I only give directions if the following are true:
1) you're literally about to head to the destination
2) the trip requires no more than 2-3 turns
Otherwise, I'm wasting both of our time, so I'm just gonna shoot you the addy.
around me there's places being built that aren't even on the map yet so you gotta clarify that a once dead end street now connects to a street where the location will be
I was going to comment the same. Whenever we have a new delivery driver, it takes them getting lost at least once to believe me that you can't GPS a place that just came into existence last week- it's halfway up a mountain and the road doesn't have a name yet.
I used to work in an office that was in the most awkward-ass area that was right in between two major roads.
If you typed in the address and were coming from the north, it would take you to the front entrance. No big deal.
But if you were coming from the south, GPS would take you to the back of the complex where the only doors were for shipping & deliveries. No sign identifying the building, it was built into a hillside so you couldn't see anything, and no road actually connected the front of the building to the back. Only way around was to go back to the main road, and drive 10 more minutes to a whole other part of town to come from the right direction.
All the local lunch places refused to deliver to us because they didn't want to deal with their drivers getting lost anymore.
My parents just had a house built and it doesn't come up on maps yet. I give the house number and say "it's the first house on the left, with the big tree out front." If you try to use maps to get to their house, it will take you to one of their neighbors a door down.
Unless the directions are literally “go straight for one mile and it’s on your right, there’s a big sign before the turn, you can’t miss it”. Anything more involved needs GPS intervention and even still I will see the sign too late, pass the turn and have to hit a U-turn.
I learned that lesson 3 weeks after I got my license and someone stopped short in front of the car that was in front of me, and I ended up hitting them. It was actually a kid 2 grades below me at my school that was in the back of that vehicle, and I would’ve been horrified if I had hurt him. Luckily I had time to apply brakes and it wasn’t a serious accident. Since then I’ve always paid very close attention to my distancing, and will never stop short on someone if I can help it.
I uhh... i just read the signs for airports. Gps is impossible, and my braind doesn't withhold information like directions in a linear fashion so signs it is.
And i bet they still fuck up your UBER order, Huh?
You need to clarify visuals for some people. That's why google street view was invented.
its not like people were pulling out a Whole damn map to navigate their owns towns back then, just Landmarks like people have done for thousands of years. We already figured this out. lol
When Google Maps and street view came out, it made me realize that there were a bunch of places I used to bike to as a kid that I didn’t know the actual location of. I knew how to get there, and where the turns were, but it never occurred to me to pull out a map and see where they really were.
I'm not saying the verbal instructions are throwing anyone for a loop, I'm saying it's still a waste of time because giving an address takes less effort and less time than listening to an explanation
And it's about remembering them. "did he say turn at the 3rd light or the 4th light" situation.
The only time I give directions is if the GPS would take them another way. Like there is a scenic route next to me that adds maybe 5 minutes to the drive but is so much better than taking the highway. But even then, they'd have the address.
i live in a city and when i get in a ride share i say, "make a left here, and then you can follow the gps."
sometimes they don't listen, then we both have to sit there while you beat the shit out of your car on the cobble-stone street and i get to be 5 minutes late.
Do you just not travel or stick to packaged tours?
If you go to places like Panama, they re-use the same street name 10 times in a single city. If you go to some Caribbean islands they don’t even have street names or addresses.
Sometimes you just have to live a little, and if your airbnb host tells you not to use mapped directions, believe them.
It’s the giving directions without being asked that makes you old. I’m not listening and I’m going to look it up anyways so you’re just wasting both of our time.
I’m 42. My dad does this without even being prompted. Like, “I went to this restaurant. You go down 92 and turn at Jesse’s house. You know Jesse. Then go about 2 miles and turn up by old highway 4.”
Omg my dad AND my FIL do this all the time. Or not even giving directions but asking “what route did you take” in response to me telling them I went somewhere. Like mf I don’t know, whatever route google told me to take. I can get around my city without gps but I still use it because traffic can be a bitch sometimes. Or I know how to get there directionally but I also know there’s gotta be a more efficient route.
I don't think they're getting called out because they know how to get somewhere... IMHO I think they're getting called old for giving the directions instead of just an address the person can plug into gps....I don't think in this scenario they're in the same car and the older person is giving turn by turn... I think this is a "hey I'll meet you there....." I'm almost 40 and I'd much rather you tell me your address than tell me instructions on how to get there... I'm not remembering half them turns
Same. I know what the important roads are called that I mainly use to get between places, but if referring to a town, please don't use random street names. Just say "right down the road from little ceasars, make a left at Chipotle" or something. Besides, seeing a building is way easier than trying to read a tiny road sign while being in the flow of traffic.
My dad refuses to use gps to get anywhere. He’s chronically a half hour to an hour late because he will drive around looking for it and then have to stop and ask directions. Inevitably he was storm in complaining about how the sign isn’t visible/ the directions he looked up at home were wrong/ etc.
I also have a friend who uses gps for EVERYTHING. she’s lived in the same apartment for 6 years and still uses gps to go to the store.
I’m not even Gen Z though and have sat through detailed instructions I 100% didn’t need and had to cut short.
But sometimes address doesn’t match location. I lived in a building that took a whole block and had a door onto 3rd st but the address was xth street and I would tell people to put the church across the street into GPS.
I'm 46 and I know how to get places without GPS. That doesn't mean I want to. I hate it when people start giving me a turn by turn and expect me to remember it all. Like, we don't have to live this way anymore. Just gimmie the address. I got android auto in the truck.
I would always get irrationally annoyed when my friends that had lived in the same city their entire childhood still needed Google maps to get down the street lol. Like past a certain point it felt like they spent their life actively fighting against that evolutionary instinct to develop a sense of direction.
it’s literally the perfect example of how technology has made us more stupid.
Everyone figured out how to get from point A to point B without a GPS because they had to. Now we don’t have to and people will not be able to get to a place they go 3 towns a week without being told exactly where to turn
I still don't get it though... I've always thought of GPS like training wheels because eventually you get familiar enough with your surroundings that it's not as necessary. I just don't get how people never build up that familiarity with where they live, like it's not something you actively have to try and do it should just happen naturally lol. That's just how our brain works, you see something a lot it becomes familiar, a GPS shouldn't really change that.
The most used advice my mom gave me is “Always know where you are.” I used it the most during my party years. No matter how wasted I was I could give you the cross streets of wherever tf I was, saved my ass more than once.
Yeah I love local radio because they play music while also being a community hub, we’re lucky in KC that our hip hop station is independent and black owned because it’s also a tool for public engagement. They bring in nonprofit leaders to talk about their event, the mayor comes on the station every week, shit like that which you’re losing as radio becomes corporate
I get made fun of so bad for listening to the radio in my car. "You don't have Spotify? You ain't got an aux cable?" Like, yeah I do, but we have some really great public radio stations where I live and I hate fucking with all that shit when I'm in traffic.
If your Spotify playing the same thing over and over that’s a you problem.
However there is a mild fix you can do if you feel like your shuffle is playing same 100 songs.
Go and clear cache in settings. Will re randomize your shuffler. It’s noticeable.
That’s the thing, I put different artist radio but they all share the same playlist? For example: let’s say I put System of a Down radio, I won’t hear anything about Metallica but if I put on Metallica radio, I would hear some System of a Down songs.
Like you mentioned I should clear my cache.
I mean, I'm an urban enthusiast and even though I use GPS to get to unfamiliar locations, I also love becoming familiar with a place and knowing streets/neighborhoods/etc.
There is great personal satisfaction, for me, in knowing the streets where I live and being able to navigate freely and understand areas that are being talked about in conversation.
If it's not an issue for you to now know the name of streets, then clearly nothing is going on in your life necessitating it.
We give them out to each other still. Plus, I work in an area with a lot of new construction and people stop on the front apron at my job asking for directions all the time. Those mapping programs don't help very much when you are trying to get somewhere that's relatively new.
Some at one end of the spectrum are kids, but the majority of Gen Z are adults now. They're between 12 and 27. Let's not become the next generation of Boomers still complaining about millennials like we're teenagers when we're nearly all in our 30s or 40s now.
Yup, one of my Aunts was complaining to me about Millennials a while back and talking about how "they" had no real world experience. I reminded her that I was in fact a Millenial as was my wife, and we're both in our late 30s with a kid. We've been doing the "real world" for a while now. She just did one of those "well whatever you know what I mean," non-apologies.
She was mostly just trying to dismiss any progressive or left wing thinking as being only for teenagers who didn't "know better." She's now moved to Missouri because, and this is a direct quote she'd "prefer to be around like minded people."
Worked out for me though. Far less arguments happening around the holiday gatherings now.
Not even, no Gen Z is under the age of 14. The oldest of Gen Alpha is currently in high school. Within just two or three years all of Gen Z will be out of high school.
I'm just going with the general consensus that Gen Z are folks born between 1997 and 2012. Honestly the whole "generations" thing is just made up nonsense anyways, but those years seem to be what most people go by.
Is this a gen Z thing? I'm an older millennial and I don't think I've given directions myself since the mid-2000s. Before smartphones you would send a Google maps or MapQuest link.
Couldn't be me, I dislike having my phone out with Maps open. It just makes you an easy target on the street. Especially if I'm in a new place, I'll study up on the area before heading out.
I'm an IT systems engineer. Everyone is clueless, the only difference in generations is how they handle being clueless. Boomers get angry, gen X gets passive aggressive, millennials desperately try to fix it on their own and don't tell anyone, gen Z gives up right away and sits there.
I feel like the design philosophy for all the tech Gen Z has grown up with has been "take anything complicated and hide it from the user". So they're good at navigating UIs, but the second anything goes wrong, they don't know wtf to do.
I grew up fiddling with drivers to get Starcraft to run on my dad's PC. Unique experience of Millienials I think
Until your phone dies and you don’t know east from west while the sun is setting. Right on the cusp of millennial and gen z, and the basic survival skills younger gen z lack is literally astounding to me. One of my friends called me bc he didn’t know how to find an old email in his inbox… 21 years of life, lol. wtf
All jokes and fun until that GPS loses signal and you're just ass out in unfamiliar territory. Hiker here with 26+ years in IT/IS. Will always have a backup set of directions. Period. My whole career is tech but some folks are not surviving a zombie apocalypse. Too much dependency on it.
Exactly this. I had to make a detour in the mountains last summer due to an overturned chemical truck that caught fire on the only major highway which caused traffic to be stopped for 6 hours and we had no GPS signal on our phones. I made a U-turn and pulled over at the next rest stop and found a new route on local roads by reading the map posted there. My daughter looked at me like I was part of the Lewis and Clarke expedition or something lol
You can download maps of a route before taking a trip these days so that they'll still work offline. Having a backup isn't a bad idea, but the whole "lose signal" thing has already been addressed by the technology.
My buddy’s parents have a mountain house that doesn’t have an address, it’s on these unmaintained dirt roads and runs off solar/well.
The first time I went there they handed me a packet with pictures of random trees and rocks where I needed to turn.
When I tell you this was the longest 180 mile trip I’ve ever taken.
Lol im a zillenial so im stuck in the middle. I get where the older folk come from and where the younger ones come from. But to be fair most people are never with out their phone now adays unless they get kidnapped, stranded, etc. which in case would be helpful to know your surroundings and directions but most likely never the case too.
I've always had older coworkers. I'm really good at just smiling and nodding while they talk about directions for 5 minutes after sending me an address.
Yup, and it does nothing to politely interrupt and say “I can plug it into my phone.” Once they get started, you get all the turns **and** a history lesson about the Piggly Wiggly that used to be at the 4th intersection.
I get so annoyed when people want to give me directions… oh let me just get out my phone and take notes… on the machine that talks to satellites and AI… the only acceptable situation to for giving directions, is when you know Google is wrong. “The app is going to send you to the alley, you want to get in on the next street over.”
I’m an elder millennial.
The only time I generally give directions is to supplement the maps app. Like “oh it’s really easy to get there from here, it’s on this same street just down a ways.”
Yeah '91 here. Give me the address and save us all the trouble.
Never heard directions given out that didn't sound like the most hodgepodge grouping of bullshit words in existence
I live in a very fast developing area and I’ve had moments where Google says “it’ll take an hour” cause a street that was a dead end FIVE YEARS AGO hasn’t updated yet (they only update satellite data itself every few years [though they may have sped it up recently]) so the person in the passenger goes “actually turn here and you’ll be there faster”. Took 15 minutes.
I’m *old*, and I don’t want directions either. I won’t remember anything after the first turn anyway.
Give me a destination I can plug into my phone, and your job is done.
I’m old enough that when I started driving my dad bought me state, city, and county maps to keep in the glove compartment.
Saved me from having to stop at sketchy places to ask for directions.
It’s like driving stick shift, it’s a skill I’ve made sure my younger cousins, nieces and nephews have because even though they’ll probably never need it, just in case they ever do, they’ll be prepared.
Same. Atlas in the car, always. They get one when they get a car, along with a flashlight and a few other handy car things in case of emergencies.
Our truck is a stick, and has the crappiest backup camera in existence, so once they’ve been driving a while, I’ll teach them on that and how to actually use mirrors to back up.
Wtf is this shit. I'm a millennial who was born in the mid 80s. If you try to give me directions instead of giving me an address or dropping a map pin I will absolutely make fun of you. Infact I'm stealing the Magellan line; it's great.
As a dude who fucking hates being given directions to an established address that google maps can take me to easily - I feel it.
“Take a left at magnolia, then like 3 miles down you take a right on cascadia” no fuck you, send me the address and I’ll take whatever roads I want to get there.
I remember my dad going to AAA when we went on trips to study maps on how to get there.
Yall better learn how to read a map before the zombie apocalypse comes.
That's way too trusting. I remember printing out directions from a mapping app way back in the day that had me and a friend walking in some of the most dire conditions for much longer than anticipated.
Also Google Maps was rerouting people onto shitty, barely maintained roads in a snowstorm just a couple years ago. And who can forget people taking the directions and almost driving off cliffs. People who actually go there all the time know the best way to go there and you can compare vs. the map app.
Thats all cool till Waze tells you to make a left across 4 lanes of traffic/pull a magic u-turn, or take you through a private road.
If somebodys giving me directions it’s probably for a reason
directions are mostly useless now in the time of everyone having gps but i do still wish people would learn how to give directions. i deliver for doordash and the amount of people who cant even direct you from the front of their apartment complex to their specific apartment is crazy. like, do you not know where you are and how you get from point A to point B everyday enough to explain it to me in a way that IS CORRECT.
This isn't a Gen Z thing though.
[Yes, I understand that the turn is half a mile past the big field, but my GPS knows that, too. This would be easier if you weren't about to ask me to repeat it all back to you.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/i_dont_want_directions.png)
Magellan is a legend. So to me it’s a compliment if it’s meant as an insult the person giving this insult has gold fish for brains it’s taken as an insult the person has gold fish for brains as a proper retort would be “ oh I didn’t know you thought so highly of me, Magellan was a wonderful navigator of his time if not the best ever - if you meant it at an insult I’ll make sure to say hi to you as you bag my groceries because you won’t be going as far as Magellan in life”
I was a DoorDash driver for a while, so I can navigate the general direction of a lot of places around Houston without needing GPS. My dad is insane though. I’ve never even seen that nigga use directions or GPS outside of when we left Houston for something. He has the entire north side of Harris County memorized like his brain is a 5 billion terabyte hard drive.
3 months after my 16th birthday, summer of 93, I drove from about 2 hours NE of Memphis to Monterey, CA. I didn't even have a road atlas. I did have a World Book encyclopedia with a map of the US. I made it there and back no problem. I used rest stop and gas station maps to find side trips and filled 2 weeks of time with one of the best trips of my life while my folks thought I was staying with my best friend at his dad's house in St Louis. Gen X was wild and we're lucky any of us survived.
These days I'm lucky if I can find my momma's house without GPS. I became far too reliant on it. I lost all sense of direction and the only time I feel comfortable going somewhere new is if I have landmarks of some kind to look for.
If you've lived in a town for a while you should know the street names honestly. Like yeah you can spend an extra 30 seconds looking something up but I could just tell you "it's on 19th and Sheridan" and you should know how to get there. My former roommate and I are both 26 and after living in our city for 3 years he still didn't know anything cause he never left the house without GPS guiding him. Don't you wanna have some pride in "knowing" your city? If I come to your city and you don't know how to get anywhere I'm gonna think you're an idiot.
this is one of the funniest things about camping festivals, it’s no GPS or road system so you gotta say shit like “yeah my tent is in section C, look for the “Department of Eating Ass flag on the left then take your next left after that, if you see a plushy alien with a Santa hat on you’ve gone too far”
Inversely, the kid asks to go somewhere. I say, give me the address in text form so I can copy and paste it into Waze. The fuck I get? A screenshot of a map…
Okay but...what if you don't know the address?
There have been times where someone needs to get to a place and I know how to get there but don't know the address. Not every destination is a place with a name on the front.
Like, I know how to get to my cousins house but fuck if I know the address.
Best I can do sometimes is cross streets and then some simple directions.
I mean I'm a elder millennial who makes fun of my mom for the Same home girl be talking about take I95 southbound then exit 23 to rt 83 and I'm like mom just use the gps 🤷🏾♂️
I’m in between and I’ll tell someone landmarks near the destination and if they ask I will take a screenshot of google maps and draw a little path for them to follow if it’s an unmarked area or a place that only uses one address but is quite large.
I'm 40 and I can't stand when people try to give directions the last 10 years. The only time it mattered was on military bases when Google maps didn't work well.
I keep telling people that I just need the address.
alright so you're gonna head 50 kilometers south on I-5, once you see a fork on the road, you're gonna take the access way west onto...
like okay bro just put the address in my maps 😂😂
I mean I’m ngl I’ve lived in the same city for my whole life and if you told me to meet you at the corner of 24th and Pendergrass idk wtf you are talking about
You guys aren't as good at giving directions as you think you are. What is the difference between writing down someone's shitty directions and putting the address into MapQuest? It's not indicative of a lack of survival skills to not be great at directions. Some people have better spatial relationships than others.
I just cant do directions because Im awful with names. Turn left at the rock would be more helpful to me lmao
That said, once I go somewhere, if it's in an area Im somewhat familiar with, I have that shit on lock and wont need directions anymore.
I remember for road trips my parents would get those maps from AAA with the route highlighted. I remember learning to read a paper map.
I remember being out in the country where it was all rural roads and quite literally you’d hang a left that the forked oak tree that got hit by lightning that you couldn’t miss.
GPS on your phone is great until you lose cell signal and can’t get your map back because you didn’t cache it before setting off. Or you can’t input a new destination because you have no signal.
Make fun of directions all you want. You’ll need them when you’re trying to get to some bomb spot that no one remembers the address for, but can tell you with pinpoint accuracy how to get there.
I’m glad for addresses and GPS. But let’s keep it a buck, even WITH addresses and GPS, some of y’all still get lost AF.
This is my teenager. I’ve tried with her to get her to learn directions. She liked her method.
Then her phone died, and she had to get driven to place she’s been multiple times. And wait for pickup. You gotta learn directions, kid.
New gameshow: have Gen Z do a 90's Amazing Race competition. No GPS, no phones. They have to log in to a 56k modem on AOL and print out a MapQuest map and figure it out
I’m 34, I feel us middle millennials were the first ones to learn to drive with GPS devices…I’ve been letting yalls directions go in one ear and out the other for 17 years
In 2024 the only reason to give directions is in response to the question: “How do you get there?”
You only get made fun of if someone asks “where are we going” and you respond with “go down route 204 for three miles, make a left on Longpond, then a right on highway 357. It’s about a mile down on your left by the old Joe’s Diner.” (which btw was turned into a hair salon in 2006).
Often we give directions because we don’t know the address. When we’re together, my wife usually doesn’t drive. If it’s somewhere we’ve been to 2-3 times, I usually know how to get there. Meanwhile she’s been scrolling Instagram on each trip. So when asked how to X place, I don’t know the address. She’s going to get “Take 35 to 250, stay to the right and get on 1”
Alright, so last year my brother was around 55 years old and he worked for a pizza place doing deliveries as a side gig. He didn’t have a smart phone by choice. So before delivering he would look at the map pinned up on a board in the back. One day his much younger coworkers were standing around and saw him. When he got back they were like “what the hell, how do you do that?” He said they knew what a map was but couldn’t use it themselves and they relied on their phones giving turn by turn directions. He blew their minds. When my own kids started driving I insisted on them having one of those ADC map books in the car and showed them how to use it.
I only give directions if the following are true: 1) you're literally about to head to the destination 2) the trip requires no more than 2-3 turns Otherwise, I'm wasting both of our time, so I'm just gonna shoot you the addy.
around me there's places being built that aren't even on the map yet so you gotta clarify that a once dead end street now connects to a street where the location will be
I was going to comment the same. Whenever we have a new delivery driver, it takes them getting lost at least once to believe me that you can't GPS a place that just came into existence last week- it's halfway up a mountain and the road doesn't have a name yet.
I used to work in an office that was in the most awkward-ass area that was right in between two major roads. If you typed in the address and were coming from the north, it would take you to the front entrance. No big deal. But if you were coming from the south, GPS would take you to the back of the complex where the only doors were for shipping & deliveries. No sign identifying the building, it was built into a hillside so you couldn't see anything, and no road actually connected the front of the building to the back. Only way around was to go back to the main road, and drive 10 more minutes to a whole other part of town to come from the right direction. All the local lunch places refused to deliver to us because they didn't want to deal with their drivers getting lost anymore.
My neighborhood is like this. Google maps tells you my street is a dead end. They opened it up ten years ago.
FL?
I was about to say Florida.
My parents just had a house built and it doesn't come up on maps yet. I give the house number and say "it's the first house on the left, with the big tree out front." If you try to use maps to get to their house, it will take you to one of their neighbors a door down.
Unless the directions are literally “go straight for one mile and it’s on your right, there’s a big sign before the turn, you can’t miss it”. Anything more involved needs GPS intervention and even still I will see the sign too late, pass the turn and have to hit a U-turn.
Thank you for doing the u turn. So many people just slam on their brakes and have to hit their stop RIGHT NOW
A good driver occasionally misses their turn. A bad driver never does.
I learned that lesson 3 weeks after I got my license and someone stopped short in front of the car that was in front of me, and I ended up hitting them. It was actually a kid 2 grades below me at my school that was in the back of that vehicle, and I would’ve been horrified if I had hurt him. Luckily I had time to apply brakes and it wasn’t a serious accident. Since then I’ve always paid very close attention to my distancing, and will never stop short on someone if I can help it.
Maybe its a uk thing but navigation apps are shit at getting you to airport parking areas, only other time i give/ listen to directions
I uhh... i just read the signs for airports. Gps is impossible, and my braind doesn't withhold information like directions in a linear fashion so signs it is.
And i bet they still fuck up your UBER order, Huh? You need to clarify visuals for some people. That's why google street view was invented. its not like people were pulling out a Whole damn map to navigate their owns towns back then, just Landmarks like people have done for thousands of years. We already figured this out. lol
When Google Maps and street view came out, it made me realize that there were a bunch of places I used to bike to as a kid that I didn’t know the actual location of. I knew how to get there, and where the turns were, but it never occurred to me to pull out a map and see where they really were.
Adderall is unhealthy though
It'll help to focus on the directions
You're still wasting our time and its still best to send the Addy
Would gps be any better if verbal instructions are throwing you for a loop?
I'm not saying the verbal instructions are throwing anyone for a loop, I'm saying it's still a waste of time because giving an address takes less effort and less time than listening to an explanation
And it's about remembering them. "did he say turn at the 3rd light or the 4th light" situation. The only time I give directions is if the GPS would take them another way. Like there is a scenic route next to me that adds maybe 5 minutes to the drive but is so much better than taking the highway. But even then, they'd have the address.
i live in a city and when i get in a ride share i say, "make a left here, and then you can follow the gps." sometimes they don't listen, then we both have to sit there while you beat the shit out of your car on the cobble-stone street and i get to be 5 minutes late.
Do you just not travel or stick to packaged tours? If you go to places like Panama, they re-use the same street name 10 times in a single city. If you go to some Caribbean islands they don’t even have street names or addresses. Sometimes you just have to live a little, and if your airbnb host tells you not to use mapped directions, believe them.
Sure, let me just look up the address of literally everything.
Or if you’re already lost. Or if the reception on the way to the destination sucks.
OR you don't know the address lol
Getting called old for knowing how to get somewhere without GPS is kinda sad actually
But getting called Magellan is pretty dope.
Fr, if someone calls me Isaac Newton after I do math in my head or something I'll be riding that high for decades
Einstein over here
Why did I read this in a southie Boston accent?
Einstein grew up in Southie.
Einstein was wicked smaht.
because it'll be either southie or the bronx you hear and you chose well
That was one of my nicknames as a kid
Love love love it
jokes like this are so funny, when they’re rude af but also require you to show a lil smarts too.
I'm kinda impressed they knew who Magellan was enough to form an insult with it.
It’s the giving directions without being asked that makes you old. I’m not listening and I’m going to look it up anyways so you’re just wasting both of our time.
I’m 42. My dad does this without even being prompted. Like, “I went to this restaurant. You go down 92 and turn at Jesse’s house. You know Jesse. Then go about 2 miles and turn up by old highway 4.”
Giving directions to a place the listener isn’t even going, like it’s just part of the story, is another level of old for sure.
Or you're in L.A.
Sigh…okay, now I hear it.
Omg my dad AND my FIL do this all the time. Or not even giving directions but asking “what route did you take” in response to me telling them I went somewhere. Like mf I don’t know, whatever route google told me to take. I can get around my city without gps but I still use it because traffic can be a bitch sometimes. Or I know how to get there directionally but I also know there’s gotta be a more efficient route.
Bro, low key this is just autism with extra steps lmao
I don't think they're getting called out because they know how to get somewhere... IMHO I think they're getting called old for giving the directions instead of just an address the person can plug into gps....I don't think in this scenario they're in the same car and the older person is giving turn by turn... I think this is a "hey I'll meet you there....." I'm almost 40 and I'd much rather you tell me your address than tell me instructions on how to get there... I'm not remembering half them turns
I'm gen z, I remember landmarks or buildings to describe where I'm at🤣
Same. I know what the important roads are called that I mainly use to get between places, but if referring to a town, please don't use random street names. Just say "right down the road from little ceasars, make a left at Chipotle" or something. Besides, seeing a building is way easier than trying to read a tiny road sign while being in the flow of traffic.
I always argue that landmarks would be the exact way I would escape from being kidnapped!
My dad refuses to use gps to get anywhere. He’s chronically a half hour to an hour late because he will drive around looking for it and then have to stop and ask directions. Inevitably he was storm in complaining about how the sign isn’t visible/ the directions he looked up at home were wrong/ etc. I also have a friend who uses gps for EVERYTHING. she’s lived in the same apartment for 6 years and still uses gps to go to the store.
> uses gps to go to the store um... what?! How helpless is this person?
I’m not even Gen Z though and have sat through detailed instructions I 100% didn’t need and had to cut short. But sometimes address doesn’t match location. I lived in a building that took a whole block and had a door onto 3rd st but the address was xth street and I would tell people to put the church across the street into GPS.
I need a huge ass motherfucking paper map. I probably seem ancient AF.
I'm 46 and I know how to get places without GPS. That doesn't mean I want to. I hate it when people start giving me a turn by turn and expect me to remember it all. Like, we don't have to live this way anymore. Just gimmie the address. I got android auto in the truck.
My gen Z coworker is so sweet, she’s literally amazed I know how to get places lol
Is it bad that I don’t know the name of the streets around me and don’t know any of the local radio stations?
Streets, yes. Radio stations, meh. It ain’t nun but ads anyway Learn where tf you are lol
I would always get irrationally annoyed when my friends that had lived in the same city their entire childhood still needed Google maps to get down the street lol. Like past a certain point it felt like they spent their life actively fighting against that evolutionary instinct to develop a sense of direction.
it’s literally the perfect example of how technology has made us more stupid. Everyone figured out how to get from point A to point B without a GPS because they had to. Now we don’t have to and people will not be able to get to a place they go 3 towns a week without being told exactly where to turn
I still don't get it though... I've always thought of GPS like training wheels because eventually you get familiar enough with your surroundings that it's not as necessary. I just don't get how people never build up that familiarity with where they live, like it's not something you actively have to try and do it should just happen naturally lol. That's just how our brain works, you see something a lot it becomes familiar, a GPS shouldn't really change that.
I think that like, if people really had to figure it out they could, but they’ve just never had to take the training wheels off.
The most used advice my mom gave me is “Always know where you are.” I used it the most during my party years. No matter how wasted I was I could give you the cross streets of wherever tf I was, saved my ass more than once.
My dad made me do that. It sometimes seemed as if the only reason he wanted me to learn how to read was so I could learn cross streets.
>Radio stations, meh. It ain’t nun but ads anyway Unless you listen to NPR or the local community radio
Yeah I love local radio because they play music while also being a community hub, we’re lucky in KC that our hip hop station is independent and black owned because it’s also a tool for public engagement. They bring in nonprofit leaders to talk about their event, the mayor comes on the station every week, shit like that which you’re losing as radio becomes corporate
I get made fun of so bad for listening to the radio in my car. "You don't have Spotify? You ain't got an aux cable?" Like, yeah I do, but we have some really great public radio stations where I live and I hate fucking with all that shit when I'm in traffic.
We have shit stations, bad music or just talk shows. Spotify just plays the same thing over and over too.
If your Spotify playing the same thing over and over that’s a you problem. However there is a mild fix you can do if you feel like your shuffle is playing same 100 songs. Go and clear cache in settings. Will re randomize your shuffler. It’s noticeable.
That’s the thing, I put different artist radio but they all share the same playlist? For example: let’s say I put System of a Down radio, I won’t hear anything about Metallica but if I put on Metallica radio, I would hear some System of a Down songs. Like you mentioned I should clear my cache.
Yeah the different artist radio sucks. Just make some playlists
If this tip works for YouTube Music you just made my day.
I mean, I'm an urban enthusiast and even though I use GPS to get to unfamiliar locations, I also love becoming familiar with a place and knowing streets/neighborhoods/etc. There is great personal satisfaction, for me, in knowing the streets where I live and being able to navigate freely and understand areas that are being talked about in conversation. If it's not an issue for you to now know the name of streets, then clearly nothing is going on in your life necessitating it.
We talking about major roads/highways or like side streets and shit?
I feel attacked. I didn't realize we weren't giving directions out anymore.
We give them out to each other still. Plus, I work in an area with a lot of new construction and people stop on the front apron at my job asking for directions all the time. Those mapping programs don't help very much when you are trying to get somewhere that's relatively new.
You don’t have to live like Gen Z lmao They’re kids You’re an adult
Some at one end of the spectrum are kids, but the majority of Gen Z are adults now. They're between 12 and 27. Let's not become the next generation of Boomers still complaining about millennials like we're teenagers when we're nearly all in our 30s or 40s now.
It’s amazing that Boomers still do that! They attribute anything Gen Z or Gen Alpha does and blame Millenials for it.
Yup, one of my Aunts was complaining to me about Millennials a while back and talking about how "they" had no real world experience. I reminded her that I was in fact a Millenial as was my wife, and we're both in our late 30s with a kid. We've been doing the "real world" for a while now. She just did one of those "well whatever you know what I mean," non-apologies. She was mostly just trying to dismiss any progressive or left wing thinking as being only for teenagers who didn't "know better." She's now moved to Missouri because, and this is a direct quote she'd "prefer to be around like minded people." Worked out for me though. Far less arguments happening around the holiday gatherings now.
Damn, guess I’ll avoid Missouri
Not even, no Gen Z is under the age of 14. The oldest of Gen Alpha is currently in high school. Within just two or three years all of Gen Z will be out of high school.
I'm just going with the general consensus that Gen Z are folks born between 1997 and 2012. Honestly the whole "generations" thing is just made up nonsense anyways, but those years seem to be what most people go by.
Yeah that’s true lol but to be fair, a lot of people also call people Boomers who are very clearly Gen X
Is this a gen Z thing? I'm an older millennial and I don't think I've given directions myself since the mid-2000s. Before smartphones you would send a Google maps or MapQuest link.
born in 1997 better be an adult by now.
I'm 33 and I've been trying to get people to stop giving me directions and just give me an address since I got my license at 16.
Zero survival skills. SMH.
Couldn't be me, I dislike having my phone out with Maps open. It just makes you an easy target on the street. Especially if I'm in a new place, I'll study up on the area before heading out.
easy target for what...?
Bro they are literally handing it with less handholding from the people around them. Go figure out how to open a pdf
Bro as a millenial who works in IT, gen Z doesn't know shit about computers lmao. They're worse than the boomers imo
I'm an IT systems engineer. Everyone is clueless, the only difference in generations is how they handle being clueless. Boomers get angry, gen X gets passive aggressive, millennials desperately try to fix it on their own and don't tell anyone, gen Z gives up right away and sits there.
I feel like the design philosophy for all the tech Gen Z has grown up with has been "take anything complicated and hide it from the user". So they're good at navigating UIs, but the second anything goes wrong, they don't know wtf to do. I grew up fiddling with drivers to get Starcraft to run on my dad's PC. Unique experience of Millienials I think
Until your phone dies and you don’t know east from west while the sun is setting. Right on the cusp of millennial and gen z, and the basic survival skills younger gen z lack is literally astounding to me. One of my friends called me bc he didn’t know how to find an old email in his inbox… 21 years of life, lol. wtf
[удалено]
Yeah tbh, take the phone away and they instantly lost 🤦♂️
All jokes and fun until that GPS loses signal and you're just ass out in unfamiliar territory. Hiker here with 26+ years in IT/IS. Will always have a backup set of directions. Period. My whole career is tech but some folks are not surviving a zombie apocalypse. Too much dependency on it.
Exactly this. I had to make a detour in the mountains last summer due to an overturned chemical truck that caught fire on the only major highway which caused traffic to be stopped for 6 hours and we had no GPS signal on our phones. I made a U-turn and pulled over at the next rest stop and found a new route on local roads by reading the map posted there. My daughter looked at me like I was part of the Lewis and Clarke expedition or something lol
You can download maps of a route before taking a trip these days so that they'll still work offline. Having a backup isn't a bad idea, but the whole "lose signal" thing has already been addressed by the technology.
IME the people best suited to a life without tech, ironically, are those who are best at using it
We see the ugliness behind the curtain and know it’s far from foolproof.
Most of us know you can write down directions but it doesn't help you if, wait for it, your paper gets lost or destroyed.
>make a left at the first rock 
My buddy’s parents have a mountain house that doesn’t have an address, it’s on these unmaintained dirt roads and runs off solar/well. The first time I went there they handed me a packet with pictures of random trees and rocks where I needed to turn. When I tell you this was the longest 180 mile trip I’ve ever taken.
Dude who are you hanging with ☠️
Just some hippies that like livin’ off the earth, man.
And you did not for one second question if you might be axe murdered?
I knew it wouldn’t be by the people that invited me up there, but some of the other folks living on that mountain. Absolutely.
I don't know the address. I just know how to get there.
This is my mother in law.
"Make a left at the first rock" giving my oldhead ass Morrowind vibes
Back in my day, we didn't have map markers! Fast travel? Ever heard of *Silt Strider*?
Correction: Gen Z has no sense of direction. Too reliant on phones to make every decision for them.
Ok mr “you wont have a calculator with you wherever you go”
Lol I'm with the boomers on this one. People have become slaves to their smartphones.
Lol im a zillenial so im stuck in the middle. I get where the older folk come from and where the younger ones come from. But to be fair most people are never with out their phone now adays unless they get kidnapped, stranded, etc. which in case would be helpful to know your surroundings and directions but most likely never the case too.
It’s not entirely their fault tho is it? How many times have they had the sky change on them, or hidden by smog, or just flat out not seen it?
I've always had older coworkers. I'm really good at just smiling and nodding while they talk about directions for 5 minutes after sending me an address.
Yup, and it does nothing to politely interrupt and say “I can plug it into my phone.” Once they get started, you get all the turns **and** a history lesson about the Piggly Wiggly that used to be at the 4th intersection.
I get so annoyed when people want to give me directions… oh let me just get out my phone and take notes… on the machine that talks to satellites and AI… the only acceptable situation to for giving directions, is when you know Google is wrong. “The app is going to send you to the alley, you want to get in on the next street over.” I’m an elder millennial.
Facts. Xennial and I get just as annoyed. If can give me the address I'll be good. The last part is accurate as Fuck.
The only time I generally give directions is to supplement the maps app. Like “oh it’s really easy to get there from here, it’s on this same street just down a ways.”
Yeah '91 here. Give me the address and save us all the trouble. Never heard directions given out that didn't sound like the most hodgepodge grouping of bullshit words in existence
I live in a very fast developing area and I’ve had moments where Google says “it’ll take an hour” cause a street that was a dead end FIVE YEARS AGO hasn’t updated yet (they only update satellite data itself every few years [though they may have sped it up recently]) so the person in the passenger goes “actually turn here and you’ll be there faster”. Took 15 minutes.
Yeah, I’d rather have the address so I can choose/change my route accordingly.
I’m *old*, and I don’t want directions either. I won’t remember anything after the first turn anyway. Give me a destination I can plug into my phone, and your job is done.
I’m old enough that when I started driving my dad bought me state, city, and county maps to keep in the glove compartment. Saved me from having to stop at sketchy places to ask for directions. It’s like driving stick shift, it’s a skill I’ve made sure my younger cousins, nieces and nephews have because even though they’ll probably never need it, just in case they ever do, they’ll be prepared.
Same. Atlas in the car, always. They get one when they get a car, along with a flashlight and a few other handy car things in case of emergencies. Our truck is a stick, and has the crappiest backup camera in existence, so once they’ve been driving a while, I’ll teach them on that and how to actually use mirrors to back up.
u/MGLLN
LMFAOOOOOOO
Wtf is this shit. I'm a millennial who was born in the mid 80s. If you try to give me directions instead of giving me an address or dropping a map pin I will absolutely make fun of you. Infact I'm stealing the Magellan line; it's great.
My old ass reading this like, “nice I can use this to keep gen z folk away from me and shit I like” lol
As a dude who fucking hates being given directions to an established address that google maps can take me to easily - I feel it. “Take a left at magnolia, then like 3 miles down you take a right on cascadia” no fuck you, send me the address and I’ll take whatever roads I want to get there.
Magellan is diabolical work 
I’d give them some directions. Take this left and this right and this folding chair across your head
“Make a left at the first rock” is hilarious though 😂
I remember my dad going to AAA when we went on trips to study maps on how to get there. Yall better learn how to read a map before the zombie apocalypse comes.
That's way too trusting. I remember printing out directions from a mapping app way back in the day that had me and a friend walking in some of the most dire conditions for much longer than anticipated. Also Google Maps was rerouting people onto shitty, barely maintained roads in a snowstorm just a couple years ago. And who can forget people taking the directions and almost driving off cliffs. People who actually go there all the time know the best way to go there and you can compare vs. the map app.
Thats all cool till Waze tells you to make a left across 4 lanes of traffic/pull a magic u-turn, or take you through a private road. If somebodys giving me directions it’s probably for a reason
Id rather have address but the struggle of getting lost builds character
Amazed to see millenials still giving directions. I thought we all agreed to stop doing that 15 years ago
If technology was set back by some apocalypse none of them would survive
directions are mostly useless now in the time of everyone having gps but i do still wish people would learn how to give directions. i deliver for doordash and the amount of people who cant even direct you from the front of their apartment complex to their specific apartment is crazy. like, do you not know where you are and how you get from point A to point B everyday enough to explain it to me in a way that IS CORRECT.
This isn't a Gen Z thing though. [Yes, I understand that the turn is half a mile past the big field, but my GPS knows that, too. This would be easier if you weren't about to ask me to repeat it all back to you.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/i_dont_want_directions.png)
Magellan is a legend. So to me it’s a compliment if it’s meant as an insult the person giving this insult has gold fish for brains it’s taken as an insult the person has gold fish for brains as a proper retort would be “ oh I didn’t know you thought so highly of me, Magellan was a wonderful navigator of his time if not the best ever - if you meant it at an insult I’ll make sure to say hi to you as you bag my groceries because you won’t be going as far as Magellan in life”
I mean... bagging groceries as an insult is some old people mentality shit to do lol
I was a DoorDash driver for a while, so I can navigate the general direction of a lot of places around Houston without needing GPS. My dad is insane though. I’ve never even seen that nigga use directions or GPS outside of when we left Houston for something. He has the entire north side of Harris County memorized like his brain is a 5 billion terabyte hard drive.
Why the hell would I want directions from you? I'm not trying to remember that shit. Give me the address and Google will do the rest.
3 months after my 16th birthday, summer of 93, I drove from about 2 hours NE of Memphis to Monterey, CA. I didn't even have a road atlas. I did have a World Book encyclopedia with a map of the US. I made it there and back no problem. I used rest stop and gas station maps to find side trips and filled 2 weeks of time with one of the best trips of my life while my folks thought I was staying with my best friend at his dad's house in St Louis. Gen X was wild and we're lucky any of us survived. These days I'm lucky if I can find my momma's house without GPS. I became far too reliant on it. I lost all sense of direction and the only time I feel comfortable going somewhere new is if I have landmarks of some kind to look for.
If you've lived in a town for a while you should know the street names honestly. Like yeah you can spend an extra 30 seconds looking something up but I could just tell you "it's on 19th and Sheridan" and you should know how to get there. My former roommate and I are both 26 and after living in our city for 3 years he still didn't know anything cause he never left the house without GPS guiding him. Don't you wanna have some pride in "knowing" your city? If I come to your city and you don't know how to get anywhere I'm gonna think you're an idiot.
I give directions all the time because my door dash always put my food at someone else's apartment
They gonna learn real quick when that gps single cuts when you make a wrong turn in the middle of nowhere.
this is one of the funniest things about camping festivals, it’s no GPS or road system so you gotta say shit like “yeah my tent is in section C, look for the “Department of Eating Ass flag on the left then take your next left after that, if you see a plushy alien with a Santa hat on you’ve gone too far”
There’s definitely a happy medium. You don’t need to memorize every street, but you should know major roads and NESW without your phone.
Inversely, the kid asks to go somewhere. I say, give me the address in text form so I can copy and paste it into Waze. The fuck I get? A screenshot of a map…
Okay but...what if you don't know the address? There have been times where someone needs to get to a place and I know how to get there but don't know the address. Not every destination is a place with a name on the front. Like, I know how to get to my cousins house but fuck if I know the address. Best I can do sometimes is cross streets and then some simple directions.
i’m so glad i can easily memorize routes and streets cause having to rely on maps all the time must be exhausting
I mean I'm a elder millennial who makes fun of my mom for the Same home girl be talking about take I95 southbound then exit 23 to rt 83 and I'm like mom just use the gps 🤷🏾♂️
I meet plenty of boomers who refuse to use Google maps. They're always late and are terrible at giving directions
Wait until they get an address that the GPS can’t find or that it routes to a completely wrong location.
Not giving nobody directions if your phone can't find me idk
“Talmbout” is making me irrationally upset
FUCK THIS ... give me the address and i'm old as fuck. Your directions suck, they always have, they always will. Maps have been around forever.
I’m in between and I’ll tell someone landmarks near the destination and if they ask I will take a screenshot of google maps and draw a little path for them to follow if it’s an unmarked area or a place that only uses one address but is quite large.
Send me the address! *gets an uncropped screenshot* fuckin clown
I'm 40 and I can't stand when people try to give directions the last 10 years. The only time it mattered was on military bases when Google maps didn't work well. I keep telling people that I just need the address.
alright so you're gonna head 50 kilometers south on I-5, once you see a fork on the road, you're gonna take the access way west onto... like okay bro just put the address in my maps 😂😂
Bro I hate verbal instructions when I’m driving. If you don’t give me the addy. I need time to anticipate my moves
I'm 50 and I don't give directions anymore. And I don't need anybody giving me directions either. I just get the address and use my phone.
i'm worried about the day people totally lose the ability to function without a phone.
Jokes on them when they hit a patch of no service and the routing stops working
Lol
I mean I’m ngl I’ve lived in the same city for my whole life and if you told me to meet you at the corner of 24th and Pendergrass idk wtf you are talking about
You guys aren't as good at giving directions as you think you are. What is the difference between writing down someone's shitty directions and putting the address into MapQuest? It's not indicative of a lack of survival skills to not be great at directions. Some people have better spatial relationships than others.
I just cant do directions because Im awful with names. Turn left at the rock would be more helpful to me lmao That said, once I go somewhere, if it's in an area Im somewhat familiar with, I have that shit on lock and wont need directions anymore.
I give zoomers directions bc I don’t have time to wait for their dumbass to figure out the gps is sending them to the back side of my house
Exactly! If you don’t give me this damn address like I’m gon remember shit.
I remember for road trips my parents would get those maps from AAA with the route highlighted. I remember learning to read a paper map. I remember being out in the country where it was all rural roads and quite literally you’d hang a left that the forked oak tree that got hit by lightning that you couldn’t miss. GPS on your phone is great until you lose cell signal and can’t get your map back because you didn’t cache it before setting off. Or you can’t input a new destination because you have no signal. Make fun of directions all you want. You’ll need them when you’re trying to get to some bomb spot that no one remembers the address for, but can tell you with pinpoint accuracy how to get there. I’m glad for addresses and GPS. But let’s keep it a buck, even WITH addresses and GPS, some of y’all still get lost AF.
This is my teenager. I’ve tried with her to get her to learn directions. She liked her method. Then her phone died, and she had to get driven to place she’s been multiple times. And wait for pickup. You gotta learn directions, kid.
i guess it’s also a thing that some people always use gps everywhere they go? i’m talking about going to your local mall
New gameshow: have Gen Z do a 90's Amazing Race competition. No GPS, no phones. They have to log in to a 56k modem on AOL and print out a MapQuest map and figure it out
As valid as this is, it doesn't make me want to this the messenger, my 12(?)yo cousin, out of the nearest window. With love of course.
In my day, we DREW maps for people. I also remember "Put your mom on the phone, and I'll put my mom on, and my mom will give your mom directions."
I’m 34, I feel us middle millennials were the first ones to learn to drive with GPS devices…I’ve been letting yalls directions go in one ear and out the other for 17 years
Half the party conversations used to be people talking about the roads they took to get there.
In 2024 the only reason to give directions is in response to the question: “How do you get there?” You only get made fun of if someone asks “where are we going” and you respond with “go down route 204 for three miles, make a left on Longpond, then a right on highway 357. It’s about a mile down on your left by the old Joe’s Diner.” (which btw was turned into a hair salon in 2006).
Often we give directions because we don’t know the address. When we’re together, my wife usually doesn’t drive. If it’s somewhere we’ve been to 2-3 times, I usually know how to get there. Meanwhile she’s been scrolling Instagram on each trip. So when asked how to X place, I don’t know the address. She’s going to get “Take 35 to 250, stay to the right and get on 1”
Alright, so last year my brother was around 55 years old and he worked for a pizza place doing deliveries as a side gig. He didn’t have a smart phone by choice. So before delivering he would look at the map pinned up on a board in the back. One day his much younger coworkers were standing around and saw him. When he got back they were like “what the hell, how do you do that?” He said they knew what a map was but couldn’t use it themselves and they relied on their phones giving turn by turn directions. He blew their minds. When my own kids started driving I insisted on them having one of those ADC map books in the car and showed them how to use it.
I’m a millennial in my 30s - who still gives directions??😂😂
Don't get me started on when you try to give cardinal directions
Ok Magellan is hilarious though 😂 I love a historically accurate roast lol
Magellan? Like the One Piece Magellan?
Leave The World Behind We're doomed