Millenials and Zoomers experience decision fatigue differently (And what it means for Lemmy)

What I didn’t expect was what My friend said after making a Lemmy account on her chosen website — “I don’t like it because it looks like Old Reddit. I have to click on each post to view it”.

Sometimes people tell you something and it just ends a friendship...

I'm continually surprised by how incurious people are in general. One of the first things I did when I explored Lemmy was click on the weird "+" button next to post titles, because I wanted to know what it did. And then I checked the settings to see what I could tweak.

People don't seem to do shit like this, and it baffles me.
- I think this is based on the way short form video has taken over as being what having-the-TV-on-in-the-background was for the baby boomers. And click-then-go-back is too complex an interaction for "noise" while having your brain off, while swiping from meaningless clip to meaningless clip in shorts or tiktok works.
- We aren't taught or encouraged to explore or experiment by our educational systems. We are taught how to do something, and then don't question it. There are tons of people that cannot meaningfully play with Lego without assembly instructions. The idea of trying something out of the norm from what they already know never enters into their head.
  
  Like, back in the day, I literally discovered I could drag and drop files directly into the "upload" area on some websites and it would automatically post the file to the site. I didn't even know it was possible, I just out of the blue wondered if a browser can work like a drag and drop file manager and just went ahead and did it.
- I always open settings on every app or website to see what I can change. This gives me feeling like this is something made just for me and I will use it for longer. Except KDE, this has way too many settings.

Maybe it's just because I had taken classes on web design in the late 90's, early 2000's, but I hate the current Reddit design because they absolutely ignore all of the basic design rules. The most egregious is wasted space.

Like, I get it; modern shit is more commonly viewed on a phone, being held vertically. That doesn't prevent you from having a widescreen format for regular fucking screens or phones held horizontally. I can not stand having all the content squeezed into the center, leaving big open spaces with absolutely nothing in them on the margins of the page.

We went from fixed-length elements that don't scale with the browser, to the golden era, and then back to fixed-length elements that don't scale with the browser.
Yea, I used old.reddit.com even on my phone and it was fine. Their new design was fucking awful the last time I saw it. On top of that it was slow as shit. You spend more time looking at that fucking stupid spinning logo than you do seeing content.
Naah I like the wide spaces on the left and right. It looks too cluttered otherwise with unnecessary information

I really hate that that writer capitalizes every instance of 'Me', 'My', 'Mine', etc... it changes my internal inflection when reading, and really fucks up the flow of the text.

OP has a very niche identity.
Ugh, yes, that's really obnoxious.
But not capitalize 'ours' for reasons!
- The reason is that I'm not in any groups which use capitalised pronouns as a collective. I used to be in a pantheon which used We/Us, but I'm not currently in one.
OP also probably uses Arch. Some people are just like that, you can't help them anymore. They're beyond help.
- more like freebsd
Here's an explanation of My pronouns: https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/introduction-to-capitalised-pronouns-f5140e722b48
- [...]because nearly everyone who speaks English is a capitalised pronouns user. I. The subject form of the first person pronoun. While it’s not a matter of importance to most people, it is still the proper form used in legal documents and anything else that needs to be done “correctly”. And it got that way because someone, at some point in history, felt their pronoun ought to be capitalised and convinced everyone else to generally agree.
  
  This is as far as I got. That isn't why we capitalise "I", as others have pointed out, and if the argument held true then we'd capitalise "Me" as well, which we don't in English.
  
  You've clearly thought about this enough that anything I say isn't going to change your mind, so I'm just addressing the actual argument being made in that opening paragraph because it's categorically incorrect. I'm not going to bother reading the rest because I'm bored already. You might as well try to fight the tide on stuff like this.
  
  I say that as someone who got tired of people shortening their name and instead changed their name to one that cannot be shortened because it's the only effective way to accomplish the objective.
- That never uses or explains the use of "My".
  
  It's actually not even explaining anything I imagined. It's explaining, that some people want others to capitalize the pronouns used to refer to them specifically. I was thinking of a grammatical choice to always or never capitalize pronouns uniformly. But changing grammar rules on the whims of the person being written about, seems exceptionally odd. The closest I ever heard of to that, is in the spelling someone's name.
  
  In reality it doesn't explain anything other than to say, some people want it that way. It never goes into actually explaining the logic of that desire. It merely tries to shame people for not doing it if requested.
- Honestly that really helps with context, although I think the comparison of capitalizing other pronouns with a capital I is based on a misunderstanding of why I is capitalized.
  
  I is capitalized due to a common way of writing the letter to avoid confusion with similar looking letters in manuscripts due to how the letters were shaped, similar to some spellings are a result of the printing press where the letters f and s were sometimes switched.
  
  Still it is interesting in an e e cummings not always following the common capitalization practices kind of way.

But, perhaps the difference is generational. I haven’t spoken to very many people about this, but what I have noticed is a shift over time from menus to feeds on the internet. Forums are dying. Users don’t want to scroll search results, they want an AI to just give them the answer. And the difference seems to be generational. Perhaps informed by our early experiences with online platforms. It certainly cannot be an absolute distinction, but a correlation seems evident from the state of the world.

Extrapolates a distinction between number of questions and answer based on age from a tiny data set, acknowleeges large scale changes over time that applies to all ages, offhandedly mentions the actual reason (early experiences with the internet), then goes back to random speculation.

What a terribly incoherent article. Capitalizing 'Mine' made it a struggle. Why didn't they capitalize 'ours' for consistency? If I was tha author I would assume it was because of generational self centeredness or something, because everything needs to be generational conflict!

Capitalizing 'Mine' made it a struggle.

OP here is also the author of the linked article, and OP has very specific positions about capitalised pronouns
- Well that was an interesting rabbit hole, thanks!
It's what is called guessing. The author isn't saying "this is how it is, it's fact". They are postulating and guessing. But you read it and take it as if this was a scientific paper published in a journal with a dataset = 20 or something.

Chill out dude. Not everything is rage bait.
- You are misreading a fun bit of snark as anger.

Millennial here. I’ve been consuming Reddit, and now Lemmy, almost exclusively on my phone and for me it’s card view all the way. Often the graphic content is more important than the title and opening posts only to find out it’s not funny or interesting feels like a waste of time. Only when I find a post interesting enough that I want to comment or see the comments, I open it. Instances or communities that I don’t like go on the blocklist.

If I really need to use Reddit, I open old Reddit in the browser with an extension that turns it into a mobile friendly site with card view. The new design has always felt sluggish and bloated to me, but not because of the card view.

I switched Lemmy instances in part because lemmy.ml doesn't have the old.lemmy (mlmym) interface available. For a while, mlmym had an official standalone site that could be used to access any Lemmy instance in the mlmym interface, but once they shut that down I was disappointed in going back to the standard Lemmy web UI that doesn't stretch to use your entire screen width. I used some userscripts to make it better but finally ended up moving to lemmy.today because they run mlmym on old.lemmy.today.

It's basically the old Reddit interface and that's how I viewed Reddit for 12+ years, on desktop and on phone. Also, the mlmym/old Lemmy interface actually fits better on portrait phone screens than old Reddit as it hides the sidebar.

I hate Reddit's awful card UI. I don't want giant pictures everywhere. Let me read the headlines and then click to expand if I want. The overly media heavy Times Square looking overstimulation of modern web design is atrocious.

Something I hadn’t considered to possibly be generational. When I was on Reddit, it was always old Reddit. I can’t imagine anyone using card view, I thought maybe that existed for iPads or devices with large screens.

I also don’t see appeal in instagram or TikTok like the author though as well.

I don’t necessarily get the consideration of “decision fatigue”. If you chose not to decide you still have made a choice. The choice then of allowing the app to just show you whatever can’t really be put on decision fatigue in my opinion.

Card view is great for porn. Otherwise, yeah, old Reddit is the better layout.

This seems very anecdotal. It would be interesting to see some numbers on how different age groups interact with different UI types.

In my experience, most people prefer "card" view type interfaces. Most popular sites I can think of at the top of my head are like this. Instagram shows you a picture. Facebook you default see a post until it is truncated. New Reddit is like this as well. Twitter shows just a small post, and you can view threads that way too.

Even old sites that had list views tended to get more popular when you get a card view, like Reddit.

I'm not sure if it's generational.

I don't agree at all with the author's approach. I'm a millennial and I came to Reddit around 2019-2020, using it a lot since the pandemic, I prefer the new reddit a thousand times. It's not a question of interpreting the site as questions, it seems like a nonsense to me. It's a matter of making everything more visual, I don't stop to read the title, the community or the author, at a glance I see the vast majority of the post, if I consider it I see the rest of the information, most of the time I ignore the information, because I don't care.

I would like to remind you that Instagram (the example given in the article) is mostly used by millennials.

Yeah, I'm not sure this is the generational thing that the author is trying to make it out to be. It seems to me like one of those things that leans on personal preference.

The author's sample for the behavior of generations is a few anecdotes from personal friends. How many friends does a person have, 3, or 30, or 300? That means n is pretty small when there's something like 3 billion mellenials
- It might be a vaguely generational thing as in people's preference being influenced by when they hopped on board. How the website looked when they first started shapes their preference kind of thing. I started using reddit over a decade ago and vastly preferred the old layout for the same reason Foni hated it. I hated the new layout precisely because I don't want to see all the contents all the time and I want to filter it by reading the titles first. IIRC most users who come on to reddit after new is the default preferred that over the old and the percentage of people who uses old kept shrinking over time. Now that I'm on mbin I've configured it to be like old reddit as well (not that it took that much effort).
- Agreed, this seems more like a preference shaped by which layout you're used to. That would make it somewhat generational as younger users wouldn't be starting with the old layout, but some older users would also be affected if they started after the new layout became the default.
  
  To add another anecdote, I'm Gen Z but started using Reddit 12 years ago. I prefer the old layout on desktop and even use mlmym to get a similar layout for Lemmy, but I prefer card layouts on mobile. I dislike the new layout due to what I would consider as excessive whitespace and the fact that it shows fewer comments by default, but I want to see image posts inline and use "Show Images" from RES for that.
Because you're primarily looking at image posts...

Older people, 30-40s grew up when bandwidth was a limiter, we're used to having to decide if an image is worth the bandwidth.

We just grew up with vastly different internets.

You all could just load a bunch of stuff and ignore what you didn't want. We're stuck in the mindset that bandwidth matters, so a bunch of stupid memes we aren't interested taking up bandwidth and screen real estate just feels off.

It feels less like it's being "offered" and more like it's being shoved down our throats.

Bandwidth is going to be the new "turn off the lights when you leave" for the Oregon Trail generation. In our heads we still need to be cognizant of how much we're using, even tho subsequent generations never seem to think about it. They've just never had to.

Happens to every generation in some way or another.
- I'm getting annoyed that every damn thing is turning into a web app now and JS/Chrome is even infecting desktop programs that traditionally were written in a real systems language like C or C++. The technology world feels janky and bloated now, built like a house of cards where one thing is relying on 20 other things, some of them in the cloud, to work right.
  
  Programming these days seems to be more about glueing various services and APIs together to come up with a solution instead of actually coding it.
- I am 38 years old, I remember perfectly when downloading a single song could easily take a week, porn was exclusively photos because online videos were unimaginable and streaming hadn't even been invented yet. I don't understand why you're still worried about that right now, photos, videos, games, movies, everything moves online in a matter of seconds, downloading at +10Mb/s on emule is today normal. I have gotten used to it normally.
I don't stop to read the title, the community or the author, at a glance I see the vast majority of the post, if I consider it I see the rest of the information, most of the time I ignore the information, because I don't care.

Careful, this is how popular subs/communities end up full of non-relevant stuff, because people upvote without checking if it's appropriate! Thankfully I've not seen much of that here yet, but I think that's because I tend to subscribe to smaller communities.
- I would never upvote without seeing what community it is in. It wouldn't happen to me on Lemmy but the Reddit algorithm spent weeks showing you stuff from that sub and it was something I hated, maybe over time I ended up doing what you said, but for now I still have the habit of doing it.
Same, millennial here and I massively prefer card view over having to click again. Similarly I want a Mastodon interface in which links are shown as link preview cards.
- Yes, a link without a preview is unpleasant

When Lemmy came around, I didn't stop using Reddit.

steps aside to dodge rotten tomato

I saw a new place to go visit and explore, and I haven't been given a reason to leave. I actually post more here than Reddit because the conversations feel more genuine, but I still browse both. No reason not to.

I haven't been using reddit, but no shade from me for using it. I know it's difficult finding communities on Lemmy that are similar for some topics. Episode discussions have been hard to find for most shows. I still prefer Lemmy because like you said it feels more genuine.

this is dumb, you still have to parse info either method of interacting with the site, its just slightly diffrent, some people can just filter out info they care less about a little better. if anything has to do with the so called divide between generations (i always call bullshit on this, people are far to complex to be put in these boxes) it may have to do with how people first started interacting with the internet. people who have been interacting with the internet for longer may be more accustomed to the fourm style of website, where as people who started using the internet on their phone may be more accustomed to the app style layout. it mostly boils down to learned ways of interacting in online spaces, not how old you are in my opinion.

I haven’t spoken to very many people about this

Obviously not. I, a millennial prefer the "new" design. I can subscribe to communities and subreddits with already is a good way to filter content. I don't have to look at everything that gets thrown at me. Also I do not have to be scared there is a hidden ad somewhere inbetween like when using Instagram or whatever.

I also really liked the forums from the bronze age, but those were text-based at the post level, while Lemmy also supports images and links (including thumbnails).

How can you prefer this:

over this:
- I definitely think the newer design looks better, although it is less functional and has more unnecessary crap. I definitely prefer the compact view over the the card view. Back when I still used Reddit I used the old design with custom css though.
- I'm mobile so I am much faster scrolling. I guess that's an important point, most people probably use their smartphones browsing Instagram etc. Also I use Voyager for browsing Lemmy on PC, no reddit for me
Without seeing actual statistics, both accounts are anecdotal. But it’s my experience that I have had a lot less interaction of people who prefer new Reddit and a lot more with people who prefer old Reddit. Many Lemmy instances host old Reddit inspired front ends. I’m not aware of a single front end for Lemmy that strives to emulate new Reddit
- I think Voyager is one of the most popular Lemmy web frontends. I haven't used reddit for a long time but it seems to be more similar to the new than old design.. I honestly don't talk about reddit designs with people in the real world

honestly i'm not even sure how the author of this managed to boil down feed UI preferences into "questions" or "options" or whatever. all of the same content is there, it's just a matter of if it's expanded or collapsed by default- merely information density. what it really comes down to is older sites collapsed things by default, newer sites expand things by default, and most people like whatever they grew up with. i'm gen z and much prefer the older style just because i was on forums and old reddit right around when my peers opened their twitter and instagram accounts. there is definitely a discussion to be had there about which format is healthier and why companies prefer the latter format these days, but to skim right past that into the bit about third parties makes me think that was the real point the author wanted to make and contorted their UI argument to get there