An unnamed former AOL executive has whispered a few choice sweet nothings into the ear of the New Yorker, not the least revealing of which may be that allegedly 75% of subscribers to the service “don’t need it”. “The company still gets eighty percent of its profits from subscribers,” explains the New Yorker’s Ken Auletta, “many of whom are older people who have cable or DSL service but don’t realize that they need not pay an additional twenty-five dollars a month to get online and check their e-mail.” That $25 dollars just happens to be the old dial-up fee, from way back when the internet was a joke…

Or: The Pac-Man Call. I… I can’t even really explain this video (well, it’s just audio, really). Poor Lorainne just can’t seem to figure out how to make Google Pac-Man disappear. Over a brutally hilarious five minutes, the ever-helpful Brian holds Lorianne’s hand through a tour of her screen real estate and the secret to making ‘The Pac-Man Game’ leave her in peace. The finale is frustratingly cute: ‘how many calls have you gotten about this?’ Lorianne asks with a laugh, surely expecting a triple-digit number. I’ve said to much already, just listen. This is exactly why I don’t discuss computers…

Finally, there’s, like, numbers and stuff to back up what I’ve been saying for a couple years now – old people haven’t a goddamn clue how modern social networking rolls. For all the people whose parents leave ridiculous, long, embarrassing public Facebook wall posts… this one’s for you. The Pew Internet & American Life Project has released a report that more or less states the obvious: young folks are the authority on how to manage oneself on social networks. First of all, let me clarify that ‘old’ for the purposes of the study, as well as this article, constitutes anything over 30 years of…