Top 5 Ways To Pretend You Understand Computers

Understanding computers beyond Facebook and film downloading is hard work. In our baffling, deterministic modern lives, with all these other things going on, it may be much easier to blag it. Listed below are five ways to do just that.


Understanding computers beyond Facebook and film downloading is hard work. In our baffling, deterministic modern lives, with all these other things going on, it may be much easier to blag it. Listed below are five ways to do just that.

Buy a touchscreen

There’s something impressive about working a touch screen computer. It’s such a cool, trendy technology that people just assume you know what you’re on about. It’s the old schoolyard mentality, where everyone just assumes that the lad with the best football boots is good at football and acts as such, whereas in reality he’s crap. Use this mass-psychology to your advantage.
Touchscreen is also a brilliant way of highlighting your exemplary personal hygiene and habits.  If there’s no grease, chocolate or worse on the screen it screams wonders for your integrity and dietary habits. It’s also why I haven’t bothered with it.

Only talk to old people

This is the most radical of all our advice and the easiest to put into practice. Simply avoid everyone under sixty at all costs. It’s a fact that no one over that age knows anything about computers and lacks the capacity to learn. My grandad’s had a computer for years and he still has to set aside the afternoon to send an email. In the grand circle of the elderly you’ll be king of technology. You’ll never get married or anything but your secret lack of viable computer knowledge will be safe. Of course when you get to sixty everyone else who’s sixty will know about computers and then you’ll have to learn, but this is a great way to put things off for a few decades.

Show your teenage kids how to delete their history

This is valuable information and something only a parent can teach. It’s sex education for the twentieth century. Simply ambush your son one night when he’s about to go on the computer and tell him how to get rid of that pesky history. It’s one of those really tender parent-son moments you’ll never forget and gives you eternal household dominance over the computer-knowledge domain. This applies to daughters too, though I’ve never heard of any girl needing to know how to delete their history…

Offer small business IT support

You don’t know anything about business but you’ve seen enough episodes of Dragon’s Den to know you can do it. Bugger it. You’ve brought the Dummies book off Amazon, got some adverts typed up, and made sure your boxers aren’t visible on the webcam. You’re ready to go.
The first thing to do is to set a low service price; not so low it’s suspicious, just low enough to be tempting. Some tight novice will take you on at some point guaranteed, and then you’ll be legit in the IT game and no one will be able to doubt it. Who knows, you might even learn as you go along. Just don’t quit your day job to begin with. And make sure you only advise friends and relatives. This way if you screw up their lives completely, you can justify it by remembering some reason why they deserve it.

Play an online role-playing game

No one on Earth who plays an online RPG you have to pay for is rubbish on the computer. Be the exception. No one will know. No one will care.
Faking being good on the computer is a matter of practice and persistence. It’s also an admirable rebellious stance against a technologically-dependent world and I salute you. In fact, I do it all the time.
What are the ways that you pretend to be a computer whizz?
Sam Beddall is a creative writing graduate and a prolific blogger, who has built an unstable career pretending to be good at things he isn’t. He writes for Electronic Workplace as well as for various freelance clients. Image source