Apollo you are a good case in point. Only DSL would cause you to leave AOL.
um, this is going to be really embarrassing, but I'm an even better case in point: I also switched to Bell Atlantic DSL like Apollo, but actually kept my AOL account, just so I wouldn't have to do anything new.
What all you techies fail to appreciate is just how much anxiety computers generate in us normal humans. We love all the cool things we can do with them, but have no friggin' clue how they work and live in perpetual fear that something we don't understand will make the whole crazy rube goldberg contraption stop working.
Now this actually happens all the time, from the system crashing to files and attachments being unreadable to getting viruses to accidentally reconfiguring things so that nothing works. At that point you guys simply rejigger things, or press a couple of buttons, or take the whole damn thing apart and put it back together again. You think of it as a game, or a challenge, or at worst a minor annoyance. We, on the other hand, think of it as a look deep into the abyss: suddenly we are cut off from our life support system, and we have no idea what to do next. We flounder helplessly, gasping for air, and at the same time feel deep, agonizing frustration and humiliation. We search desperately for a computer-savvy relative, or friend, or employee, and sometimes have to resort to endless hours of waiting on god-awful phone tech support lines--all this to be told, with a smug dismissive sneer, "oh, that's not a cup holder, it's a CD tray," or "you just hold down the button for five seconds and everything will work fine."
AOL sucks. I've thought it was an underachieving, dumbed-down, slow and inefficient piece of crap ever since I joined five or six years ago. BUT--keeping it allows me to keep a single, continuous email address at which I can get personal and business email anytime, anywhere, even if I change jobs or travel to Timbuktu. Plus, the sheer terror and anxiety of having to choose and learn something new is more than enough to keep me where I am, as long as I know that AOL will continue to keep adding whatever new features are possible and necessary.
tekboy/Ares@there,I'vesaidit,mockmeasyouwill.com |
