Fran Lebowitz may hate technology but I'm a geezer geek and proud of it.

Admit it Fran. Technology scares you.

Jan 31, 2021

This is the Snarky Sunday edition of Snarky Senior — the newsletter from Erica Manfred, which you can read about here. If you like it and don’t want to miss an issue, you can get it in your inbox by subscribing.

Have you seen the Fran Lebowitz documentary, Pretend it’s a City, on Netflix? If not, watch it. It’s a hoot. Leibowitz, known for her rapier wit and curmudgeonly commentary, has been my guru of snark since the 1970s when her first book, Metropolitan Life, came out.

Lebowitz has a knack of saying what I’m thinking, long before I even knew I was thinking it.

For instance, I never understood why I hated t-shirts with messages on them until I read her quip, “If people don't want to listen to you, what makes you think they want to hear from your sweater?” which pretty much nails it. I despise Pollyannaish faux-spiritual clichés. She gets it. “All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable.”

Lebowitz has written only two books, the last one, Social Studies, in the 80s. She then contracted terminal writers block but, unlike most of us introverted literary types, she morphed into a “sit down comedian” appearing on TV shows and college campuses, where, for some reason kids love her.

As her contemporary I still appreciate her humor, but also as her contemporary, I am dismayed by her Luddite-ism (Is that a word?). She revels in being out of touch with technology. This reverse snobbery is all too common among my peers. She has the chutzpa to brag about not owning a cellphone or a computer (which may be why she has writers block).

Admittedly she’s funny when she talks about how impossible it is to navigate her beloved New York City when everyone is looking at their phones. Unfortunately she is setting a bad example for too many of our contemporaries who share her technophobia.

This is what I have to say to you, Fran. Feel free to quote me:

There is no shame at being intimidated by your smartphone, but bragging about it is like purposely not learning French when you live in France because you prefer to speak English.

Why not come clean and admit the truth? Technology scares you.

I understand. I’ve been there.

The Kaypro II and me.

In 1983 I was a freelancer in my thirties cranking out six stories a month for a consumer newsletter. My parents gave me a Kaypro II, one of the first “portable” computers made, as a birthday gift.

It cost over $1,500, weighed 26 pounds, had a 9-inch glowing green screen and ran something called CPM, a now-obsolete operating system which used floppy disks that held maybe 20 pages of data. There were no Windows. There were no handy menus. To do anything you had to memorize numerical commands.

It was cutting edge technology at the time, but I wouldn’t blame Fran Lebowitz for not wanting to use it.

Just because I was an early adopter doesn’t mean it didn’t terrify me. I tiptoed towards my Kaypro II every morning, expecting the worst when I flipped the “on” switch. I was sure the story I wrote would have disappeared from the disc, or that it would refuse to turn on and I’d get the green screen of death, or that it would mysteriously switch from one file to another (all of which happened).

Instead of trying to troubleshoot it myself, I’d have an anxiety attack and run for the phone. I was so panicked that I called the salesmen at the computer store at least five times a day (they offered unlimited customer service—another obsolete concept). I called so often I would hear grumbling in the background: “It’s her again.”

For those of you whose first computer was a Mac, you have no idea.

The Kaypro II did not send email, do Google searches or Tweet because the internet did not exist at the time.

What it did do--which was nothing short of miraculous—was word processing. It corrected errors without Whiteout and it cut and pasted. Until then, after typing up a story, I’d actually sit on the floor cutting up paragraphs, laying them out and moving them around until they made sense. Then I’d scotch tape them on another piece of paper, retype the whole thing, and often cut and paste again, and retype again, correcting mistakes with Whiteout as I went along.

That little computerized function, cut and paste, cut literally 50% off my work time. I went from having a full time job to a part time job without a loss in pay. Of course I still had to use a dot matrix printer which was a nightmare in itself and then take the subway to drop the story off.

You would think that after allowing me to become a lady of leisure I would fall in love with technology and with the Kaypro II, but I still hated that goddamn thing, although not enough to go back to physically cutting and pasting

Eventually I moved on to a series of better computers, but I’d hang on to outmoded ones as long as possible, terrified of learning anything new.

I slowly overcame my fear of technology…very slowly. I think like any phobia, constant exposure simply desensitized me to the source of my panic. It took me at least twenty years but one day I started noticing that I was able to troubleshoot problems myself without making frantic phone calls to Kenny, my computer consultant. All of a sudden I was the one getting those hysterical calls from technophobic older friends who couldn’t figure something out, instead of being the one making them.

The next sign was what a friend calls the “ooh shiny” syndrome when you spend hours at Best Buy trying out and lusting after the latest high tech gadgets.

At seventy-eight I’m far from totally over my technophobia. I still put off things like setting up new printers and figuring out complicated software. And when I DO figure something out I feel really proud of myself.

Fran Leibowitz doesn’t have to get over her technophobia. She can get away with demanding that people call her on a landline and send her actual snail mail. Ordinary people do not have the same privilege.

The moral is that unless you’re on Martin Scorsese’s rolodex (assuming he too doesn’t have a smartphone) you need to stop obsessing and get with the program. You won’t regret it. Your children and grandchildren will thank you, and your brain will thank you too.

I swear I gain a couple of IQ points and another few memory cells every time I have to figure something out on my phone or computer. I am confident that I am staving off Alzheimer’s each time I pick up my phone and use a new app. Despite her fame and fortune, Fran Leibowitz can’t make the same claim.

If you know someone who doesn’t take themselves too seriously and might enjoy some snark in their inbox once or twice a week, forward this newsletter their way. You can subscribe (and link to it) here. Email me anytime at Askerica@gmail.com. Suggestions and feedback welcome.