You know you are getting old when:

[GHT]

When you have to scroll back to the top of the page because you cannot remember what thread you are on.

I'm told that having a lifetime of memories and information is what causes that temporary amnesia, I get annoyed when I can't remember a name, word or phone number. However, there are some advantages to advancing years:

 

[GHT]

 

[Trenchfriend]

Moorhuhn 3, anyone else?

 

[tonyb]

… you get solicitations for “free” hearing evaluations in the mail.

These guys either know I’m old, or they’ve heard me sing.

 

[Zombie_61]

AARP wants to welcome me to the "50's Club" (whatever that is) by sending me a three-piece set of luggage if I'll renew my membership and send them $12 before September 8th. Even if it's made from cardboard that luggage would have to cost more than $12 to produce. That's bad business, and I'm not sure I want to be associated with anyone with so little business sense.

 

[Fifty150]

In the AARP world, you are their product. What they sell is you. Mindboggling that anyone would pay them money, for them to sell you. They sell you as a target market audience. They solicit businesses to advertise to you. They send out publications and mailers to you, and charge the other businesses for the advertising. It's the same way social media companies make money. You are the product. Businesses pay them, to advertise to you.

 

[Zombie_61]

In the AARP world, you are their product. What they sell is you...

I'm not even sure how they got their hooks in us in the first place because my wife was only 49 years old when we got our first contact from them, asking her if she wanted to join. Someone told her they were a good organization, so she signed on and I got "grandfathered" in as part of the deal (I'm 1.5 years younger than she is). So we were members for a while, but I can't ever remember taking advantage of any "deals" or "bargains" or anything of the kind that they sent us information about.

 

[Fifty150]

my wife was only 49

I'm 1.5 years younger

They don't care. It's another name and address on the mailing list. It adds to their membership base. That's what they sell. Now you get the AARP card which you can present to a Motel 6 or AMC theater, and get a "senior discount". I'm pretty sure that you can a discount meal on Tuesdays at Denny's, and Carnival Cruises will offer you souvenir key chain tag when you book a $2,000 cruise package. I heard that The White House cafeteria also offers a discount to presidents with AARP cards.

 

[Zombie_61]

Hmmm. A discount at AMC Theaters could come in handy, but I've never been to a Motel 6, I've eaten at Denny's once in the last 20 years and I'm in no hurry to go back, and I have no plans to obtain a Carnival Cruises key chain.

 

[GHT]

In the AARP world, you are their product. What they sell is you. Mindboggling that anyone would pay them money, for them to sell you. They sell you as a target market audience. They solicit businesses to advertise to you. They send out publications and mailers to you, and charge the other businesses for the advertising. It's the same way social media companies make money. You are the product. Businesses pay them, to advertise to you.

Exactly so, and it's not unique to Uncle Sam. Profiling has been around quite a while, today's technology is a profiler's dream. The last road block in their way is cash payment. Yesterday was the first time I experienced a retail outlet that wouldn't accept cash. When the cashless society happens you will be giving away your entire spending habits.

 

[Fifty150]

it's not unique to Uncle Sam

The same Sam behind Social Security?

 

[BobHufford]

 

[tonyb]

^^^^
Yeah, that’s sobering, seeing how 1980 was, like, last week.

 

[Edward]

Exactly so, and it's not unique to Uncle Sam. Profiling has been around quite a while, today's technology is a profiler's dream. The last road block in their way is cash payment. Yesterday was the first time I experienced a retail outlet that wouldn't accept cash. When the cashless society happens you will be giving away your entire spending habits.

It's coming close. A decade ago, 70% of UK transactions were in cash. Now it's 30%. I can count on my fingers the number of times I've even seen cash since the start of the pandemic. My issue isn't so much that the information is there (if someone really wants to profile you, there are so many other tells, not least, here in London, the densest CCTV coverage in what is already the most surveilled country in the world per capita), more the potential for abuse. I wouldn't mind tailored ads if that didn't seem to mean they were also much more frequent ads.... Though the biggest pain I've found recently is how streaming platforms work. Neither Netflix nor Prime give me a full list of what is available; instead, they rely on recommending me more of the same (at least according to their algorithm, which can occasionally be hilariously wrong). I've long refused to fill in any reviews or even tick whether I liked something I watched because I don't want that to narrow the horizons of what I'm offered.

As doubtless I've said before, my big bugbear is "contactless" payments, which the bank have tried hard to sell me on in the past despite the simple fact that if they don't require a pin number every single time, then their claims of security are a lie. Once they allow me to require a pin number every time no matter how little I'm spending, I'll have one - not til then. And they're forever pushing the top limit up, too! Course, it's in the banks' interests: just touching the card to a reader instead of putting it in to the machine every time means the cards don't wear out close to as fast. Big savings for the banks when you take into account they issue millions of those (in the last few years, I've more often than not had to order another several years before one runs out because of wear and tear).

 

[Zombie_61]

 

[Fifty150]

View attachment 356240

that’s sobering, seeing how 1980 was

A decade ago, 70% of UK transactions were in cash. Now it's 30%.

In The 80's, an instructor I had lectured that society was transitioning to be cashless. Keep in mind that in The 80's there was a major surge of bank cards.

https://youtu.be/J1LUqsj72Fs

 

[Edward]

In The 80's, an instructor I had lectured that society was transitioning to be cashless. Keep in mind that in The 80's there was a major surge of bank cards.

https://youtu.be/J1LUqsj72Fs

That guy had his finger on the pulse. My dad worked for BT at the time (both before and after the transition from GPO Telephones to the privatised British Telecom), and as early as 1982 they were saying that mobile phones would eventually replace landlines. The web gave the old fashioned landline a reprieve as most people have relied on copper phone lines for broadband, but with the increasing rollout of fibre optic online connections and the pandemic-boost in development of VoIP, video calling, and such, the old landline hasn't much long left in this world.

 

[Turnip]

Though copper landlines also had a real advantage in comparison, being way better „blackout proof“ than the other systems.

 

[tonyb]

It took no great insight to foresee plastic and “virtual” currency supplanting cash. Just as it took no soothsayer to predict the demise of news and information delivered via print on paper. (I knew people in the business preparing for this 30 years ago, and I knew people who dismissed it — “It’ll never happen,” I recall one publisher telling me. One guess as to which camp is still in business.)

 

[Trenchfriend]

When you really like beetroot salad and you start to buy it frequently.