tools — it’s unlearning the belief that hard work has to be hard.
We grew up thinking success meant struggle. Late nights. Grinding. Proving yourself.
Meanwhile, AI shows up like, “Hey, I rewrote that report in a friendlier tone and scheduled your meetings. Also, here’s a personalized haiku.”
And our first instinct is, “Wait… isn’t this cheating?”
Look, we don’t need to become prompt jockeys overnight. We just need to stay curious.
We adapted before — from cassette to CD to Napster to Spotify.
We watched the death of the VCR and the rise of streaming, and we didn’t even flinch when Netflix asked if we were still watching.
So no, you don’t need to build a custom GPT or make an AI-powered Excel dashboard.
Just start small.
Have it take notes for you on your next Zoom meeting. Or ask it to help you word a nicer email to that annoying colleague that always presses your buttons. Or finally summarize that whitepaper on that open tab in your browser you’ve been pretending to read since Q1. Or decode what your kid means when they say someone has “no drip.”
NEWS FLASH: the robots are not here to steal your job. They are here to help you spend less time doing stupid, mindless 💩 and more time doing the human stuff like coaching a teammate, solving real problems, or maybe finally understanding meditation without checking your phone like it is a slot machine.
Friends, I’m not saying you need to fall in love with AI. But maybe don’t ghost it.
It’s not your replacement. It’s your new co-pilot.
And unlike your old Garmin GPS, it won’t yell at you for missing a turn.
So yes, Friends — we’re living in the future now. But don’t panic.
The mixtape generation always finds the beat.
XOXO
Dave
And now a few things to make you smarter…
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In this graphic, you will find the most transformative industries by 2040, offering a glimpse into the future economy.
Although our ability to easily pick up a new skill declines with age, harnessing a specific type of mindset can help you learn effectively as an adult.
As people construct a life narrative, researchers have found, they tend to remember more events from the teens and twenties than from any other time. It’s called the “reminiscence bump.”
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American culture embodies a zeal for individuality and property rights — of the idea that people should be able to conduct their own affairs in their own territory without the neighbors or the government imposing their views and forcing conformity. Like so many other cultural quarrels, the lawn has this deep contradiction at its heart.